Discussion: Improving Quality

Discussion: Improving Quality

Improving the quality of health care delivery and patient safety continues to be a political concern and has been at the heart of reform issues for many years. The American Nurses Association (ANA) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) have increased awareness of health care quality and safety issues, as well as advocated for health care reform. The documents featured at the ANA and IOM websites listed in this week’s Learning Resources focus on many of the current issues surrounding quality and safety in the health care industry.

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To prepare:

• Review this week’s Learning Resources, focusing on the Six Aims for Improvement presented in the landmark report “Crossing the Quality Chasm: The IOM Health Care Quality Initiative.”
• Consider these six aims with regard to your current organization, or one with which you are familiar. In what areas have you seen improvement? What areas still present challenges? As a nurse leader, how can you contribute to improving the organization’s achievement of these aims?
• Select one specific quality or safety issue that is presenting a challenge in the organization. Consider at least one quality improvement strategy that could be used to address the issue, as well as which of the six aims for improvement would then be addressed.
• Reflect on your professional practice and your experiences with inter-professional collaboration to improve quality and safety. How has inter-professional collaboration contributed to your organization’s efforts to realize the IOM’s six aims for improving health care? Where has inter-professional collaboration been lacking?

BY DAY 3

Post a description of the quality or safety issue you selected and a brief summary of the impact that this issue has on health care delivery. Describe at least one quality improvement strategy used to address this issue. Then explain which of the six “aims for improvement” are addressed by the strategy. Finally, explain how inter-professional collaboration helps improve quality in this area.

Six Aims for Improvement

Advances must begin with all health care constituencies–health professionals, federal and state policy makers, public and private purchasers of care, regulators, organization managers and governing boards, and consumers–committing to a 2

Advances must begin with all health care constituencies… committing to a national statement of purpose…

national statement of purpose for the health care system as a whole. In making this commitment, the parties would accept as their explicit purpose “to continually reduce the burden of illness, injury, and disability, and to improve the health and functioning of the people of the United States.” The parties also would adopt a shared vision of six specific aims for improvement. These aims are built around the core need for health care to be:

• Safe: avoiding injuries to patients from the care that is intended to help them.

• Effective: providing services based on scientific knowledge to all who could benefit, and refraining from providing services to those not likely to benefit.

• Patient-centered: providing care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values, and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions.

• Timely: reducing waits and sometimes harmful delays for both those who receive and those who give care. • Efficient: avoiding waste, including waste of equipment, supplies, ideas, and energy.

• Equitable: providing care that does not vary in quality because of personal characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, geographic location, and socioeconomic status.

A health care system that achieves major gains in these six areas would be far better at meeting patient needs. Patients would experience care that is safer, more reliable, more responsive to their needs, more integrated, and more available, and they could count on receiving the full array of preventive, acute, and chronic services that are likely to prove beneficial. Clinicians and other health workers also would benefit through their increased satisfaction at being better able to do their jobs and thereby bring improved health, greater longevity, less pain and suffering, and increased personal productivity to those who receive their care.