Quality Improvement Initiative

Quality improvement can be considered as a systematic and formal approach for analyzing the performance of the practice and initiating efforts for improvement of performance (Gardam, Gitterman, et al., 2017). There are different models and approaches that exist for the collection and analysis of data as well as testing changes. The process of understanding and implementing quality improvement initiatives is crucial in practice as it helps improve patient safety, efficiency in care delivery, and clinical outcomes (Berman et al., 2018). Quality improvement initiatives help in the preparation of the transition to payment models that are based on value and also allow a facility to participate in public reporting of physician quality data. Furthermore, they help in the application and completion of national recognition programs. The paper provided an executive summary of the quality improvement initiative aimed at eliminating discharge delay.

Purpose of Quality Improvement Initiative

The management of bed capacity is a vital issue for all healthcare organizations. This is because it has a huge impact on the flow of patients, speed of care, and costs associated with care (Lee et al., 2018). The project is focused on improving the current hospital system of discharging certain patients at specific times of the day as a measure of freeing up beds. This is because the current process is associated with delayed admissions and transfers. It is also associated with longer than necessary lengths of stay for patients, which increases the costs involved for both the facility and patients. The process will involve the development of different discharge criteria for the most common conditions, and these criteria will be based on expert consensus and available evidence. After the development of the criteria, they will be embedded in the electronic health records to allow for a discharge process that focuses on the patients’ needs and facilitates their discharge when they are medically ready.

Target Population

The target population for the quality improvement project includes all in-patient clients at the facility. The project is aimed at improving services for all clients admitted to the facility. It is aimed at ensuring these people are discharged immediately after they become medically ready. This will help in ensuring the clients are reunited with their families to continue with their recovery from home (Dixon-Woods & Martin, 2016). It will also help them in saving money that would have been used to pay the hospital organization for their continued stay in the facility. This target population will include patients in all departments, provided they are admitted to the facility.

Benefits of the Initiative

The quality improvement initiative has several benefits for the healthcare organization. It will help nurses in monitoring and signaling for patients that meet the goals of being discharged. It will also assist the physicians in prioritizing early rounding for assessing patients to be discharged and determining their medical needs. Furthermore, it offers the benefit of streamlining the pharmacy prescription filling process to ensure the medications of patients are ready when they get discharged. This intervention also offers the benefit of improving the efficiency of the discharge process. The intervention will help with the reduction of inefficient discharges, and this will lead to an increased cost-saving for families, the hospital, and health insurance plans (Lee et al., 2018). It will also increase beds for higher acuity patients.

Interprofessional Collaboration

The implementation of the project will require interprofessional collaboration between different healthcare professionals. Physicians and surgeons will be required to collaborate with other care providers in the formulation of discharge criteria for different conditions (Gardam et al., 2017). This will also require the input of researchers to include all the recent evidence-based information that will assist in the formulation of the discharge criteria. Nurse informaticists will be required to include the discharge criteria in the electronic health records and ensure a synchronized process that will enable the efficient discharge of patients. Pharmacists should also be involved in the process to ensure they include prescription processing abilities in the criteria for the efficiency of discharging patients. Finally, the nurse managers and leaders should be included to ensure compliance with legislation and for budgeting purposes.

Budget Justification and Basis of Evaluation

The quality improvement process will only cost the facility initial charges in the development of the discharge criteria for different common diseases. The initial funds will be used to facilitate meetings for the development of discharge criteria and purchasing of technology to allow for the incorporation of these criteria into electronic health records. After the completion of the process and incorporation of the criteria into the EHRs, the initiative will not require any additional funding. The basis for evaluation of the project is the determination of the efficiency of discharging patients (Lee et al., 2018). The time taken to complete the discharge process will be determined and compared with the initial time before the implementation of the project. Patient feedback will also be used for the evaluation of the project. This will be done through the administration of voluntary questionnaires.

Conclusion

Overall, quality improvement is the systematic and formal approach for analyzing the performance of the practice and initiating efforts for improvement of performance. The quality improvement initiative to be undertaken is aimed at eliminating delays in the discharge process of patients. The target population for the project includes all in-patient clients. It will help in improving the efficiency of discharging patients and reducing the costs of healthcare for both patients and the healthcare organization.

References

Berman, L., Raval, M. V., & Goldin, A. (2018, December). Process improvement strategies: Designing and implementing quality improvement research. In Seminars in pediatric surgery (Vol. 27, No. 6, pp. 379-385). WB Saunders.

Dixon-Woods, M., & Martin, G. P. (2016). Does quality improvement improve quality? Future Hospital Journal, 3(3), 191-194.

Gardam, M., Gitterman, L., Rykert, L., Vicencio, E., & Bailey, E. (2017). Healthcare Quality Improvement Requires Many Approaches. HealthcarePapers, 17(1), 57-61.

Lee, E. K., Wang, Z., & Shapoval, A. (2018). Strategies for Inpatient Bed Management. J Health Med Informat, 9(308), 2.

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