Essay Safety Score Improvement Plan

Essay Safety Score Improvement Plan

Safety Score Improvement Plan for MediHelp Medical Centre

Essay Safety Score Improvement Plan Quality improvement in healthcare comprises of an organized and progressive activities that result to quantifiable improvements in the status of specific group of patients. According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), enhancing value in healthcare has a direct relationship with the rate of improvement in clinical services and the expected health results (Crutchfield & Roughton, 2013). When quality healthcare is considered in this perspective, the current system of the organization should define how things are done while, performance in healthcare is defined by the efficiency of the organization, the outcome of care, and patient satisfaction. Quality services are directly related to the service delivery approach adopted by the organization or the primary system of care. To achieve better results and improve the quality of service, a hospital has to change the current system to incorporate quality improvement standards. It also needs to work as one system and process by focusing on the patients, use data effectively and involve every stakeholder.

Study of Factors

The hospital score is an important factor for MediHelp Medical Centre in maintaining the market share and avoiding losing its reimbursement under Medicaid/Medicare programs. Under the value based-purchasing program, institutions with low hospital-acquired health conditions scores can be penalized financially. Hospital safety scores use the national performance measures to determine the safety scores of each particular healthcare institution in the United States. The score increases transparency and allow patients to have a wide choice in selecting a hospital based on experience of other patients.

At MediHelp Medical Centre, infections and medication errors in the operating room are the main hospital–acquired conditions that could alleviate the use of evidence-based guidelines for hospital safety. These conditions can easily be avoided through effectively applying the evidence-based guidelines subjecting them to the adjustment in payment. Various strategies can be adopted by the hospital to prevent the avoidable hospital-acquired conditions in the operating room.

Patient Safety Issue

Errors in preparation of the operating room are the major cause of infections and medication errors in the hospital. In addition, surgical errors are the chief causes of injuries, infections and death for patients.  This implies that more people are likely to die from medical errors in this unit than through other ailments treated in the hospital. Most faults results from problems that are caused by today’s multifaceted healthcare system. Miscalculations also happen when physicians and patients fail to communicate properly. According to a recent research, doctors often fail to help their patients make informed decision in regards to treatment (Tweedy, 2014). Patients who are not informed or involved are unlikely to accept the choice of treatment used by a doctor and are less likely to do what is required to ensure that the treatment work. Various changes need to be implemented in order to improve patient’s safety, the management and the physician involved in treating the patient has to change the situation.

Essay Safety Score Improvement Plan

Recommendations

Total involvement and effective communication between team members

The most important way of preventing errors is to ensure that each member is actively involved in the team involved in serving a patient regardless of their role and professionals background. This means that the nurses, laboratory technicians, radiologists and all specialized doctors involved should take part in decision making about the healthcare approach to be used on a patient. Effective communication between the team members and the patient is essential providing better results. Several studies have revealed that patients who are involved in decision making in regards to their health status have better outcome and make positive feedback for the hospital (Kalra, 2011).

Preventing infection

The operation room and the surgical equipment used should be thoroughly disinfected. Hand washing is necessary for nurses and anyone handling the patient as recommended by the Center for Disease Control (Kalra, 2011).Preparation of the operation room should beinspected and cleared long before the patient is brought in for surgical operations. The hospital should have sinks located at strategic places to encourage healthcare providers, patients and their family members to wash hands before and after interacting with the patient. Team members are required to encourage their teammates on the importance of handling patients with gloves of clean hands. 

Collect and act on the data analyzed

As it is the case in most improvement initiatives, long term advancement on HCAHPS scores requires the health institution to collect data, analyze it, and act on the output in regards to client’s experiences. The hospital management can identify the trends in quality improvement and focus on refining the problem areas.  Tweedy (2014) illustrated that there should be follow-up calls by quality control personnel to seek further information from the patient to establish what their best or worst experience was and then create the necessary projects to target the grey areas (Tweedy, 2014). Patient satisfaction can be maximized by focusing on small micro-projects. If the problem arises from poor training of nurses, retraining should be recommended.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the management needs to integrate the changes with the human resource. Developing a strong organization culture that values the customer experience can help increase the safety score for a hospital. The single most vital contributor to this change is leadership. The leaders must develop and encourage a mature model of accountability that infuses the culture. The main function of leadership is to be accessible to the patient and their families in order to have direct feedback on patient experience.

Essay Safety Score Improvement Plan