Introduction
Medical facilities need to maintain a high level of quality management system so as they can meet their patient’s medical needs appropriately. The medical facilities industry deals with life-threatening conditions thus there is much need for accuracy and timely delivery of services by both medical and support departments (Pollitt & Geert Bouckaert, 1995). This paper discusses how to implement an organizational quality improvement plan at the Academic Medical Centre.
A brief history of the facility
Academic Medical Centre is a leading medical facility situated in Bijlmer, Netherlands; it doubles as a medical facility and a teaching center for the University of Amsterdam. The facility offers inpatient and outpatient services in all medical conditions to people in the locality and aboard. To give quality services, resources are required; however, resources are limited, there is a need to use the available resources appropriately.
The hospital aims to use the facility as a teaching and researching aid in developing medical solutions as it gives quality services to patients. To attain this mission, the facility has put in place some measures to align its programs to the mission, they include massive research and development of medicines, offering a conducive training environment, and retaining and employing experts in different sectors of the facility.
What is the role of consumers (patient, family, and friends) in your organization’s QI process?
An organization does not operate in isolation; there are customers, friends, and family to the facility. Before a QI program is implemented, the first step is to ensure that the organization understands the gap that it is not fulfilling well; the gap is the difference between what the patients, management, and stakeholders have on the organization. Patients, friends, and family members will play the role of information sources required to develop and implement an appropriate quality improvement strategy.
What external quality indicators are available to consumers regarding that organization?
The major role of a medical facility is to offer quality medical services to the patients and develop not only curative services but also preventive measures. External indicators available to consumers include improved health conditions of the societies, change of behavior patterns to those that can prevent them from diseases an example is a change in eating behavior.
When the community health has increased, their expected life will increase, the infant maturity rate will decrease and the community will have access to quality services when they need it at an affordable rate.
How do consumers utilize these indicators as part of the QI process?
Consumers are selective on the medical facilities they attend to; they are willing to go to those facilities that offer quality services. They are likely to be influenced by experiences; as well, the attitude held by colleagues, peers, and friends to say about the facility. Consumer perception is shaped by the experiences they have with a certain service; when they are deciding on the facility they are likely to be influenced by the experiences they have had. They are going to utilize the above quality indicators to gauge the service of the Academic Medical Centre (Pyzdek & Paul, 2009).
For your organization, how is or could stakeholders (patient, managers, administrators, clinicians, health insurers, regulatory agencies, etc.) feedback be utilized (if you do not know how it is utilized, indicate how it could be utilized) in the QI process?
Information and analysis of the current situation and the expected quality is the initial first in implementing a QI at Academic Medical Centre; information related to different segments of the facility and the sources may be different. Patients have their expectation from the facility, the expectations may be individual, maybe societal, or communal, research on what the community expects of the facility gives information on areas like, the expected cost, expected delivery time, and general response of the facility. Many are the times that patients may have a different experience from other similar facilities, they thus have rich information about what others are doing; this information is necessary for developing benchmarks in different areas.
Internally, information can be sort from managers, administrators, clinicians; they have the hospital charter that defines the mission, objectives, and delivery mechanisms that the hospital should employ. The failure of hospital facilities in delivering quality is because they fail to follow the service charter to the letter. Information on the expectation at an ideal situation is used as a benchmark to gauge and improve services in the facility.
Other than internal sources and patients, other stakeholders who offer benchmarks and regulations on different sectors in the hospitality industry: they include health insurers, regulatory agencies. Academic Medical Centre should ensure that it has met the expectation of such institutions, the areas addressed by the institution and regulating bodies include sanitation, waste disposal, emergency services delivery, and patient information sharing.
Internal and external information sources will assist Academic Medical Centre to determine the areas of inefficiency that need t to be addressed. When implementing an organizational quality Improvement program, major areas of focus are areas that affect patients service delivery directs, such areas include reducing patient medication errors and improving nurse response times (Curtis & Kaluzny, 2006).
References
Curtis P., & Kaluzny, D.(2006). Continuous quality improvement in health care. New York: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Pollitt, C., & Geert Bouckaert, G. (1995). Quality improvement in European public services: concepts, cases, and commentary. London: Sage.
Pyzdek, T., & Paul, A. (2009). The Six Sigma Handbook. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.