Type of care the organization provides.
The hospital provides various health cares to patients and others who may need them. It offers both complex and simple ones. The hospital provides care on maternity issues; it also provides guidance and counseling services. For sick patients it examines them and provides them with the necessary medication.
Organization mission and QI goals.
The mission of the hospital is providing quality health care that distinguishes the dignity of all humans and the inherent human worth. The hospital aims at making its services and program available to all people devoid of restrictions. It creates a healing environment whereby the physicians associated with health staff and professionals and staff work in harmony to offer a personalized care. The hospital intents to be a leader in advocating of superior quality health care programs and developing of resources for satisfying the primary healthcare needs of the citizens in the area if operates.
In line with this mission, the QI goals comprise of equitability that entails providing care that does not vary in quality due to personal traits like socio-economic status, geographic location, ethnicity, and gender. The hospital wishes to improve its efficiency by avoiding waste of energy, ideas, supplies, equipment. Time is to be managed well to reduce waits and delays that are potentially harmful. The facility is to operate with core concern been on patients. This will entail providing care that is responsive to and respectful of, individual patient values, needs and preferences. All clinical decisions are to be guided by the patient values. Effectiveness is to be upheld. This will be done by providing services based on specific knowledge to persons who would benefit and also refrain from offering services to individuals who are unlikely to benefit. Safety will also be observed. This will entail avoiding injuries to patients from the care that is aimed at helping them.
Role of the patients in the hospital’s QI.
When a patient takes an active role in healthcare it can help him/her to get an excellent care from doctors. This can be done by improving the relationship one has with the doctors. Personal information in relation to any symptoms one has or change in life should also be disclosed. Patients should also ask questions; the patients should tell their doctors when they need more time to discuss certain issues. The patients can be care evaluators when they are the source of data on system performance and provider and when they are engaged in the definition of the quality parameters. The assessment on patients can be fed back to the healthcare providers and hence be the basis for quality improvement. Patients should partner with their healthcare providers and take on a significant role in health maintenance which will help to produce health. Consumers in hospitals should be informed choosers. In addition, these consumers motivate providers to improve their performance (Hibbard, 2003).
Difference between performance measurement and quality improvement processes
Measurement usually provides quantitative and values regarding subjective experience. Performance measurement usually makes it easy to have quality improvement, and the urge of improving quality necessitates performance measurement. This means that the two are dependent on one another. Improvement is known to have been made through data.
A measure is a mechanism for assigning a quantity to an attribute through comparison to a standard. A measure on clinical performance is a form of quality measure that acts as a mode for evaluating whether the provider safely or completely delivers clinical services that are suitable for the patient in the most favorable time period. Measure of quality entails mechanism for assigning a quantity to care quality by a criterion of comparison.
The only way of knowing whether the health care quality has improved is by measuring the performance. Performance measurement usually enables improvement of quality through performance measurement based on indicators of quality. Therefore, performance measurement can result to quality monitoring. The data obtained through monitoring of quality can be used by clinicians and health care providers in improving the quality in various ways (Tusler, Stockard, & Hibbard, 2003).
Three external indicators and how customers use the indicators as part of the QI process.
An indicator can be defined as measures of a given healthcare process or outcome; they are also measuring tools that are used for monitoring and evaluating the health care provider quality. The outcome indicators are the ones which describe the care effects on the health status of patients and populations. Patients’ improvements along with valuable changes in the behavior of a patient may be stated in the outcome broad definition and some may be representing the level of patient’s satisfaction with care. For the quality process indicator to be viable its use, it ought to have previously been shown to give better results. In the same manner, use of structural indicators for assessment of quality is only possible if the structural aspects have been shown to increase the chances of a good outcome or a process that has previously been shown to bring forth better results.
Generic and disease specific indicators measure care aspects that have relevance to the majority of patients with disease specific indicators showing diagnosis and measuring specific aspects of care that are related to certain diseases. These mostly focus on process, outcome and structure. The disease specific outcome indicators can be used in comparing hospitals and plans when data are adjusted to risk.
Indicators can be compared classified in accordance to modality, function and type of care. The indicators that are classified by the type of care may be chronic, acute or preventive. Care function may be relating to follow up, treatment, diagnosis, and screening. The modality of care delivery can be related to patient’s physical examination, medication prescription or laboratory or radiology (Hibbard, 2003).
How stakeholder feedback is used in the QI process.
Patients may use data comparing physicians and rating them in relation to how they take care of patients in their role of self-management. In the same way, the feedback of patients on this data could form the basis for change in the practice of physicians. Stakeholders ought to be part of a viable solution to the challenges that face healthcare. If patients become knowledgeable they will make informed decisions concerning their care and health outcomes. The support and encouragement for patients from the physicians in adoption of these roles will be very crucial in ensuring that it happens.
References
Hibbard JH. (2003) Engaging health care consumers to improve the quality of care. Med Care; 41 (Supp I):61-70.
Tusler M., Stockard J, & Hibbard JH, (2003) Does publicizing hospital performance stimulate quality improvement efforts? Health Aff. 22:84-94.
