Quality Improvement Part 1
Bledine Thelusma-Choudelor
HCS/588 Measuring Performance Standards
January 25, 2016
Dr. Richard Woerz

Healthcare organizations is held up to very high standards by society especially when it comes to patient safety. The quality of care has to be at its best at all times. This paper will look into the Quality Improvement for the patient safety, some of the areas that will be covered are the data to monitor improvement, three tools that will be used to measure improvement, the information each tools will collect, will discuss the strengths and weakness of each tools and the similarities and difference for the tools been used. We will discuss what Davis Health Care goals are with patient safety.
For proper monitoring there will be data that are needed from the Davis Organizations such as past patient safety reports from the past few years, organizations rating on patient safety from patient, The Joint Commission and other important organizations. The last piece of data that would need to be collected is where does Davis Health Care wants to go from here, so that can help the goal setting.
Monitoring the improvement allows the Davis organizations to be aware of their starting point and future goals. Monitoring improvement will include setting goals such as clear and specific goals ( Kelly, 2012). Clear goals allows is the most effective progress, and it’s very clear. This goal allows the most effective solution to the improvement the Davis Health care organizations would like to see. Since we are focusing on patient safety this goal allows us the time and effort with can make with the team while meeting and monitoring each department. Davis Health Care will require up close and personalized monitoring because the improvement affects stakeholder, employees and managers. Specific goals having the organizations realized they are now at seven on scale of one to ten and they want to be a nine. Specific goals allows the organizations to know the standards they are been are held and making sure all is on track. ( Kelly, 2012).
The goals of Davis Health Care are to determine the effects of process that is been used currently, but ways to implement new process to improve patient safety. The three tolls that will be used to measure the QI are measuring the patient harm level, MATCH toolkit for medication reconciliation, and Central line insertion care team checklist. Patient harm level is an overall patients metric to measure the amount of occurrences that happens during the hospital stay. To calculate the patient harm level, you are looking at the bloodstream infections, catheter associated urinary tract infections, pressure ulcers and adverse drug events. When the patient harm level chart appears things that will be on the templates are total patient harm per month, and ways to measure the organization strategies for improvement from previous chart (http://www.hhnmag.com/articles/3249-the-one-tool-you-need-to-measure-patient-safety-and-quality, 2015).
MATCH stands for Medication at Transitions and clinical handoffs for medication reconciliation, this tools is used to impact all patients as they move through all health care setting with medication from previous physician admission, transfer or discharge (www.ahrq.com, 2012). This tools allows each hospital setting that the patient goes to they have the knowledge of the patient medication. This tools can help us identify patients that may need more education on their current medication regimen. This tools can be one of the most effective way to reverse advert drug affect. This tools allows the number of medications errors to decrease, because all staff will have access to see what medication this patient is currently on. Davis health care wants to prevent and improve any medication errors, on average medication errors is the third leading cause of death in hospital settings.
Central Line insertion can be a very serious part of patient safety, it cause blood clots, veins rupture, and skin irritation/infections. Central line insertion needs to be inspect to ensure the line is necessary for the patient care that is been received. Central insertion is necessary for medication to be admin, long-term hospital stay, and therapy such as chemo. The central line will be looked at to see how often the line are changed, or cleaned to avoid infections.
The first tool that will be used to measure improvement will be the plan-do-study-act ( PDSA), this plans allows the Davis Healthcare to accomplish it goal through small and frequent PDSAs. PDSA look at the goal of the project, which would be the quality improvement for the organizations ( www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, 2008). The PDSA measure nature and scope of the problem, what changes needs to be made in the organizations and plans with specific goals. This tools contain weakness such as not having obtainable goals that will should progress and improvement.
The next tools would be data assessment such as surveys, the survey will allow the problem within the Davis healthcare to be identify. Once these survey are concluded the management and stakeholder needs to be aware of the outcomes, the surveys needs to be conducted anyomous so employees don’t feel any of fear retaliation. The weakness with this data collections is not getting all the employees to complete the survey which can be due to scheduling and more (Barnhorst, Martinez, & Gershengorn, 2015).
The last tool that can be used is the data that has been collected from previous or for previous projects. Administration collects data for all purpose, but these purposes can be used to improve the quality patient safety for the Davis HealthCare. The tools we used are essential to the outcome of the project. The similarities with all these tools is that the goals are specific. The difference with these tools can the way they were collected. We have surveys that are looking at employees and other tools that are looking at patients. We have data that is coming from administration.

As healthcare organization we have to do our best to provide the best patient care including best patient safety to every patient. Davis healthcare can rise up to the standards of great patient safety. We have looked into Quality Improvement for the patient safety, some of the areas that we covered are the data to monitor improvement, we discuss the three tools that will be used to measure improvement, we spoke specific spoke about the information that would be collected, we discuss the strengths and weakness of each tools and the similarities and difference for the tools.

References

Barnhorst, A. B., Martinez, M., & Gershengorn, H. B. (2015). Quality improvement strategies for critical care nursing. American Journal Of Critical Care, 24(1), 87-92.

Hall, S., Goddard, C., Stewart, F., & Higginson, I. J. (2011). Implementing a quality improvement programme in palliative care in care homes: a qualitative study. BMC Geriatrics, 1131. doi:10.1186/1471-2318-11-31 http://www.hhnmag.com/articles/3249-the-one-tool-you-need-to-measure-patient-safety-and-quality Hughes RG. Tools and Strategies for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety. In: Hughes RG, editor. Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. Rockville (MD): Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US); 2008 Apr. Chapter 44. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2682/
Kelly, D. (2012). Applying Quality Management in Healthcare: A system approach 3rd edition.
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