Homework 1: Quality of Practice
Quality of Practice
Quality practices in healthcare have relied heavily on regulatory/standards compliance and individual competence (people doing the right thing). These quality practices are also present in manufacturing industries; however, in manufacturing, the overwhelming focus is on management sciences-reducing process variation, meeting customer needs, and continuously improving.
Task:
How do quality practices that originated in the manufacturing industry differ from the traditional quality practices of health care organizations?
1) Choose one article from the below list and develop an essay as per Syllabus guidelines to answer the above question.
2) Articles
Colton, D. 2000. "Quality Improvement in Health Care: Conceptual and Historical Foundations." Evaluation & the Health Professions 23 (1): 7-42.
Merry, M., and G. Michael. 2001. "The Past, Present and Future of Health Care Quality." Physician Executive 27 (5): 30-35. Available online.
Berwick, D. M. 2003. "Improvement, Trust, and the Healthcare Workforce." Quality and Safety in Health Care 12 (suppl.1): i2-i6. Available online.
Griffith, J. R. 2009. "Finding the Frontier of Hospital Management." Journal of Healthcare Management 54 (1): 57-72; discussion 72-73.
Homework 2: Performance Measures
Follow the below instructions to develop your Homework topic "Performance Measures"
1) Search the National Quality Forum site (NQF). Click item "Quality Positioning System". Once directed to this website you will identify five evidence-based performance measures related to prescribing the correct medications for patients. To find related measures search on the word "medication," and many measures will be listed. Many of these will meet the broad parameters of the question. (see below image from this site).
2) The measures should focus on choosing the right medication for a patient's condition. List each measure, the organization or group that developed the measure, and the date the measure was published.
3) Develop your response following the Short Essay guidelines as per Syllabus.
Homework 3:
This homework revisits a topic discussed in chapter one- consumer expectations and definitions of quality. Most consumers expect quality in the delivery of health-care service- receiving the right treatments, experiencing good outcomes, etc. Student should revisit relevant sections of chapter one before answering this homework.
Whether consumers are actually using the data on the CMS website to select nursing homes and other providers is debatable. Below are some websites with articles and reports that discuss this subject:
• Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. 2017. "Public Reports on Provider Performance for Consumers." (three reports). Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
• California Healthcare Foundation. 2012. "Value Judgment: Helping Health Care Consumers Use Quality and Cost Information."
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 2015. "Public Reporting of Health Care Quality Performance."
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 2017. "Public Reporting of Health Care-Associated Infections."
Task:
1. To expand this discussion activity, the student must read one or more of the above resources (or other current references on this topic) and prepare a report on the advantages and drawbacks of public reporting of healthcare performance data.
Homework 4: Improvement Projects by Healthcare Organizations
There are many articles in the literature describing improvement projects conducted in healthcare organization. In addition, below are some websites where improvement project examples can be found. There are many other sites with project examples. These sites can be located using search engines and key words such as "FADE" and "healthcare."
1) Institute for Healthcare Improvement.
2) Clinical Microsystems, The Dartmouth Institute.
3) Individual websites of the Quality Improvement Organizations in the Quality Innovation network.
*Note: It may be hard to find FADE projects, as this model is no longer commonly used in healthcare organizations.
Activity:
1) Many examples of improvement projects conducted by healthcare organizations can be found in the literature and on the Internet.
2) Find an example of each type of project (at least 3 examples in total): PDSA, RCI, FOCUS-PDCA, FADE, Lean, Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma.
Format your homework according to the following formatting requirements:
(1) The answer should be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
(2) The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the homework, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
(3) Also include a reference page. The Citations and references should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.