Section 3: Quality Measurement and Assessment
Measuring and assessing quality provides a foundation for identifying needs for improvement, developing effective interventions, and then monitoring progress toward desired results.
In the Sadeghi, Barzi, Mikhail, and Shabot text, the authors assert that an effort to improve quality “calls for setting outcome and performance targets (goals and expectations) beginning with the end in mind, and then formulating initiatives and actions (processes) that can serve as a bridge to take the organization from its current performance to its desired performance” (p. 182).
Having this “end in mind” can provide justification for dedicating valuable resources toward the effort, and help to lay a clear, concrete path that takes the organization from uncovering gaps between current performance and evidence-based targets to actually achieving those goals.
In this section of the Course Project, you focus on what you would measure—and how you would measure it—relative to your previously identified quality improvement issue. Note: This section of the Course Project will serve as the Portfolio Assignment for this course.
To prepare:
- Review the Learning Resources. Also conduct a search of the literature related to your selected quality improvement issue and complete the Evidence Matrix (provided in this week’s Learning Resources).
- Evaluate the evidence presented in the research literature and the quality standards proposed by various organizations, including the IOM’s six aims for quality improvement.
- Based on this review and your knowledge of the organization that you have selected, determine appropriate measures and indicators of performance related to your identified quality improvement issue.
- Consider how you could gather and use historical evidence of the organization’s performance related to the quality improvement issue. Also consider methods for gathering and assessing current quantitative and qualitative data, including those currently in use by the organization (e.g., chart audit data, staff surveys, quality indicators that are monitored, observations). If possible, examine actual data to assess your selected organization’s performance related to the issue.
- Think about what, specifically, you would like to achieve related to this issue. Establish realistic, evidence-based quality performance targets.
- Analyze gap(s) between the organization’s current performance and the performance targets.
- As you do this, you may wish to create a graphic organizer/alignment chart for your own use that illustrates:
- The measures and indicators that you would evaluate
- Current and historical data related to this quality issue—either actual data or methods for how you would collect and analyze the data
- Methods for collecting and analyzing data in the future (including when you would do this)
- Realistic, evidence-based targets
- Project: Promoting Health Care
Section 3: Quality Measurement and Assessment
This week you continue working on Section 3 of your Course Project, which was introduced in Week 6. Through your work in previous weeks of this course, you have likely gained critical insights into the organization that serves as the focus for your quality improvement plan. Integrating this knowledge of the organization into your plan for addressing a quality improvement issue is essential for successfully facilitating change.
As you deepen your analysis of your selected organization, consider how the information presented in this week’s Learning Resources relates to strategic priorities as well as to the uniquely collaborative and competitive dynamic that binds organizations in health care.
To prepare:
- Think about the quality improvement issue that you are addressing and the associated plan that you are developing. Consider the following:
- What is the overall purpose, or aim, of doing this work?
- What would you hope to achieve for the organization by undertaking this project? What are the objectives of this initiative?
- What value would this work add to the organization?
- How would this work improve practice and create outcomes with impact?
- Review Chapter 7 of the Sadeghi, Barzi, Mikhail, and Shabot course text. Consider how addressing this quality improvement issue would align with the organization’s mission, vision, values, and strategic goals and objectives. How does it relate to regulatory issues, and other matters that are significant for the organization? If you notice a misalignment, use this as an opportunity to refine your focus.
- With this in mind, continue to hone your development of this Assignment, integrating the concepts addressed here into Section 3.
- To complete:
Write a 3- to 5-page paper that includes:
- An introduction to your quality improvement plan, including the overarching aim of this initiative and an explanation of how it aligns with the mission, vision, values, and strategic goals and objectives of the organization, as well as regulatory issues and other matters that are significant for the organization
- An overview of the current situation with regard to this quality improvement issue in the organization
- A description of measures and indicators
- A presentation on data related to this issue, including:
- Actual historical and current data and/or a description of the methods that you would use to collect and analyze the data
- Methods for collecting and analyzing data in the future, including when you would do this
- A description of realistic, evidence-based targets
- Be sure to cite evidence from the literature to justify your selection of the measures and indicators, as well as the performance targets. This section of the Course Project serves as the Portfolio Assignment for this course.
