Managing Quality Assurance in the Workplace
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Managing Quality Assurance at the Workplace
The enactment of the Affordable Care Act has led to an increase in the demand for healthcare services. The legislation extended access to health insurance to over 30 million previously uninsured Americans. Gilead & Ma (2015) projected an increase of 3.8% increase in healthcare visits nationally by 2020. Similarly, the outpatient departments experience an increase of about 2.6% in visits nationally. Other factors such as the prevalence of chronic diseases, increase in ageing population, and the search for a higher quality of life triggers the skyrocketing demand of healthcare services.
Consequently, the rising demand for healthcare services has mounted pressure on the allied healthcare sector. This has resulted in an explosive growth of the allied healthcare organizations. Similarly, the need for additional allied healthcare workers has arisen. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there is an expected shortage of allied healthcare workers such as certified occupational therapy assistants, audiologists, physical therapy assistants, speech-language pathologists and hearing aid specialists. With that said, it is imperative to initiate measures that help in managing the growth of allied healthcare organizations and filling the void in allied healthcare workers demand while maintaining quality in the sector. The two forms the focal themes of this paper.
Managing the Growth in the Allied Health Sector
Since the increased demand for healthcare services instigates the growth in the allied health sector, the best way to manage the growth is to rebalance the demand and supply scale of healthcare services. This is best done by initiating a behavior change, and encouraging consumers to take ownership of their health, assist them in managing chronic illnesses and prompting them to make appropriate use of healthcare services. This is achievable through the following approaches;
Educating Consumers. Education about preventive care and health is pivotal in managing the increased demand for healthcare services. The rationale behind this is that when consumers understand the risks associated with their lifestyles, they are at a better place to address them. This can be done through sensitization on wellness, prevention, nutrition, disease management and information about the available care services. This can be done through websites and traditional channels (Cruz-Gomes, Amorim-Lopes, & Almada-Lobo, 2018)
Providing Incentives for Behavior Change. Providing incentives for behavior change has a potential for positive impact in the management of increased demand for healthcare services. The incentives range from ad hoc rewards for simple behaviors. For example, coming in for a health check-up or taking a vaccine. Similarly, the government should mandate free benefits that support the change of behavior. The incentives should be designed to curb the inappropriate use of healthcare services (Cruz-Gomes, Amorim-Lopes, & Almada-Lobo, 2018).
Formulating Quality Standards for Certification. The country can formulate elaborate quality requirements for the establishment of new allied healthcare organizations. This should be a review of the existing ones to address the ever-growing demand of the services. This measure should be adopted if the first two prove ineffective in managing the growth in allied healthcare organizations. For example, the federal certifying bodies such as the National Commission for Health Certifying Agencies (NCHCA) should clearly outline the minimum staff requirement, capital requirement and facilities for the establishment of allied care organizations (Chassin, 2016).
Steps in Maintaining High Standards
The mushrooming of allied healthcare organizations presents a quality concern. Therefore, there is a need to coordinate services across the complex healthcare system. This requires policies that handle the quality issues from the global to the organizational level. Quality assurance requires providers and facilities to work together to improve access, quality and reduce disparities. The steps to maintaining the quality of healthcare with the increased demand are outlined as follows.
Step 1: Restructuring the Healthcare Governance System. The first step to maintaining high standards in the care-based healthcare sector is the institution of the healthcare system leadership with teams that depict adaptive leadership, governance and culture. This team should have the dedication and aptitude required to improve the system and maintain the highest level of quality in the wake of increased demand and expansion in the sector. For example, the Department of Health and Human Sciences (HHS) should be made up of professionals with a background in healthcare quality management and a proven track record in quality improvement initiatives. Successful quality improvement initiatives need adaptive learning and leadership support culture committed to data-driven quality improvement (Melnyk & Morrison-Beedy, 2018).
Step 2: Analyzing the Healthcare Sector at the National Level. Analytics is a critical element for sustained quality assurance and improvement initiatives. The national healthcare leadership should analyze the sector with an emphasis on meeting the rising demand without compromising the quality of services offered and patient safety. Analytics should be incorporated in all the phases of improvement lifecycle (plan, do, study and implement). This will help in understanding the problem from a national perspective and monitoring improvements. This step provides data for decision making to shape the entire allied healthcare sector.
Step 3: Formulating Evidence-Based Best Practices. Formulation of evidence-based practices guidelines for the allied healthcare sector is the foundation for the successful quality improvement in the sector. The federal bodies governing allied healthcare sector should formulate regulations to guide the sector in navigating through the increased demand and the subsequent mushrooming of healthcare organizations. These guidelines should be aligned with federal mandates that link financial outcomes to quality performance. For example, these guidelines should touch on the minimum requirements for establishing an allied healthcare organization. These should form an update to the National Commission for Health Certifying Agencies’ (NCHCA) guidelines. Additionally, the guidelines should provide a framework for collaborating and sharing information between the allied healthcare organizations and other healthcare organizations in the healthcare sector (Melnyk & Morrison-Beedy, 2018).
