A NUR-630: Performance Improvement and Quality in Health Care course examines models of performance and quality improvement in health care.
With our NUR-630: Performance Improvement and Quality in Health Care assignment help, students will get a deeper understanding of various concepts. Additionally, the students will also learn to differentiate measures of quality and apply industry-standard tools and process improvement methodology to enhance safety and positively impact patient outcomes and financial performance.
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What is the difference between quality improvement and performance improvement?
Quality improvement refers to an array of techniques and methods used for the collection and analysis of data gathered in the course of current healthcare practices in a defined care setting to identify and resolve problems in the system and improve the processes and outcomes of care. On the other hand, performance improvement refers to the continuous study and adaptation of the functions and processes of a healthcare organization to increase the probability of achieving desired outcomes and to better meet the needs of patients.
Objectives of quality improvement.
- Reducing medical errors, morbidity, and mortality
- Assisting in the development of best practice guidelines
- Improving client satisfaction
- Ensuring the environment of care promotes safety
- Ensuring professional performance
3 types of measures.
- Structure: physical equipment and facilities
- Process: How the systems work
- Outcome: the final result
Principles of quality improvement.
1. Perform as processes and systems.
Every health care organization needs to comprehend its own delivery system and key processes, rather than considering it as small and simple or big and complex. Therefore, the key to a quality improvement approach in any size of an organization should be, to streamline “Input – Process – Output” to meet the needs of a specific organization’s health service delivery system.
2. Focus on the Patient.
The main purpose of quality improvement in healthcare is to get the focus on the patient’s needs and expectations. In order to achieve this, health care organizations often provide services such as:
- Patient Safety
- Patient Engagement
- Systems that support patient access
- Evidence-based care provision
- Patient-centered communication
- Health literacy of patients
3. Focus on the use of data.
Data is the basis of quality improvement. This is because it describes how current systems are working, tracks the changes, allows comparison and monitoring for sustainable improvements. Therefore, medical staff use data to make decisions and the data-driven insights deliver better outcomes, minimum variation, fewer re-admissions, lower infection rates, and fewer medical errors. This data can be collected using both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection in order to improve the quality of the healthcare system.
4. Focus on Care-coordination.
Care coordination software maintains the Master Patient Index and Longitudinal Health Record for each patient (It becomes very effective if it is a case of a chronic condition). Additionally, it helps reduce care fragmentation of a patient, by providing a secure network of trusted healthcare providers and ensure effective referrals and smooth transitions between two or more healthcare providers.
Benefits of Quality Improvement in Healthcare System
Safe.
Quality improvement embraces a culture of safety, quality, and transparency. This is because the systematic and organized approach is intended towards optimizing care for the patients it serves and avoids harm.
Effective.
By improving the processes within a health care organization by using data-driven choices and insights, an organization reduces the chances associated with failure and redundancy.
Patient-centered
Improved efficiency of managerial and clinical processes leaves transition space for doctors and staff to provide responsive, respectful, and value-based care to a patient.
Proactive.
Improved processes recognize and solve the problems even before they occur.
Cost-effective.
Quality improvement processes are budget neutral. Therefore, it avoids the cost associated with process failure, poor outcomes, and errors. Most importantly, quality improvement involves use of reliable and streamlined processes which are less expensive to maintain.
Efficient
Improving the process makes wasteful activities associated with equipment, supplies, ideas, and energy more obvious and makes them easier to eliminate.
