Question

Define Quality and Quantity Improvement as critical elements in Healthcare? Then select and explain one key element of Quality Improvement and your role in implementation of that approach as a healthcare leader.

Answer 1

Ans) Quality in healthcare means providing the care the patient needs when the patient needs it, in an affordable, safe, effective manner.

- Quality healthcare also means engaging and involving the patient, so the patient takes ownership in preventive care and in the treatment of diagnosed conditions.

- In conventional organizations, QI is defines how things are done, meanwhile, quality in the health care performance is characterized by the efficiency of an organization and the result of care, and even the level of the satisfaction of the patients.

- The quantity of Work is the amount of work accomplished by an employee against the expectations set by the employer.

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Three Tips for Facilitating the Quality Improvement Process
Place a priority on encouraging communication, engagement, and participation for all of the stakeholders affected by the QI process. Learn what is most important to the people who make up the microsystem and look for ways to help them embrace the changes and begin to take ownership of them.

Start your implementation of improvements with small-scale demonstrations, which are easier to manage than large-scale changes. Small-scale demonstrations or small tests of change also allow you to refine the new processes, demonstrate their impact on practices and outcomes, and build increased support by stakeholders.

Keep in mind and remind others that QI is an iterative process. You will be making frequent corrections along the way as you learn from experience with each step and identify other actions to add to your strategy.

- The concept of microsystems in health care organizations stems from research findings indicating that the most successful of the large service corporations maintain a strong focus on the small, functional units who carry out the core activities that involve interaction with customers. In the context of health care, a microsystem could be:

•A core team of health professionals.
Staff who work together on a regular basis to provide care to discrete subpopulations of patients.
• A work area or department with the same clinical and business aims, linked processes, shared information environment and shared performance outcomes.
- Examples of microsystems include a team of primary care providers, a group of lab technicians, or the staff of a call center. In the patient-centered medical home model, a microsystem could be the patient's care team accountable for coordination of the patient's services that address prevention, acute care, and chronic care.

- The goal of the microsystem approach is to foster an emphasis on small, replicable, functional service systems that enable staff to provide efficient, excellent clinical and patient-centered care to patients. To develop and refine such systems, health care organizations start by defining the smallest measurable cluster of activities.