Quality Assurance to Quality Improvement: The Impact of the Agenda for Changes

1991 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-89
Author(s):  
Joanne Moreland
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Quality Improvement ◽  
Patient Care ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Health Care Organizations ◽  
Health Care Organization ◽  
Care Organization ◽  
Flow Monitoring ◽  
The Impact

Health care professionals are committed to the continual improvement of the quality of patient care. The Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) has launched a major research and development project intended to improve its ability to evaluate health care organizations and encourage greater attention to the quality of daily patient care. This chapter describes JCAHO’s challenge to evaluate capability and performance of health care organizations and practitioners. The intent of JCAHO’s agenda for change is to focus on patient outcomes and quality improvement through a more precise and objective evaluation of both clinical and managerial performance. Through the agenda for change, JCAHO and the health care organization will participate in a continuous-flow monitoring system in which clinical and organizational data are transmitted from the field to JCAHO, analyzed, and fed back to the health care organization

Measuring the Customer-Perceived Service Quality in Health Care Organization: A Case Study

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunil C. D’Souza ◽  
A.H. Sequeira
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Quality Of Care ◽  
Service Quality ◽  
Health Care Organizations ◽  
Health Care Organization ◽  
Services Marketing ◽  
Care Organization ◽  
Nursing Quality

In today’s highly competitive environment, health care organizations are increasingly realizing the need to focus on service quality as a measure to improve their competitive position. While there has been a plethora of conceptual and empirical research regarding the many complexities involved in services marketing, few endeavours have been directed towards integrating the customer’s assessment into models to improve overall service quality. This article examines service quality through a case study of a health care organization in Mangalore, Karnataka, India with a tertiary health provision. The population consisted of patients aged 18–65 years and 45 patients were considered through a purposive sampling technique. The study basically started off using the grounded theory for patient of service quality and this exploration was enabled to formulate a hypothesis; to test the specific hypothesis, the descriptive approach was used. The grounded theory indentified service quality dimensions through open coding, axial coding and selective coding. The analysis was done for the assessment of overall service quality by ‘doctors’, ‘quality of care,’ ‘nursing quality of care’ and ‘operative quality of care’ and the proportion of statistically significant variance. The service quality in which operative quality of care yielded 79 per cent; doctor quality of care yielded 45.6 per cent; and nursing quality of care yielded 63.8 per cent of explanatory power.The results also indicated there is need to improve doctors’ care in the case of this organization. Service attributes related to this dimension requires management attention to improve the doctors’ care of quality. The article concludes by highlighting the dearth in services marketing research for service quality measurement through patient perspective in health care organizations.

Benchmarking of the Maintenance Service in Health Care Organizations

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
María Carmen Carnero
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Care Organizations ◽  
Health Care Organization ◽  
Care Quality ◽  
Care Staff ◽  
Care Organization ◽  
Analytic Hierarchy ◽  
Maintenance Service ◽  
Hierarchy Process

The support services of health care organizations, such as maintenance, have not traditionally been considered important from the perspective of care quality. Nevertheless, the degree of excellence in maintenance significantly influences availability, maintenance costs and safety of facilities, medical equipment, patients and care staff. Thus, it would be of great importance for health care organizations to apply benchmarking to their maintenance processes, as do other processing companies, in order to determine the quality of maintenance provided, and compare it to other, similar, organizations. This would also allow all the continuous improvement processes to be controlled, and actions for radical improvement to be carried out by comparing performance with that of companies in other sectors. This chapter describes a multicriteria model integrating a fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process with utility theory to obtain a valuation for the Maintenance Service of a Health Care Organization over time.

scholarly journals Examining The Impact Of Sarbanes-Oxley On Non-Profit Health Care Organizations

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 69
Author(s):  
Caprina P. Beal ◽  
Thomas Griffin
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Care Organizations ◽  
Health Care Organization ◽  
Care Organization ◽  
Font Size ◽  
Case Study Method ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Sarbanes Oxley ◽  
The Impact

