Quality Improvement Plan
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Examined how a growing population that is living longer and requiring more healthcare services than ever before will contribute to many challenges in the future of health care. The readings highlighted that while an ongoing issue, emergency department (ED) overcrowding and quality of service is certain to continue to worsen as a result without innovation and quality initiatives.
Synthesize many concepts covered in this course to analyze this problem and outline a quality improvement initiative that can create positive change.
This hospital in the District of Columbia ranks as one of the worst in the entire nation for ED timely and effective care.
Create a systems-wide approach to substantially improve aspects of ED operation and care that will dramatically improve wait times to be seen, wait times until admission, and reduction of left-without-being-seen rates to meet or register below national averages.
This is the hospital in question.
https://www.medicare.gov/care-compare/details/hospital/090001?id=b9cafe19-1d42-4af1-bc4f-00338f195e26&city=Washington&state=DC&zipcode=20037#ProviderDetailsRatingsContainer
This is the Textbook used for this course
Textbook:
Sollecito, W. A., & Johnson, J. K. (2020). McLaughlin and Kaluzny’s continuous quality improvement in health care (5th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning. https://online.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781284174410
Sample Solution
The hospital in the District of Columbia highlighted in the readings as one of the worst performing hospitals for timely and effective emergency department (ED) care, has a clear need for improvement. The root cause of ED overcrowding, long wait times to be seen, inadequate wait times until admission, and high left-without-being-seen rates is a symptom of an inefficient system. To create positive change in this hospital’s ED operations and care quality, an innovative systems-wide approach must be implemented.
First and foremost, there needs to be a focus on improving patient flow throughout different departments at the hospital. This requires creating processes that efficiently move patients from one area of service to another within the same or other departments. Additionally, optimizing staffing levels by managing staff workloads through comprehensive resource utilization will help ensure that healthcare teams are working with adequate resources without becoming overwhelmed or overworked (Sollecito & Johnson 2020).
Second, communication between all individuals involved in providing healthcare services must be improved if an integrated team approach is to successfully reduce ED overcrowding. Initiatives such as daily huddles can foster collaboration between departments so thatpatients receive coordinated multidisciplinary care (Sollecito & Johnson 2020). Involving frontline staff members further adds value by allowing them to provide valuable insight into potential solutions based on their direct experience with caring activities throughout each shift. Furthermore, involving patients themselves allows healthcare providers to gain better understanding into how they prefer receiving health information which can lead towards improved outcomes (Sollecito &Johnson 2020).
In conclusion, adopting a systems-wide approach can dramatically improve ED operations and care quality at this hospital in DC by decreasing wait times for both patients seen and those admitted while reducing overall numbers of people who leave without being seen for treatment or diagnosis. By creating processes that optimize staffing levels through efficient resource utilization combined with enhanced interdepartmental communication initiatives such as daily huddles and patient involvement programs we can begin reversing current trends associated with negative performance ratings at this facility.
