Question

Examine two (2) well-known healthcare quality organizations that have taken two to three (2-3) measures to improve quality within the organizations themselves. Suggest one (1) additional measure that each organization could take to further improve healthcare quality. Justify your response. Suppose you are a Quality Officer for a healthcare organization in your area. You have been tasked with creating a plan to reduce the increasing number of medical errors that occur within your organization. Specify two (2) quality initiatives that your organization could implement in order to reduce medical errors and their related costs. Determine the fundamental tenets of the Standard of Care that would influence quality in your organization. Provide a rationale for your response.

Please provide references so I can understand.

Answer 1

Answer 1:

The two healthcare companies which I am examining are CVS Health and Cardinal Health. These companies are amongst the top 30 rankings of Fortune 500 healthcare companies in the world. Both these companies have been strictly following NATIONAL SAFETY AND QUALITY HEALTH SERVICE STANDARDS as well as HAZARD ANALYSIS AND CRITICAL CONTROL POINT. These standards ensure a great deal of essential maintenance of quality of the products they maintain. The company can go for an additional standard also which is that of ISO. The ISO health standard has 1300 standards which deal with all major areas ranging from medical devices to medicines to health informatics.

This is a useful standard because it has major benefits like, global harmonization of medical practices, efficient exchange and support of important medical information as well as improving quality of the output of the company. Thus if CVS Health and Cardinal Health use ISO health standard, it would be very useful for them.

Answer 2:

Being the quality officer of the healthcare organization of my area and finding that there has recently been an increase in medical errors, I would make a plan that would help to reduce the errors and improve the functioning of the company. The quality initiatives that I would ensure to be implemented are Six Sigma and Total Quality Management. (TQM). With six sigma, the number of errors would definitely reduce and with total quality management, the work would be done in an organized way thus reducing the errors. The fundamental tenants of the standards of care which would influence quality in my organization are safety and governance which would be ensured by the implementation of six sigma and TQM