In Week 4, you identified some immediate areas of concern that you were able to effectively address. You must present the final phase of your improvement plan to your staff and upper-level management. You will create a presentation of 15-20 slides. Each slide will have 4-6 bullets and 100-150 words of speakers notes. The presentation will address the following areas:
In preparation for the accreditation visit for AKT, choose 1 health care accrediting and credentialing organization.
- Select a quality improvement focus (QIF) area to improve patient outcomes in beyond the 3 issues that you identified and addressed in Week 4.
- Discuss the selected accreditation agency related to the QIF and why the organization is seeking this particular agency for credentialing.
- As part of the quality improvement initiative, select 3-4 related accrediting standards that the organization will use as the basis for the quality improvement plan.
- Provide a clear mission statement and set of 3-4 specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely (SMART) goals for the QIF initiative.
- Using the online database provided the by the organization you selected conduct an analysis.
- Provide general statistical data related to the QIF.
- Discuss specific health care examples of local, state, and national policies that have been developed to improve this QIF based on evidence-based practice research.
- What internal policies do you plan to implement based on evidence-based practice approaches to ensure your organization meets these standards?
- Develop a plan that includes strategies for your facility to improve patient outcomes regarding the QIF.
- Describe how the QIF initiative can be incorporated to the organization’s overall strategic plan.
- Describe how you plan to evaluate the effectiveness of the initiative.
- Each slide will have 4-6 bullets and 100-150 words of speaker’s notes and pictures.
Select a quality improvement focus (QIF) area to improve patient outcomes in beyond the 3 issues that you identified and addressed in Week 4.
Introduction
In this week, you will select a quality improvement focus (QIF) area to improve patient outcomes in beyond the 3 issues that you identified and addressed in Week 4.
Section: Select a quality improvement focus (QIF) area to improve patient outcomes in beyond the 3 issues that you identified and addressed in Week 4.
An area of focus is a specific area for improvement. For example, you may want to focus on improving patient outcomes in your hospital by increasing the number of patients who are discharged home within one week of discharge from the hospital.
You can select one or more quality improvement focus areas based on your plan, but you must also define how you will measure success in each one.
Addresses a real-world problem, challenge, or opportunity that exists for an organization or group of organizations seeking to improve health system performance.
You must select a QIF that addresses a real-world problem, challenge, or opportunity that exists for an organization or group of organizations seeking to improve health system performance.
The problem must be a real-world problem, not a hypothetical one. The challenge or opportunity you select should be something that your organization is seeking to improve. For example, if you’re working on improving the quality of care provided by nurses at your hospital’s emergency department (ED), then you might consider choosing “improving patient flows” as your focus area because this would be an opportunity for improvement rather than just addressing issues within current processes or systems.
Identifies one or more QI tools that would help to overcome the barriers described in the scenario, when applied to this problem area, challenge, or opportunity.
In this section, you will identify one or more QI tools that would help to overcome the barriers described in the scenario, when applied to this problem area, challenge, or opportunity.
Barriers to improving patient outcomes in this area include:
The availability of data from existing sources is limited because there are no existing records available for analysis (and therefore no validation).
The process for collecting and analyzing patient data is complex and time-consuming for staff members responsible for collecting it at multiple locations across an entire medical center.
Supports your selection with references from the literature and course materials.
To support your selection, you should use references from the literature.
To support your selection, you should use course materials.
To support your selection, you should use references from the literature and course materials
Developing a Quality Improvement Focus Area
To develop a Quality Improvement Focus Area, you must select a QIF area that represents a specific need for improvement within your organization.
You should identify the following:
A clear description of the current state of affairs and expectations around patient outcomes in this area. This can be done through a review of existing data sources or through interviews with staff members who work on these issues every day (e.g., nurses). You should also consider how well they are meeting those expectations by using something like the five whys technique (http://www.drcnet-mdc.org/about_us/our_leadership/five_whys).
Any other nonclinical factors that could affect patient care positively or negatively in this particular QIF area(s). For example, if there is poor communication between physicians and nurses about changes in medications being given to patients with certain conditions, then this might create problems for both parties
Conclusion
In this assignment, you were asked to select a QIF area and develop a plan for addressing it. We hope that you were able to find an issue or opportunity in the real world that could be modeled after an existing tool or method, but with modifications and tweaks that are specific to your situation. You also needed to have supported your selection by referencing literature from previous assignments as well as course materials. Finally, we believe that it is important for all students who are developing their QI plans to consider how their plan will be implemented before beginning any work on it!