Improving quality and safety

Quality issue

A major quality issue that is currently affecting my organization is the issue of delays. In health care delivery, time tends to be an essential component when providing health services. Patients visiting the organization have been complaining that they are not receiving immediate attention when in the institution. Because of time inefficiency, it is resulting in the patient lack of satisfaction. A delay in providing patients with health services is resulting to unsatisfied patients (IOM, 2012). Lack of satisfaction from delays is an issue that is affecting the organization negatively. Because of time inefficiency, most patients do not have trust with our organization and others are considering receiving services from other organization. The issue tends to be undermining the overall performance of my organization. When employees receive satisfaction from health organization, they are more likely to comply with the prescribed treatment and the advice they receive from doctors. Delays in attending to patients can result in worsening of the illness, permanent disability, or death.

Quality improvement strategy

The need for safety and quality improvement initiatives permeate the health care. Quality improvement refers to a systematic data-guided activity designed to bring about immediate improvement in the delivery of healthcare in certain settings. Quality improvement strategy refers to any intervention aimed at reducing the quality gap for the group of patient’s representative of those encountered in the routine practice. Thus, an effective strategy for dealing with the delay issue in the organization is ensuring allocation of duties among the health practitioners. It is necessary to have a plan that nurses will be following so as to ensure that they attend to patients on time (National Quality Forum, 2012). When nurses know their responsibilities and where they should be at what time, it will help to ensure that patients do not have to wait long before being attended to by a practitioner. The strategy will also enhance the overall organization performance as it will result in patient satisfaction from the quality service delivery.

Aim for improvement

There are six specific aims that a health care system must fulfill in delivering quality care. They include effective, efficient, safe, timely, patient-centered, and equitable (IOM, 2012). The above strategy addresses the time aspect in the six aims of improvement. The Institute of Medicine claims that the health care institutions should develop mechanisms for promoting timely delivery of health care services to patients. The timely aim considers that patients must not experience waits or delays when receiving care and services. Because of delays, most patients normally lose their lives from treatable illnesses that could not happen if the health providers attended to the patient on time. A delay in the delivery of health care can result in a decline in the quality of services. Thus, the quality improvement strategy conforms to the time aspect of the aims of improvement.

Inter-professional collaboration

Inter-professional collaboration involves when professionals from different departments consider working together in the pursuit of similar organizational goals (Gardner, 2010). Inter-professional collaboration has the potential of influencing advances in the knowledge that span the health profession, end of life care, and care of chronically ill. Inter-professional collaboration normally improves the patient outcome and also the quality of care. When professionals from different departments collaborate, they can bring in ideas regarding dealing with the issue of time wastage and through the collaboration, it results in a desirable outcome.

Reference

Gardner, D. (2010). Health policy and politics. Expanding scope of practice: Inter-professional collaboration or conflict? Nursing Economic, 28(4), 264–266

Institute of Medicine. (2012). Crossing the quality chasm: The IOM Health Care Quality Initiative 

National Quality Forum. (2012). 

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