Quality Management in Healthcare

Excellent provision of care in patients is usually determined by the quality management in the field of healthcare. Healthcare organizations such as medical clinics and hospitals have an obligation to deliver optimal care to their patients (Ginter, Duncan, & Swayne, 2018; Dodwad & Subhash, 2013). Some of the ways in which healthcare organizations can employ quality management includes guiding principles, monitoring compliance, risk management, process involvement and technical assistance. For instance, establishment of guiding principles can assure that the patient's demands are fully considered. Furthermore, compliance is monitored to guarantee that the processes involved in quality management are improved as well as the patient's optimal care. Minimizing risks in health care often helps in ensuring that the patients are safe as well as protection of their care. Process improvement involves identifying various weaknesses in health care organizations through compliance audits for purposes of success and growth. In addition, technical assistance training tends to be provided for purposes of ensuring that audits or observation do not encounter errors or weaknesses. Doctors and administrators usually tend to benefit by applying quality management mechanisms to health care practices as it enables them to improve on specific areas such as internal processes.

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Most of the regulations involved in health care compliance relate to the protection of patients' health records. In most cases, the healthcare industry faces constant pressure to meet the demands of the routine changes. For example, healthcare providers are required to obtain comprehensive information on patients in various forms such as Electronic Health Records as well as securing the information of the patient by encryption. Inconsistencies and duplication of efforts amongst different healthcare departments together with the functions involved are brought as a result of utter complexity and diversity of the initiatives carried out in healthcare regulatory compliance. On the contrary, to avoid such an issue from increasing rapidly, the health care providers in an organization need to relevantly regulate certain norms including improving the quality of compliance programs.

An organization's future depends on the kind of quality management tools that are applied to achieve better prospects. These quality tools are usually represented in the form of a fixed set of graphical techniques for purposes of assisting in troubleshooting issues involved in quality management. Some of the quality management tools include Pareto charts and Control charts (Zaizu Ilyas, 2018). The Pareto chart is considerably based upon the Pareto principle. The Pareto principle states that eighty percent of an outcome comes from twenty percent of its inputs. For example, in transportation, eighty percent of the delays might result from twenty percent of the possible causes. In other words, it determines the contribution of each cause to an outcome or effect.

The Pareto principle is usually combined with case study methodology to influence the decision-making process of an organizational structure. A case study plays a vital role in arranging and presenting information to indicate the relative importance of specific problems and their causes. The order of frequency is made easier as a result of the placement of orders in a descending form which in turn makes it easier to recognize those problems. Thus, this application ensures that teams can focus on their efforts about the kind of activities carried out for greater results.

The purpose of this chart is to indicate the changes involved in a certain process in which data is represented within the time order. Variable data in control charts is usually in the form of pairs. The top chart is used for observing the average data distribution from the process involved; the bottom chart keeps the continuous record of the distribution range or width. On the other hand, attribute data in control charts are in most cases used separately or individually. The points tend to fall between the control chart limits due to the process involved in the decision making. As a result, certain information can be obtained about the process behavior with no regards to the intrinsic relationship to any targeted specification as well as engineering tolerance. The reason for this is because control charts can detect specific events that are expressive regarding the actual change involved in the process.

Benchmarking

Implementation of an Electronic Health Record can often be a lengthy process. Factors such as momentum and support of staff are essential in promoting success along the way thus for each goal; an action plan is necessary for its achievement. An action plan can be used in the following ways; firstly the e-prescribing feature in the Electronic Health Record is required to act as a substitute for the paper and handwritten prescriptions. Secondly, a control chart can be used for purposes of acting as an alternative to transcription services. Thirdly, the Electronic Health Record maintenance tracking can be used to check the process involved in antiplatelet therapy. Finally, patients need to be encouraged regarding using Personal Computers in the waiting room to bring up to date their information on demographics and insurance.

For an action plan to be effective, certain benchmarking tools must be applied including product standards and dashboards. For instance, productivity standards can be measured regarding the maintenance value, re-considering resource allocations, factors related to health, safety and the environment, management awareness, recently updated trends in the strategies involved in management as well as organizational structure changes. This measurement plays an important role to critically evaluate the type of measures to be used which include various factors such as planning and control of different measures. Furthermore, it also helps in providing the inputs and outputs required to aggregate figures to enhance setting schedules for guiding purposes as well as future capacity needs.