<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span><p style="margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt; text-align: justify; mso-pagination: none;" class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">This paper presented a proposal for research on how the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 impacts a non-profit health care organization. The research study follows a qualitative research method of the case study. In this study, the researcher presented a brief introduction of the SOX act and discussed the research data collected in the case study. Qualitative case study method was used for analysis.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span>

Clinical Guidelines as Plans

2006 ◽  
Vol 45 (02) ◽  
pp. 204-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Smith ◽  
D. M. Pisanelli ◽  
A. Gangemi ◽  
M. Stefanelli ◽  
A. Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Clinical Guidelines ◽  
Health Care Organizations ◽  
Health Care Organization ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Care Organization ◽  
Standard Guideline ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Ontological Theory

Summary Objective: Clinical guidelines are special types of plans realized by collective agents. We provide an ontological theory of such plans that is designed to support the construction of a framework in which guideline-based information systems can be employed in the management of workflow in health care organizations. Method: The framework we propose allows us to represent, in formal terms, how clinical guidelines are realized through the actions of individuals or ganized into teams. We provide various levels of implementation representing different levels of conformity on the part of health care organizations. Result: Implementations built in conformity with our framework are marked by two dimensions of flexibility that are designed to make them more likely to be accepted by health care professionals than standard guideline-based management systems. They do justice to the fact 1) that responsibilities within a health care organization are widely shared, and 2) that health care professionals may on different occasions be non-compliant with guidelines for a variety of well justified reasons. Conclusion: The advantage of the framework lies in its built-in flexibility, its sensitivity to clinical context, and its ability to use inference tools based on a robust ontology. One disadvantage lies in its complicated implementation.

L'intenzione di lasciare un'azienda ospedaliera: predittori a confronto

RISORSA UOMO ◽  
2009 ◽  
pp. 135-150
Author(s):  
Claudio Giovanni Cortese ◽  
Simona Ricotta ◽  
Laura Gerbaudo ◽  
Benedetto Violante
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Organizational Citizenship ◽  
Health Care Organizations ◽  
Health Care Organization ◽  
Intention To Leave ◽  
Internal Communication ◽  
Care Organization ◽  
Communication Analysis ◽  
Considerable Problem

- Turnover is a considerable problem for health care organizations: therefore, literature dedicates special attention to intention to leave the workplace (ITL), identified as main antecedent of factual organizational turnover rate. The present study has the aim to analyze the relationship between ITL and some psychosocial variables influencing it. The research (N = 604) has been carried out in a North of Italy Health care organization. Multiple regression analysis shows ITL as influenced by: satisfaction for development opportunities, satisfaction for workload, and quality of internal communication. Analysis of variance shows significant differences in ITL depending on professional qualification and age. Considering these two variables together allows to identify some groups of the organizational population with higher risks of turnover.Keywords: health worker, hospital, intention to leave the workplace, job satisfaction, organizational citizenship.Parole chiave: personale sanitario, azienda ospedaliera, intenzione di lasciare l'azienda, soddisfazione lavorativa, cittadinanza organizzativa.

