Data Analysis and Quality Improvement Initiative Proposal
Introduction
One of the critical roles of healthcare professionals is to continuously implement quality improvement strategies to enhance the safety and quality of care provided within healthcare organizations. Therefore, healthcare organizations must utilize effective leadership skills, a supportive work environment, interprofessional collaboration, effective collaboration strategies, and evidence-based strategies to create a safe culture. Accordingly, nurse leaders have a vital role in developing a patient safety culture to influence healthcare outcomes within their organizations. Hire our assignment writing services in case your assignment is devastating you.
Problems and Needs
One of the responsibilities of nurse leaders is to maintain the quality of care in the clinical and nursing departments. This role will be outlined using the example of data from the SAMC’s in-home hospice program. As part of the yearly evaluation of the organization’s quality, the organization’s medical support services department conducted an analysis of dashboard metrics for adverse events in hospice and home health for the years 2014 and 2015. This Quality and Safety Report was released in 2016. The hospice program data included near misses and adverse events that resulted in some harm or potential harm to the patient. Subsequently, four quality indicators were used. They consist of the length of stay (LOS) less than seven days, IPU admission, pain level between 7-10 for more than 24 hours, and inadequate symptom relief for more than 24 hours.
Proposed Solution
The results of the analysis reveal that the hospice program performed below the organization’s benchmark in two quality indicators: pain levels of 7-10 for more than 24 hours and inadequate symptom relief for more than 24 hours. The ideal score for these two indicators should be zero. This proposal will analyze the relationship between these quality indicators and the service of nurses in hospice programs for a quality improvement program. This program will evaluate the correlational patterns between quality indicators data, identify assumptions guiding nursing characteristics and care quality, determine root cause analysis methods for quality issues and recommend a protocol and interventions to enhance quality outcomes for the hospice program.
Analysis of Dashboard Metrics to Identify Quality Issues
The hospice program provides end-of-life care and comfort for patients with terminal diseases. This program does not offer urgent care or life-saving interventions. Instead, this program aims to treat symptoms. Both patients and family members are recipients of care. Due to the vulnerable nature of patients in the hospice program, the quality and safety of care are the primary priorities. There is a regular assessment of quality and safety indicators. Accordingly, nurses, hospice physicians, volunteer coordinators, chaplains, and social workers are part of the multi-disciplinary team in the hospice program.
Table 1: Hospice and Home Health Adverse Event Data 2014-15
| Unit-Year | LOS less than 7 Days | IPU Admission | Pain Level Between 7-10 for More than 24 Hours | Inadequate Symptom Relief for More than 24 Hours |
| Hospice 2014 | 50 | 47 | 13 | 13 |
| Hospice 2015 | 46 | 27 | 17 | 22 |
The data from the Hospice and Home Health Adverse Event Report in Table 1 indicated that the LOS of less than seven days reduced from 50 in 2014 to 46 in 2015, while the number of IPU admissions reduced from 47 in 2014 and 27 in 2015. However, the pain levels between 7-10 increased from 13 in 2014 to 17 in 2015. Inadequate symptom relief also increased from 13 in 2014 to 22 in 2015. Thus, this shows that the quality of care based on the two quality indicators has reduced between 2014 to 2015. This data should be a cause of concern for the hospital since it can affect healthcare professionals, patients, and the hospital in many ways. Public reporting involves providing data on healthcare outcomes to the general public. Subsequently, this allows them to compare performances and make informed healthcare decisions on hospitals to take care of (Prang et al., 2021). If the hospital’s quality outcomes are not up to standards, the hospital may lose clients since patients will prefer other hospitals. Patients with terminal conditions have extreme pain due to medications or their conditions (Hagarty et al., 2020). It is thus essential for hospitals to manage their patients. The adverse events report revealed that 17 patients had pain more than 7. This was, therefore, an area in the hospice program that did not perform well. The program failed in its primary role of providing comfort and managing symptoms.
The quality of nursing care is an effective tool in predicting favorable quality outcomes. The Director of Medical Support Services stated that the main reason for the inadequacy of the hospice program was staffing issues. They spend too much time travelling to patient homes or care loads which burden patients resulting in adverse events. He also noted that most patients are referred to the hospice program when close to their end-life. Consequently, this results in these patients not receiving the full benefits of hospice care, such as effective pain and symptom management.