On the other hand, performance dashboards are used to measure, monitor and manage measures involved in the performance. The goals of the dashboard may be determined by what purpose it may serve and how that purpose can be assessed. For example, a dashboard can be created for specific purposes including developing a basis for a set of specific operational objectives. Some of the benefits associated with the performance dashboards include increased coordination, refined strategies, increased visibility and reduction of cost and redundancy among others. They also assist in providing the required information to the right users at the right time to be effective regarding the decision making, enhancing efficiency and accelerate bottom-line results.

The two main types of benchmarking include internal and external benchmarking (Magazine, 2018). Internal benchmarking usually indicates the comparison between results of one department, team or individual to another within a specific organization. As a result, it determines which practice or procedure is best preferred. The benefit of internal benchmarking in a health care system is that it is often affordable and convenient and also it helps in regulating inter-service visits without any issues related to confidentiality among the involved facilities. On the contrary, external benchmarking is associated with the comparison of the statistical data information with other organizations within the industry. However, for external benchmarking, it is difficult to determine the comparison of certain organization practices to other sectors that are involved. In most cases, it is used to determine the best practices and procedures that can be applied in a report.

The workflow redesign process involves the implementation of an EHR team that would pay particular attention to specific key areas related to the workflow. These areas might be influenced by EHR implementations which include patient check-in and check-out, patient visits, e-prescribing, scheduling of appointments, orders of the laboratory, generation, and management referral, office discharge as well as billing. Some of the workflow concepts that are used include top-down diagrams and swimlane diagrams.

A Swim Lane Diagram

A swim lane diagram assembles the responsibilities of departments involved in an organization to improve the processes of correcting inefficiencies and eliminating delays. Swimlanes often tend to simplify responsibilities which in turn promote the collaboration of departments, especially in any process improvement initiative.

A Top-Down Diagram

In a top-down diagram, systems are disintegrated to their lowest manageable forms. They are specifically applied in structured programming for purposes of presenting the programs usually in the form of a tree. Organizations usually tend to develop strategies or plans at the top and then successively pass on the implemented strategy or plan down. A qualified manager determines what kind of decisions are to be made from the bottom henceforth.

Project Management Techniques Used in EHR Transition

Every project has its distinctive nature about the kind of problems that might be involved in its implementation, the operations that are carried out as well as the attitude that the project manager has regarding the guiding and controlling the project activities through certain measures. Some of the project management tools that are used for the Electronic Health Records transition include risk management, the budgeting process, and Gantt charts. Risk management involves certain factors that might cause a project to fail such as time, cost and quality as a result of unsuccessful objective outcomes. Assessment of the process involved in risk management can often assist in the identification of controllable and uncontrollable risks to weigh in on the kind of impact they create by applying appropriate strategies to ensure that they can be controlled (Dube, Young, Gail, & Curnow, Thomas, 2015). The budgeting process is carried out in the form of a budgetary planning process which in this case, a budget is created for the project planning process. This process involves the comparison of the results obtained from the budget to the actual results to measure the quantity of any variances or deviations from the plan of the project.

A Gantt Chart

A Gantt chart is often used for scheduling a project with each activity or task represented as a block. The completion is achieved regarding comparing the actual performance and planned deadlines.

A patient's satisfaction is usually determined the assessment of different quality management tools to improve the effectiveness of the treatment involved. Through identification of various weaknesses in a healthcare organization, a patient's safety is guaranteed as well as their optimal care. The use of strategic management tools and techniques is often based on a practical context. Healthcare compliance consists of different regulations which can help in protecting information of the patient through encryption. For instance, through the establishment of Electronic Health Records, certain norms can be regulated to improve the quality of compliance programs.

References

Dodwad, Subhash. (2013). Quality management in healthcare. (Dr. G. Anjaneyulu Oration). Indian Journal of Public Health, 57(3), 138-43.

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