Davis Health Care’s Quality Improvement Plan

To be able to effectively implement the quality improvement plan, the management of Davis Healthcare must be in a position to make a detailed illustration of the crtical steps to act as map that would guide the implementation team in starting and coordinating the project. This assignment will address areas of criteria and tasks with regards to the authority, structure and organization; communication, education; monitoring and revising; and regulation and accreditation patient identification should be treated with the seriousnes it deserves because failure to correctly identify patients may have far reaching consequences whereby a patient may undergo wrong procedures, transfusion errors may occur, a petient may be given errenous medication, and testing errors may also occur among other errors. The above areas will provide guidence in the implementation process so as to reduce errors associated with patient identity.

Criteria and Tasks

This section decsribes the authority structure, and organization of the implementaion of the quality implementation plan. The different roles of each group involved in the management and running of an healthcare organization will be described. Every professional project must have an implementation committee whose role is to oversee the implementation of the program. As is the case with most professional projects, this quality improvement plan will be implemented by an inplementing committee. However, different bodies involved in the plan within the healthcare organization, will play different roles.

Board of directors: The board of directors are have the responsibility of drafting policies of the organization. Equally, they are responsible for making decisions regarding the implementation structure and organization; communication, education; monitoring and revising; and regulation and accreditation patient identification Also, they provide oversight with regards to plans and projects of the organization.

Executive leadership: The executive leadership lias with the board to guide a culture of the organization aimed at spearheading improvements in the organization. The executive also directs the healthcare resources towards processes, structures of the organization as well as resources to monitor the healthcare systems, which in turn would ensure reduced patient identification errors.

Quality improvement committee: The role of the quality improvement comittee is to monitor this quality improvement plan, make observations on areas of improments and report to the board for action on quality issues. This committee also makes recommendations to the executive board with regards to the initaitives and policies aimed at improving the quality of the patient identification program. In addition, the committee ensures that the best practises on patient identification, are “shared with the staff” (Sadeghi, 2013) at the Davis healthacare organization. Apparently, it is this committee that overseas the preparation of every annual plans on quality improvement.

Medical staff: If patient identification is done incorrectly then it is high probable that the medical staff will misdiagnose illness, issue medication to the wrong patient, discharge infant patients to the wrong persons, conduct wrong procedures among other error. As such, medical staff play an important role in counterchecking the patient identification before starting any procedure. As part of their involvement in the implementation of the patient identification lan, they have a better understanding of the importance of its success implementaion in the organization.

Middle management: As part of their involvement in this plan, the role of the middle management is to reinforce the decisions of the executive leadership in the implementation of the patient identification plan.

Department staff: The role of the department staff is to take orders from the middle managment with regards to the implementaion of the patient identification plan.

The quality improvement team will be tasked with the responsibility of communicating the to quality performance activity outcomes of the patient identification program to all staff. In fact, the communication on quality improvement must be made to the board of directors to executive leadership, through the medical staff, to the middle managment and finally to the department staff. The communication team will also be tasked with the responsibility of making updates on how the patient identification program is being implemnted.

This means that the training activities regarding this program as well as the improvement charting are among the important aspects of the communication. The communication team will oversea the collection of data, preparation of data report and can communicate the improvement efforts through techniques such as employee meetings, posters, emails, newsletters, memos, meetings and verbal communications techniques.

Education

The importance of patient identification plan must be taught to each member of staff, if the “program is to be successfully implented and the full potential of the training be realized” (Moore & Simendinger, 1999). To initially orient each staff member to the plan, flow charts should be used to point out the actual sequence of events in the patient identification process. The use of the charts would help each staff to get a better understading of how the the whole process actually happens.

Once a problem is identified, the trainer will have to use another chart to show how the correct patient identification process should be done. This is what is referred to as process paced training. Under this training, every staff will come to understand that the implementation of the patient identification plan will affect their workflows in one way or another. However, after the trainer takes them through the process, they will finally understand new workflows.

Role based training is another effective technique of educating the staff. Under this strategy, the trainer would tailor the learning sessions based on the roles of various employees of the organization as they involve in the plan. Apparently, different staff will have different needs with regards to this patient identification plan. So, in such cases, the trainer will design the lessons on how best they will suit the particular staff.

Using super user training technique can be a very effective way to pass edcation on patient identification, to the employee. Under this technique, the trainer will be forced to create a team of super users. These are afew members of staff who have quiclkly mastered the lessons and can move amongst the other staff to share their tips to aid in better understaning of the process.

Monitoring and Revising

After the implementation of the patient identification plan has been done, it has to undergo an annual evaluation process to identify any inefficiencies or ineffectivess so that appropriate improvements are made accordingly. Apparently, the evaluation committee will be tasked withthe responsibility of conducting an annual evaluation of the effectiveness of the plan so as to reveal if the target goal has been achieved. The committee will then recommend revisions to be made on the plan. Depending on the reviews of the plan, the committee will set priorities and identify opportunities for improvement in the next annual evaluation. The review committee will then draft a report as a summary of the review process, any findings, recommendations to me made on the plan for that year. The report shall then be submitted to the board for action.

Regulatory and Accreditation

External entities such as government agencies, professional interest groups and accreditation bodies, have have a huge influence on the decision making processes of healthcare organizations. For instance, an health care organization cannot offer certain services without the permission of government agencies. It is in the same way that an healthcare organization cannot offer services to community members unless it has recieved accreditation from the accrediting bodies.

In other words, the decision making processes of these bodies and agencies are tied up with the policies of these bodies because they are the standard setters for the interest of the commuinity and citizenrty seeking seeking healthcare services from them. A government agency can revoke the operating licence of any healthcare organization if that organization violated any othe set laws of policies. For instance, FDA may revoke its approval on the use of a particular drug if it is found out that the use of that drug is harmful to the patients. “Accreditation bodies provide services to healthcare organization” (Field, 2007), without which the decision processes of those healthcare organizations will be dwindled.

References

Field, R. I. (2007). Health care regulation in America: Complexity, confrontation, and compromise. New York: Oxford University Press.

Moore, T. F., & Simendinger, E. A. (1999). Hospital turnarounds: Lessons in leadership. Washington, D.C: Beard Books.

Sadeghi, S. (2013). Integrating quality and strategy in health care organizations. Burlington, Mass: Jones & Bartlett Learning.