Outline for the Quality Improvement Initiative Proposal
Charge nurses have a critical role in influencing their subordinates to engage in patient care. Their duties include staffing, care coordination, budgeting, and developing patient plans (Delamater & Hall, 2018). Significantly, one of the issues in the hospice program is staffing issues. Staffing issues may result in staff dissatisfaction, ineffective communication, or competition from nurses due to different caseloads. It is thus vital to implement a leadership style that will promote effective nursing services. The leadership style proposed for this quality initiative is transformation leadership. Transformational leaders focus on the professional values of their team members and help them align these values with the mission and vision of the organization. The values of a transformational leader, such as creativity and optimism, will motivate team members to ensure their commitment to the organization (Collins et al., 2019).
The Plan-Do-Study-Act model will be used in this quality improvement (QI) initiative. Furthermore, the PDSA model can be applied when a fast-tracked change is required. The PDSA model has four steps that can be utilized to promote a long-term QI initiative. The four steps of the PDSA cycle include:
Plan: The plan section involves identifying a multi-disciplinary team, determining the goal of the QI initiative, describing the problem, identifying causes, and developing alternatives (Knudsen et al., 2019). The nurse leader will be in charge of the multi-disciplinary team. Other team members will include the hospice physician, social worker, nurses, and a chaplain. The problem in this program is staffing issues and caseloads, which may result in conflicts and inefficiencies.
Do: This step involves implementing the action plan. This step will include data collection to help in evaluation (Knudsen et al., 2019). Nurse leaders and hospice physicians will be educated on transformational leadership that will effectively manage the nurse schedules and caseloads
Study: The results from the implementation phase will be analyzed (Knudsen et al., 2019). Additionally, this will involve analyzing quality indicators and conducting surveys to investigate nurses’ job satisfaction.
Act: The final step involves determining success, standardizing the improvement, and utilizing it regularly (Knudsen et al., 2019). Data on the quality indicators will be analyzed for success. If the evaluation is successful, the PDSA cycle will be complete and transformational leadership will be utilized in the hospice program.
Despite the PDSA model being effective, uncertainties will still affect the QI initiative. The quality indicators may not give a complete picture of the success of the QI. It is thus critical to further evaluate the proposed QI using other indicators such as nurses’ job satisfaction, nurse-to-patient ratios, and patient satisfaction.
Integration of Interprofessional Perspectives That Support Quality Improvement
Interprofessional collaboration is important to improve the safety of quality of care. The interprofessional perspectives critical to the hospice program are transformational leaders and interdisciplinary collaboration. Identifying these perspectives and incorporating them into the QI initiatives will improve patient outcomes. The healthcare system is one big machine with interdependent parts, and hence a problem in one part will affect other parts (Huber & Joseph, 2021). The issues in the hospice program may affect other departments and hinder the organization from achieving its mission and vision. For instance, the poor performance of nurses can affect the performance of hospice physicians, social workers, and chaplains. Therefore, promoting interprofessional collaboration is important since it improves safety and quality of care (Schot et al., 2019). Transformational leadership promotes interpersonal relationships among team members. As a result, this will stimulate collaboration since the team members in the hospice program will have a sense of shared goals and mission. Transformational leadership will also guide the team members to respect and value each other in care delivery.
Effective Communication Strategies to Promote Quality Improvement
Healthcare leaders should have effective communication skills to ensure the smooth running of their departments (Huber & Joseph, 2021). Poor communication strategies hamper the achievement of organizational goals. Therefore, the adopted communication strategy should promote care coordination between nurses, hospice physicians, and social workers. Leaders should also facilitate interprofessional collaboration by having effective communication skills. Practical communication strategies include training in quality improvement on communication styles, including verbal, non-verbal, electronic, and paper communication. This will essentially enhance relationships within the team and improve interprofessional collaboration. The second strategy would be to promote effective documentation to allow the team members to document any healthcare-related data and provide feedback on improving the QI initiative.
Conclusion
Healthcare organizations must be guided by healthcare data and quality indicators when implementing quality improvement initiatives to improve healthcare outcomes. Assessment of quality and safety like the one conducted on the hospice programs identifies several shortcomings that negatively affect the quality of care, such as inadequate staffing due to poor leadership styles. Leadership is critical since it guides team members to align their professional values with organizational goals to improve patient safety. Leadership is, however, multifactorial. It depends on teamwork, interprofessional collaboration, professional values, and competent healthcare professionals. Therefore, healthcare leaders should be trained on appropriate leadership strategies to promote teamwork and effective communication and improve healthcare outcomes.
