Quality Initiatives for the organization
Creating an effective team
One quality initiative that I will apply as the quality officer is the creation of a balanced team, both in terms of expertise and in terms of numbers. I will ensure that each department gets the skilled staff it requires depending on the needs in it so that long waiting lines for patients can be avoided. Members of the team should come from different backgrounds, have varied experience levels, and possess diverse skill to ensure that all patient needs are attended to. Various departments will have team senior leaders able to provide oversight, advice, and advocate for the team so that informed clinical decisions are made.
To ensure that the team provides quality services, human factors inputs should be included so that knowledge about the abilities and limitations of various members can accessed to provide relevance to design. The information of human factors will be applied through the design of systems, tools, tasks, and environments the will provide safety, comfort, and effectiveness. Some of the main human factor principles will include standardizing procedures, making use of checklists and protocols, and avoiding reliance on memory. Considering human factors when designing the healthcare system will help in enhancing communication among medical providers, better understanding of the medical condition of various patients, reducing costs, and reducing the risk of IT-related and medical device errors.
Creating an executable plan
I will ensure that an achievable plan is created as one way of improving the quality of patient care. This will start by reviewing the goals that are set in the healthcare organization to find out whether they are the best or changes need to be done. After analyzing the data and outcomes in the organization, the goals that were initially set will be examined to see whether they are achievable and relevant. Such goals must look into the safety of the patients, effectiveness of the care, efficiency, and equitability in patient’s care. Also, the goals should be geared towards a patient-centered and timely care. After ensuring that the right goals have been set, I will ensure that they are timely accomplished by including specific protocols and measures that will enable the goals to be achieved while specific definitions will be provided to assess improvement. This will be done by tracking our measurements and data using an organized system. When making and executing the plan, all the staff will be involved while the set goals and the achieved progress will constantly be communicated.
Utilizing more modern technology
The use of modern technology will be an essential means through which the organization will seek to improve the quality of patient care. To provide advanced diagnostics and treatment, the organization will move towards electronic health records. This will connect different systems within the organization, which will allow information to be transferred faster to provide more efficient and integrated care. Also, I will introduce telehealth into the organization, which will allow advance healthcare by relying on telecommunication technologies. This will improve patient satisfaction and allow practitioners to work more efficiently. For example, patients can virtually meet with the doctor when they have been discharged and are still undergoing medication. This will also reduce costs for both the organization and the patient. The rate of discharging patients will increase through the use telehealth, which will increase the number of patients hat can be attended to. The use of remote monitoring tools will be another way through which technology will be used to improve the quality of health care. This will allow the heath of some patients to be monitored while they are still at their homes, which will reduce unnecessary visits to or from the health organization and save money for them.
Factors that will reduce healthcare costs while maintaining healthcare quality
Overhead costs that do not have a contribution to improved care will be decreased. For example, less spending will be encouraged in administrative expenditure, which will create more money for installation of efficient technology. In accordance to the American Health Association recommendation, our healthcare organization will seek to achieve economies of scale by consolidating various administrative processes. This is because administrative processes do not have the uniqueness that s found in individual patient’s needs. Other ways of reducing non-clinical overhead cost include, organized shipping, energy efficient fixtures and lighting, and cost-effective recycling initiatives. Accurate and consistent classification of overhead costs will be emphasized for the proper estimation of clinical and non-clinical care. This will ensure that intervention measures for cost reduction are not impeded.
The use of IT will help our organization greatly in. In the organization, the large amount of data that is growing exponentially in a diverse and an unstructured manner requires technology to be handled more efficiently without incurring excessive costs. This will be done by ensuring that the vendors will provide systems that are upgraded to incorporate improved standards of usage. His will not only reduce the cost of handling information but will also improve service delivery.
The other strategy that I will use to reduce healthcare cost is streamlining bureaucracy in the organization. The burden of complexity and bureaucracy has been using a lot of resources without necessarily improving the services in the organization. This will reduce the costs that are associated with many intricacies that are associated with all activities, including some simple processes such as filling a prescription order. This will be done by providing more freedom to qualified staff in different areas to reduce the time they used in paperwork so that they can have more time to offer services.
Free market healthcare systems vs. Single-payer government system
The quality in a free market healthcare system is generally better than that of single-payer government systems. However, without the right measures in place, the quality in this system may be lower than that of single-payer government systems. One factor that improves healthcare quality in a free market system is the ease with which it can use the funds from customers to improve care services at the facility without many restrictions and directions. For example, the management can purchase the technology it deems necessary according to patient needs. Also, the quality of healthcare is increased by the lack of too much bureaucracy. For example, starting a new important service will be easy because the organization has full control of the funds. However, the quality may be reduced by may be reduced in free market systems due to the management in some organization to turn it into a profit making entity instead of emphasizing of care quality. On the other hand, quality in a single-payer government system may be improved by the increased oversight role played by the government. Also, the input of the government in terms of resources can greatly improve healthcare quality. However, the system quality is negatively affected by the bureaucracy issues and the lack of freedom by the management in making important decisions.
Common law quality initiatives
One common law quality initiative that is still found in the 21st century health organizations is the Affordable Care Act of 2010 that seeks to help all Americans to access quality health. These help in providing insurance cover and pay for medical expenses of low-income citizens. The 2005 Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act is still being used in today’s health organizations to protect healthcare personnel who report risky working conditions. The Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program is a 2012 quality initiative that reduces payout healthcare organizations experiencing excessive patient readmission.
Importance of healthcare quality for our organization
My support for improving the quality in our organization’s healthcare is mainly grounded in the fact that we need to satisfy the needs of our clients, who are the patients. The patients will feel more satisfied if we have the right means of providing treatment and diagnosis. This will be achieved if the services we offer to them are effective in solving their health problems and also ensuring that the services they get are worth the money paid for them. For example, the use of a balanced team of staff will ensure that the various health problems unique in different patients will be tackled in our facilities. Their safety and the security of the data they share to us in the course of serving them are also important. For example, the use of EHRs will greatly improve the protection of their data. My position for supporting improved quality initiatives is also important as it will motivate healthcare providers at the organization to provide services more diligently. This, for example, will be achieved through the use of technology when attending to the patients, which make the work of the doctors and nurses easier and boost their confidence when providing services.
Plan to protect patient information
To ensure that patient information is protected, we intend to initiate a health and safety management system with all legal requirements in place. The use of EHRs that are installed with all data safety requirements will be one way in which our organization will ensure that the information shared by our patients is kept safe. The recommendations by AMA will always be implemented during the encryption of patient data. Passwords in computers with sensitive patient information will be provided to ensure that not anybody can access such information. Also care will be taken when transferring data from one source to the other, the right steps are taken to ensure that the data is not left in unsafe electronic and laces.
The staff will also be required to see to it that when collecting and providing data from and to patients, care is taken to ensure that privacy is maintained. Also, the organization will ensure that information tools and machines are in a condition that cannot allow hackers to access the applications and software in them. Guidelines will be formulated in order to determine performance of our health management system and enterprise safety as stipulated in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). HIPAA risk analyses will be conducted often to assess the compliance of organization with legal requirements on safety.