Step 4: Implementing at the Organizational Level. Instituting the adaptive leadership teams, analyzing the healthcare system and formulating guidelines won’t yield the required quality standards unless they dedicate resources to implementing the outcomes initiatives. The allied healthcare organization should focus on training its staff and initiating performance evaluations to ensure compliance with the set best-practices that govern quality. Healthcare organizations should set up organizational incentives tied to quality assurance and improvement goals. Allied healthcare organizations should set measurable and concrete quality improvement goals. The Institute of Medicine’s guidelines of quality should guide the quality improvement and management exercise in the organization. The goals should be patient-centred, safe, timely, equitable and efficient.
Also, it is vital to create a balanced team at the organizational level that comprises of members from different backgrounds with varied experience levels and skills. This is a critical step in the improvement process. The team should include a clinical expert who has a background and experience necessary to make sound clinical decisions, a senior leader who provide oversight and a project manager who can keep the team on track. The organization should include human factors input in the quality assurance plan. These help in reducing errors and improving patient outcomes despite the overwhelming demand for healthcare services.
Subsequently, the allied healthcare organizations should formulate an executable plan to guide the quality management process and communicate the goals and progress internally and externally with the quality assurance body. Lastly, organizations should collaborate with other healthcare organizations for efficient and patient-centred care.
Steps in Providing Exceptional Employment Opportunities
As identified by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the in-demand allied health fields are occupational therapy, audiology, physical therapy and language pathology. Consequently, there is a need to provide exceptional employment opportunities in the said sectors to attract the required qualified personnel. The first step to providing exceptional employment opportunities is ensuring that vocational education and training systems are streamlined to provide opportunities for the certification and development of skills relevant to the allied healthcare sector.
Secondly, the government should enact policies that protect allied healthcare workers against vulnerable contractual arrangements. The government should facilitate institutional openness to negotiation and dialogue to decrease instability outsourced work by guaranteeing the rights of the allied health workers. Similarly, the government should reorganize the scope of practice to facilitate “task-shifting” to allow the allied healthcare professionals to practice to the full extent of their training. The policies should also define the legal upstream of the employer and allied health workers in case of medical errors (Ramadevi et al., 2016).
At the organizational level, it is imperative to create an employee development plan. The career path should be clear and certain and with marked milestones. This provides employees with something to look forward to since they feel appreciated in the organization. The organization should define the roles and skills needed for each position and how the allied healthcare professionals will be engaged. Similarly, the organization should support employee development and provide learning opportunities. The opportunities must build on the knowledge already established. This eliminates the feeling of the allied healthcare workers being stagnant. Additionally, it improves the performance and competency of allied healthcare professionals. Healthcare organizations should also initiate training sessions and retention strategies (Gregory,2018).
In a nutshell, the allied healthcare sector is proving to be an integral component of healthcare that is growing at a high rate as a result of the increased demand in healthcare services. Consequently, the growth in the sector must be monitored to ensure that the quality and safety of patients is not compromised. Policies at both national and organizational levels are mandatory in creating a conducive workplace environment. A robust quality management initiative and conducive employment opportunities are needed to put the situation in check.
References
Burton, R., & Wishner, J. (2017). How Have Providers Responded to the Increased Demand for Health Care Under the Affordable Care Act? US Health Reform – Monitoring and Impact.
CDC. (2020). CDC – NCHS – National Center for Health Statistics. Retrieved 2 May 2020, from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/
Chassin, M. R. (2016). The Need for A Paradigm Shift in Healthcare Culture: Old Versus New. High-Reliability Organizations: A Healthcare Handbook for Patient Safety & Quality, 3.
Cruz-Gomes, S., Amorim-Lopes, M., & Almada-Lobo, B. (2018). The Demand for Healthcare Services and Resources: Patterns, Trends and Challenges in Healthcare Delivery. In Congress of APDIO, the Portuguese Operational Research Society (pp. 91-106). Springer, Cham.
Glied, S., & Ma, S. (2015). How will the Affordable Care Act affect the use of health care services? New York, NY: Commonwealth Fund.
Gregory, J. (2018). How to Improve the Employee Experience in Healthcare. Retrieved 2 May 2020, from https://www.eaglesflight.com/blog/how-to-improve-the-employee-experience-in-healthcare
Melnyk, B. M., & Morrison-Beedy, D. (Eds.). (2018). Intervention Research and Evidence-Based Quality Improvement: Designing, Conducting, Analyzing, and Funding. Springer Publishing Company.
Ramadevi, D., Gunasekaran, A., Roy, M., Rai, B. K., & Senthilkumar, S. A. (2016). Human resource management in a healthcare environment: Framework and case study. Industrial and Commercial Training.