scholarly journals Building capacity for implementation—the KT Challenge

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnes T. Black ◽  
Marla Steinberg ◽  
Amanda E. Chisholm ◽  
Kristi Coldwell ◽  
Alison M. Hoens ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Patient Care ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Practice Change ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Health Care Settings ◽  
Improvement Programs ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Background The KT Challenge program supports health care professionals to effectively implement evidence-based practices. Unlike other knowledge translation (KT) programs, this program is grounded in capacity building, focuses on health care professionals (HCPs), and uses a multi-component intervention. This study presents the evaluation of the KT Challenge program to assess the impact on uptake, KT capacity, and practice change. Methods The evaluation used a mixed-methods retrospective pre-post design involving surveys and review of documents such as teams’ final reports. Online surveys collecting both quantitative and qualitative data were deployed at four time points (after both workshops, 6 months into implementation, and at the end of the 2-year funded projects) to measure KT capacity (knowledge, skills, and confidence) and impact on practice change. Qualitative data was analyzed using a general inductive approach and quantitative data was analyzed using non-parametric statistics. Results Participants reported statistically significant increases in knowledge and confidence across both workshops, at the 6-month mark of their projects, and at the end of their projects. In addition, at the 6-month check-in, practitioners reported statistically significant improvements in their ability to implement practice changes. In the first cohort of the program, of the teams who were able to complete their projects, half were able to show demonstrable practice changes. Conclusions The KT Challenge was successful in improving the capacity of HCPs to implement evidence-based practice changes and has begun to show demonstrable improvements in a number of practice areas. The program is relevant to a variety of HCPs working in diverse practice settings and is relatively inexpensive to implement. Like all practice improvement programs in health care settings, a number of challenges emerged stemming from the high turnover of staff and the limited capacity of some practitioners to take on anything beyond direct patient care. Efforts to address these challenges have been added to subsequent cohorts of the program and ongoing evaluation will examine if they are successful. The KT Challenge program has continued to garner great interest among practitioners, even in the midst of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, and shows promise for organizations looking for better ways to mobilize knowledge to improve patient care and empower staff. This study contributes to the implementation science literature by providing a description and evaluation of a new model for embedding KT practice skills in health care settings.

scholarly journals Patterns of Patients’ Interactions With a Health Care Organization and Their Impacts on Health Quality Measurements: Protocol for a Retrospective Cohort Study (Preprint)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arriel Benis ◽  
Nissim Harel ◽  
Refael Barak Barkan ◽  
Einav Srulovici ◽  
Calanit Key
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Data Analysis ◽  
Communication Channel ◽  
Clustering Algorithm ◽  
Health Care Organizations ◽  
Health Care Organization ◽  
Communication Channels ◽  
Care Organization ◽  
Care Providers ◽  
Different Types

BACKGROUND Data collected by health care organizations consist of medical information and documentation of interactions with patients through different communication channels. This enables the health care organization to measure various features of its performance such as activity, efficiency, adherence to a treatment, and different quality indicators. This information can be linked to sociodemographic, clinical, and communication data with the health care providers and administrative teams. Analyzing all these measurements together may provide insights into the different types of patient behaviors or more accurately to the different types of interactions patients have with the health care organizations. OBJECTIVE The primary aim of this study is to characterize usage profiles of the available communication channels with the health care organization. The main objective is to suggest new ways to encourage the usage of the most appropriate communication channel based on the patient’s profile. The first hypothesis is that the patient’s follow-up and clinical outcomes are influenced by the patient’s preferred communication channels with the health care organization. The second hypothesis is that the adoption of newly introduced communication channels between the patient and the health care organization is influenced by the patient’s sociodemographic or clinical profile. The third hypothesis is that the introduction of a new communication channel influences the usage of existing communication channels. METHODS All relevant data will be extracted from the Clalit Health Services data warehouse, the largest health care management organization in Israel. Data analysis process will use data mining approach as a process of discovering new knowledge and dealing with processing data extracted with statistical methods, machine learning algorithms, and information visualization tools. More specifically, we will mainly use the k-means clustering algorithm for discretization purposes and patients’ profile building, a hierarchical clustering algorithm, and heat maps for generating a visualization of the different communication profiles. In addition, patients’ interviews will be conducted to complement the information drawn from the data analysis phase with the aim of suggesting ways to optimize existing communication flows. RESULTS The project was funded in 2016. Data analysis is currently under way and the results are expected to be submitted for publication in 2019. Identification of patient profiles will allow the health care organization to improve its accessibility to patients and their engagement, which in turn will achieve a better treatment adherence, quality of care, and patient experience. CONCLUSIONS Defining solutions to increase patient accessibility to health care organization by matching the communication channels to the patient’s profile and to change the health care organization’s communication with the patient to a highly proactive one will increase the patient’s engagement according to his or her profile. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPOR RR1-10.2196/10734

scholarly journals Impact of COVID-19 on healthcare workers at a cancer care centre

