Question

It is very important for a health care manager to continually focus on improving quality in his/her department in a health care organization. Why? Quality and value are closely tied to reimbursement. The health system is moving towards reimbursement based on ‘value-based care’. By 2018, 50% of Medicare payments will be based on value-based models of care.

1. In two or three sentences, discuss the role of quality improvement in healthcare.

2. Pretend you are a department manager of quality in a large skilled nursing facility. The Director of Quality told you to form a quality improvement committee. The committee’s function is to investigate the cause of patient falls because there were 5 patients who had falls in the last month. The goal of the committee is to reduce patient falls to 0 (zero).

      Describe 3 qualities that committee members should have to effectively work on your committee.

      Describe the titles of at least 4 people you would have on your committee and what each person would contribute to a committee to decrease patient falls (i.e. doctor, nurse, manager, etc.).

      Discuss the role of ‘brainstorming’. What is one ‘ground rule’ (found in the textbook) to follow when brainstorming?

If your team decided to redesign the workflow of the nursing home, what is one step you might take to successfully manage this change with the nursing home staff? [You don’t need to describe the redesign. You only need to describe one step that will help make the workflow change successful].

Answer 1

1.The Role of quality improvement in health care is to improve health care by identifying problems,implementating and monitoring corrective action and studying its effectiveness.

2.The three qualities thet commitee members should possess to effectively work in the commitee are important because endeavor depends on the team working on it.It is not the number of people, but rather how well they function and work together, they makes a team successful. Team members should respect each other, and share common interests,vision,goals,agendas,and timelines to be successful.And team members should possess good attitude ,qualities of mind and character.

Titles of Committee members: Team should have Clinical leadership,Technical expertise,Project Sponsorship, Technical Expertise, Chief executive officers, Medical directors,Physicians,Nursing staffs,Patient Representatives,Case Managers,Operation Managers,Billing Department staff.

Clinical Leadership: The role of clinical leadership has the authority to test and implement a change and to solve problem issues that arise in the .Clinical leader understands how the changes will affect the impact these changes may have on other parts of the Organisation.

Project Sponsorship: The individual has executive authority and serves as the link to the Quality Improvement team and the organisations' senior management.Although this Individual does not participate on a daily basis with the team , he or she may join periodically and stays appraised of its progress.

Nursing Staff: Nursing staffs are trained to handle the patient well.Nurses should be proactive in providing care to the patient.All Nursing staff should be skilled enough to render good health care to the patients.And they are accountable to the Medical doctors to report about the quality care to the Patient.

Technical Expertise:This staff has deep knowledge of the process area in question.A team may need several types of technical expertise in Quality Improvement processes, health information technology systems needed to support the proposed change, and specifics of the area of care affected.

The role of brainstorming should be to generate the most ideas possible within a specific period of time.It is a group creativity technique by which efforts are made to find a conclusion for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously by contributed by its members.

One ground rule of Brainstorming is Suspend Judgements.People of the group should be encouraged their wild ideas as there is no bad ideas.

One step that i would take to help or improve the workflow is to start with brainstorming sessions.As many hospitals, clinics lack this.One person looking for change doesnt happen and hence brainstorming session gives every faculty an opportunity to bring up ideas.And this itself is a progression to improve the workflow.