Week8 Final Project

NORTHCENTRAL UNIVERSITY

ASSIGNMENT COVER SHEET

Student: Maria Duplantier

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DHA-7005	Dr. Ismaila Ramon
Healthcare Quality Management	Assignment 5 – Performance Improvement Model

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Performance Improvement Model 

Focus PDCA

Maria Duplantier

DHA-7005 - Healthcare Quality Management

5/26/19

Dr. Ismaila Ramon

Performance Improvement Model-Focus PDCA

Overview

Quality improvement is one of the vital aspects of the healthcare industry. Most healthcare organizations and facilities aim to provide quality services at a low cost to enhance their reputation as well as maximize efficiency respectively. However, to achieve these goals, employing the right management approach is usually critical. FOCUS PDCA is a management model that healthcare administrators can use to ensure quality service delivery through process improvement (Farahbakhsh et al., 2010). Therefore, as a healthcare administrator, the following describes the application of FOCUS PDCA in a facility that is currently affected by a 15% increase in fall injuries.

F. Find a process to improve

The process to improve is patient care through reducing fall injuries. The aim is to reduce the number and percentage of fall injuries among the patients.

O. Organize a team

The team for improvement will comprise the administration, quality assurance manager, two doctors, and two nurses. The team will be appropriate since it will represent everyone that will be vital towards addressing the underlying issue. The team also has adequate knowledge about the problem to suggest better solutions. In other words, they will provide output to the process.

C. Clarify the current understanding of the process

The team will gather all the relevant data regarding the fall injuries among the patients within the facility. The information will answer the questions how, where, and why to gain a comprehensive insight into the issue at hand. For instance, the team will collect information about the places with most falls, patients with most fall injuries, and time when most falls occur among others. Flow charts will be utilized to enhance the understanding of the process. All the team members will be expected to demonstrate high cooperation during the clarification sessions.

U. Understand variation in the process

Here, the team will measure the process or establish a range of data. For example, it will determine the percentage of patients with fall injuries, the number of nurses looking after the patients with a high risk of falling, and the state of beds for patients among others. Also, the team will determine the variation in the process to know the issues in the process.

S. Select a strategy for improvement

The health care facility aims to improve patient care by reducing fall injuries. As such, it will integrate various approaches to tackle this issue. Firstly, patients with a high risk of falling will be marked so that they could receive extra care at any time from nurses (Barker et al., 2016). Nurses can also identify them quickly. Secondly, the hospital will fit patient beds with support frames on the sides to prevent patients from falling. Thirdly, nurses will receive extra training on caring for patients at risk of falling to minimize the problem (Nilsson et al., 2016). Finally, the organization will avoid slippery flow, especially in the sections with patients that are at a high risk of falling. The strategies will be effective because they are not costly and can add value to patients and clients as a whole. They are also measurable and achievable.

P. Plan

To achieve the solutions highlighted in the last part of FOCUS, the team will design a comprehensive plan to achieve the stated strategies. Firstly, the team will gather and measure all the necessary data to establish the effectiveness of the solutions towards solving the problem of fall injuries among patients (Matsuo & Nakahara, 2013). Secondly, the group will assemble all the relevant resources including financial, human, and technological resources that will help in addressing the issue. Additionally, the team will be divided into different parts with specific tasks to complete the necessary changes. The responsibilities will be divided based on the expertise of the team members to enhance efficiency. The entire process will last for about three months.

D. Do

After the preparation, the team will implement the plan. The changes will be executed one after the other. Before the execution, all employees, administration, patients, and the interested parties will be informed about the transition to avoid resistance that might jeopardize the whole process. As stated earlier, the implementation period will last for about three weeks. During this time, the team and other parties will be expected to portray maximum concentration and cooperation.

C. Check

At this stage, the team will measure the achieved results against the set targets. The team will observe the whole process as well as collect adequate data to evaluate the process by comparing the actual outcomes with the set standards. If the team finds out that the results are undesirable, it will mean that the process would have failed to achieve the set targets, and the entire process will be reviewed. Reviewing the whole process will make sure that the team establishes what went wrong at the beginning (Jacob et al., 2018). It will also allow the group to fix the identified problem in the process. However, if the team will identify that the desired results were achieved, it will look for other strategies that will maintain as well as improve the status of the process. For instance, if fall injuries among patients reduce after the implementation of the plan, the team will identify new approaches that will maintain or further reduce the percentage of fall injuries.

A. Act

The team will then act on the results. If the intervention yields better outcomes, the team will integrate as well as keep the new program in the process to reduce fall injuries. The team will even consider furthering reducing the fall injury levels or eliminate it. If the program does not yield good results, the team will not maintain it or consider rerunning it through the PDCA cycle. This will allow the team to make appropriate changes in the program to ensure success.

References

Barker, A. L., Morello, R. T., Wolfe, R., Brand, C. A., Haines, T. P., Hill, K. D., ... & Sherrington, C. (2016). 6-PACK programme to decrease fall injuries in acute hospitals: cluster randomised controlled trial. bmj, 352, h6781.

Farahbakhsh, M., Tabrizi, J. S., & Nikniaz, A. (2010). The use of Focus-PDCA in primary health care performance improvement: case study of East Azerbaijan health centers. Hakim Research Journal, 13(1), 40-48.

Jacob, J., Edbrooke-Childs, J., Lloyd, C., Hayes, D., Whelan, I., Wolpert, M., & Law, D. (2018). Measuring outcomes using goals. Working with Goals in Psychotherapy and Counselling, 111.

Matsuo, M., & Nakahara, J. (2013). The effects of the PDCA cycle and OJT on workplace learning. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 24(1), 195-207.

Nilsson, M., Eriksson, J., Larsson, B., Odén, A., Johansson, H., & Lorentzon, M. (2016). Fall Risk Assessment Predicts Fall‐Related Injury, Hip Fracture, and Head Injury in Older Adults. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 64(11), 2242-2250.