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atika Dogra ◽  
Anuj Parkash ◽  
Anurag Mehta ◽  
Meenu Bhatia
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Front Line ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Front Line Workers ◽  
Severity Of The Disease ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
Spread Of Infection ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACTBackgroundThe services of front-line health care workers (HCWs) have been paramount in the management of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Health care professionals have been at high occupational risk of getting disease and even dying of the disease, however; they have been the subject of very limited studies in terms of COVID-19. The objectives of this study are to examine the incidence and the impact of COVID-19 infection among HCWs in terms of recovery, productivity, quality of life (QOL) and post-COVID complications.Materials and MethodsThis was a retrospective, questionnaire based study including demographic details, workplace characteristics, symptoms, source/ spread of infection, details of recovery and the consequences of COVID-19 comprising impaired productivity/ QOL, post-COVID-19 complications and others. The data were analyzed by using IBM SPSS software (Version 23, SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA).Results and ConclusionsOut of a total of 1482 employees, 18.3% (271) were laboratory confirmed to have contracted novel contagion during the study period of 5 months. The median age at diagnosis was 29 (range, 21-62) years. Front-line workers and female workers were the most infected personnel with COVID-19. Flu-like symptoms were the most frequently experienced symptoms. The median time for recovery was 20 (range, 2-150) days. The relationship between pre-existing comorbidities and age was highly significant. The QOL and productivity were associated with pre-existing comorbidities, severity of the disease, time for recovery and post-COVID syndrome. More than a half (51.8%) of all HCWs had suffered from post-COVID complications. There was no fatality reported due to COVID-19. The post-COVID complications were related to pre-existing comorbidities, severity of disease, time for recovery and status of recovery. Further research to explore the consequences of COVID-19 is warranted. The general public needs to be aware of symptoms and management of the post-COVID syndrome.

Model for Assessment of Environmental Responsibility in Health Care Organizations

2018 ◽  
pp. 3131-3143 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Carmen Carnero
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Health Care Organizations ◽  
Health Care Organization ◽  
Environmental Responsibility ◽  
Care Organization ◽  
Sustainable Business ◽  
Waste Production ◽  
Order Preference ◽  
Multicriteria Assessment

Sustainability is considered a paradigm for businesses in the 21st Century. Despite this, the existing tools for helping to introduce strategies and manage activities to promote sustainable business are few. These deficiencies become more important in Health Care Organizations owing to its particular conditions of resource consumption and waste production. It is, therefore, essential to have objective tools to assist in monitoring environmental sustainability in this type of organization. This Chapter therefore sets out a multicriteria assessment system constructed by extension to a fuzzy environment of the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Situation (TOPSIS), to assess the environmental responsibility of a Health Care Organization. This model allows joint evaluation of a significant number of decision criteria. The aim is to provide a hospital with a model which is easy to apply, with criteria specific to health care, and which allows its responsibility with regard to the environment to be monitored over time. The model has been used in a Public Hospital.

Knowledge Development, Quality Improvement, and Research Ethics

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 217-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard W. Redman
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Quality Improvement ◽  
Patient Care ◽  
Research Ethics ◽  
Precise Measurement ◽  
Knowledge Development ◽  
Knowledge Generation ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Ethical Perspective

Significant contributions to the improvement of health care have been made through research and quality improvement activities. Scientists are involved in knowledge generation and new forms of evidence as they test or reshape theory. Clinicians more typically are involved in identifying ways to improve the quality of practice and patient care in their practice environments. These types of activities often are referred to as quality improvement projects. While quality improvement and research projects both rely on powerful and precise measurement, the lines between these domains and how they may relate to each other have been blurred (Grady, 2007). Recent insights have helped to clarify the contributions of quality improvement activities as well as some of the challenges those types of projects may face from an ethical perspective.

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