References
Collins, E., Owen, P., Digan, J., & Dunn, F. (2019). Applying transformational leadership in nursing practice. Nursing Standard, 35(5), 59-66. https://doi.org/10.7748/ns.2019.e11408
Delamater, L., & Hall, N. (2018). Charge nurse development. Nursing Management, 49(7), 34-40. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.numa.0000538914.53159.fc
Hagarty, A. M., Bush, S. H., Talarico, R., Lapenskie, J., & Tanuseputro, P. (2020). Severe pain at the end of life: A population-level observational study. BMC Palliative Care, 19(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12904-020-00569-2
Huber, D., & Joseph, M. L. (2021). Leadership and nursing care management – Binder ready. Saunders.
Knudsen, S. V., Laursen, H. V., Johnsen, S. P., Bartels, P. D., Ehlers, L. H., & Mainz, J. (2019). Can quality improvement improve the quality of care? A systematic review of reported effects and methodological rigor in Plan-Do-Study-Act projects. BMC Health Services Research, 19(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-019-4482-6
Prang, K., Maritz, R., Sabanovic, H., Dunt, D., & Kelaher, M. (2021). Mechanisms and impact of public reporting on physicians and hospitals’ performance: A systematic review (2000–2020). PLOS ONE, 16(2), e0247297. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247297
Schot, E., Tummers, L., & Noordegraaf, M. (2019). Working on working together. A systematic review on how healthcare professionals contribute to interprofessional collaboration. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 34(3), 332-342. https://doi.org/10.1080/13561820.2019.1636007
ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE
We’ll write everything from scratch
Question 
Assessment 3 Instructions: Data Analysis and Quality Improvement Initiative Proposal
PRINT
Prepare a 6-page data analysis and quality improvement initiative proposal based on a health issue of interest. Include internal and external benchmark data, evidence-based recommendations to improve healthcare quality and safety, and communication strategies to gain buy-in from all interprofessional team members responsible for implementing the initiative.
Data Analysis and Quality Improvement Initiative Proposal
Introduction
Healthcare providers are perpetually striving to improve care quality and patient safety. To accomplish enhanced care, outcomes need to be measured. Next, data measures must be validated. Measurement and validation of information support performance improvement. Healthcare providers must focus attention on evidence-based best practices to improve patient outcomes.
Health informatics, along with new and improved technologies and procedures, are at the core of all quality improvement initiatives. Data analysis begins with provider documentation, researched process improvement models, and recognized quality benchmarks. All of these items work together to improve patient outcomes. Professional nurses must be able to interpret and communicate dashboard information that displays critical care metrics and outcomes along with data collected from the care delivery process.
For this assessment, use your current role or assume a role you hope to have. You will develop a quality improvement (QI) initiative proposal based on a health issue of professional interest. To create this proposal, analyze a healthcare facility’s dashboard metrics and external benchmark data. Include evidence-based recommendations to improve healthcare quality and safety relating to your selected issue. Successful QI initiatives depend on the support of nursing staff and other members of the interprofessional team. As a result, a key aspect of your proposal will be the communication strategies you plan to use to get buy-in from these team members.
Preparation
To develop the QI initiative proposal required for this assessment, you must analyze a health care facility’s dashboard metrics. Choose Option 1 or 2 according to your ability to access dashboard metrics for a QI initiative proposal.
.
Include in your proposal basic information about the health care setting, Option 2
If you do not have access to a dashboard or metrics related to a QI initiative proposal:
Use the hospital data set provided in Vila Health: Data Analysis. You will analyze data to identify a healthcare issue or area of concern.
Include in your proposal basic information about the health care setting, size, and specific type of care delivery related to the identified topic.
Instructions
Use your current role or assume a role you would like to have. Choose a quality improvement initiative that is of professional interest to you. Your current organization is probably working on quality improvement initiatives that can be evaluated, so consider starting there.
To develop your proposal, you will:
Gather internal and external benchmark data on the subject of your quality improvement initiative proposal.
Analyze the data you have collected.
Make evidence-based recommendations about how to improve healthcare quality and safety relating to your chosen issue.
Remember, your initiative’s success depends on the interprofessional team’s commitment to the QI initiative. Think carefully about these stakeholders and how you plan to include them in the process, as they will help you develop and implement ideas and sustain outcomes. Also, remember how important external stakeholders, such as patients and other healthcare delivery organizations, are to the process. As you are preparing this assessment, consider carefully the communication strategies you will employ to include the perspectives of all internal and external stakeholders in your proposal.