Health Group quality improvement program

The Health Group quality improvement program is a systematic and ongoing activity that analyzes the activities of employees and health care customers with the goal of bringing about positive change and providing excellent services. The initiative is aimed at three key audiences: employees, health-care consumers, and investors, and it is intended to provide four major benefits. These advantages include better organizational agility, increased productivity, reduced errors, and improved employee and patient morale. To accomplish this, the health care facility would incur expenses for the creation of a specific database, evaluation and appraisal, and salaries and compensation. The task to improve the quality of services and products provided in the health care industry is a consistent objective in the contemporary society (Mitchell & Waterworth, 2012). Health Group quality improvement program encapsulates the use of systematic and continuous practices that analyze consumer and employees activities in a bid to formulate positive measurable changes in health care services and products. This implies that the program measures the level of quality improvement by comparing the actual quality of health care services and products with the public’s desired outcomes in health care services and products. Hence, the health program depends on consumer feedback and actual quality and performance metrics of the health care workers. In case the gap between public expectation and actual quality is wide, this implies that the population is receiving poor quality of services. On the other hand, a narrow gap between public expectation and actual quality of health care indicates quality services and products. Health Group quality improvement program often attempts to ensure that the gap between consumer expectation and health care services is as narrow as possible. This essay analyses the Community Health Group quality improvement program As such, it focuses on the purpose of the program, the target audience, the benefits of the program, and the budget.

Purpose

The main purpose of the quality improvement program is to ensure that the patients visiting the health care facility receive the best possible services and products, such as medicine. In addition, the program utilizes a multidimensional strategy to provide formal and systematic procedures for monitoring and evaluating the quality, efficiency, effectiveness, and safety of the services provided by the health care facility. The adoption of a multidimensional approach, enable the health care facility to focus on the aspects of the organization, services, and products that need improvement. Additionally, it allows the health care facility to measure the outcomes of different in their processes, services, and products based on patient feedback. This practice enables the physicians and clinicians to determine the level of satisfaction of the health care consumers. The quality improvement program also encourages accountability among all the employees affiliated with the facility in a bid to ensure high quality at all times.

The quality improvement program utilizes a multidimensional method, which focuses on the specific needs of the different customers. Hence, it is created to identify and analyze opportunities or organizational and personnel aspects that can be improved. In addition, it attempts to develop new quality improvement strategies by tracking staff member activities and establishing benchmarks that reduce the gap between consumer expectation and actual quality of organization service. Lastly, it promotes employee efforts that attempt to identify and correct issues and barriers that hinder the provision of quality health care services.

Target Audience

The quality improvement program targets three main stakeholders: facility staff members, health care consumers, and investors. The improvement program targets the facility staff members in a bid to obtain information on the quality of service they provide. The program determines the quality of staff performance through internal assessment and appraisal programs, as well as feedback from health care consumers. The program also targets health care consumers in order to gather information about their expectations and to gain feedback on the quality of service they receive. This is achieved using semi-structured, self-administered questionnaires. The health care consumers use the questionnaires to give their feedback and to answer questions on how they expect the quality of service will be. The program also targets investors because they are the key financiers of the quality improvement program. After gaining feedback from staff assessment and appraisal, as well as the health care consumers, the quality improvement team analyze data and identify the gaps that exist between consumer expectation and actual quality of service. Once all the gaps are identified, the quality improvement team prepares a summary of the areas that need improvement and a budget, which is presented to the investors for approval and financing.

Benefits

The quality improvement program is expected to have four major benefits: improved adaptability, increased productivity, reduction of errors, and improvement in morale. The multidimensional nature of the quality improvement program would ensure that the health care facility is equipped to adapt to the dynamism of health care consumers’ needs, tastes, and preferences. In addition, the program enables the health care facility to avoid threats, and take advantage of new opportunities. For instance, gaining feedback from customers will ensure that the facility is able to track changes in patient needs, tastes, or preference, thus provides quality services based on the feedback. Apart from this, the quality improvement program increases productivity because the health care facility uses information gained from staff and patients to develop better processes.

The program might also improve staff morale because the notion of adaptability coupled with improvement in processes often targets refining health care facility processes rather than blaming employees for inefficiencies. Therefore, continuous use of this program would ensure significant improvement in employee morale. Besides morale improvement, the program is also expected to reduce the number of errors. Since the improvement program would provide quality improvement guidelines, physicians, nurses, and other clinicians would have an easier time following instructions. This would reduce the number of errors or mistakes within the health care facility.

Budget & Justification

To ensure the quality improvement program works, the health care facility has to have funds. Table 1 below shows the annual budget of the program. The creation of the electronic database is a one-time cost. However, other costs such as wages and salaries, maintenance and monitoring, and evaluation, and appraisal, and assessment cost are recurrent costs, which have to be catered for yearly.

Item/ Resource

cost

Justification

Salaries and Wages

$1000000

Salaries paid to the quality improvement team based on the assumption that the team will be made of 10 members each earning $80000 p.a. The remaining $200000 will be distributed to contractors/ consultants who will assist the team

Assessment and Appraisal tools

$150,000

The health care facility will also invest in development of assessment tools such as self-administered questionnaires, technology aided monitoring (e.g. pagers and CCTV cameras ), and miscellaneous tools like pens pencils, and rubber

Electronic database Creation

$700000

Database creation: Hence, the purchase of ICT infrastructure (e.g. computers, data management software and networking equipment) for storing information and analysis of data to increase the ease of working

Maintenance, monitoring and evaluation costs

$200000

The cost of maintaining the database, monitoring, and evaluating all activities in the improvement program to ensure smooth implementation

Total

$2050000

References

Mitchell, P., & Waterworth, S. (2012, September). Embedding Quality Improvement Change Into Nursing Practice. Kai Tiaki Nursing Research, 3(1).