Table of Contents Answer 1 – Quality and TQM....................................................................................................3 Answer 2 – Patient safety and risk.............................................................................................5 Answer 3 – Safety culture and measurement.............................................................................6 References..................................................................................................................................8 2
Answer 1 – Quality and TQM The healthcare system is deeply concerned with maintenance of quality in the processes, in order to make sure that patients get quality treatment such that they get satisfied and any risks which can cause harm to the patients and their health is avoided. According to WHO, the healthcare quality can be described as “the extent to which health care services provided to individuals and patient populations improve desired health outcomes. In order to achieve this, health care must be safe, effective, timely, efficient, equitable and people-centered”(World Health Organization, 2019).It is the degree, to which the healthcare services provided for the individuals, increase the probability of getting the desired health outcomes and the outcomes are in consistence with the professional knowledge. The healthcare units tend to provide 100 percent healthcare quality to their patients, but most of the times, it is not possible due to several factors. Many times, the healthcare facilities are not provided to those who require them during emergencies. A few common causes which interfere with the provision of perfect healthcare quality include inadequate infrastructure; unavailability of competent and motivated staff; lack of availability of medicines or poor quality; poor compliance to evidence-basedclinicalinterventionsandpractices;andpooruseofinformationand documentation(Kapoor, 2011). The followingkey principles of total quality management(TQM) must be carried out in order to maintain quality in the healthcare operations. Customer-focused organization: the healthcare units in the country must be focused towards the customers and provide the health services as per their needs. The patient’s safety and health, medical ethics, sharing the quality environment and maintaining the standards in the healthcare system are some of its examples(Patel, 2010). Strategic planning and leadership: Strategic planning and leadership must be in compliance with the customer’s expectations, development of advance diagnostic technologies; new 3
opportunities, social expectations and evolving patients care system. The leaders must take measures to establish long-term relationships with the doctors, nurses and patients. Continuous improvement and learning: this measure is required to achieve the high standards of service and is directly supervised by the management. Improvement can be ensured through cycles of planning, implementation and evolution. Learning can be induced by adaptation to changes as well as leading to new approaches and goals. Teamwork and empowerment: knowledge, skills, and motivation level of the workforce in the healthcare industry determines the success. Team structures must include quality circles, self-directed work teams and steering committees(Patel, 2010). Process management: the planning and administration activities must be carried out for achieving the highest level of performance and recognizing the opportunities for quality improvement. Quality assurance and control: it helps in providing the confidence that the patient safety will be maintained and that they will get the required quality services at the healthcare units. It can be ensured through quality planning, internal audit and reliability, control, patients liability cases, improvement, training of personnel in quality, treatment records, medical claim details, and analysis of customer diagnosis(Patel, 2010) There are certain tools for process improvement which can be used such as Pareto analysis, QualityFunctionDeployment(QFD),processflowchart,sixsigmaanalysisandlean thinking. Out of these techniques, thesix-sigma analysiscan be implemented in the healthcare industry in an efficient and effective manner. The concept of six sigma can be used to improve the planned procedures. This tool also measures the closeness between the planned processes as well as actual output of the efforts, which are put into implanting an environment of total quality management. The following Six Sigma curve is used for the measurement. If the range of acceptability lies outside four sigma point of the distribution 4
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curve, it means that the efforts or the processes are working as per the target. For achieving the Six Sigma quality, any process must not produce more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities(International Six Sigma Institute, 2019). Answer 2 – Patient safety and risk Patient safety can be defined as the absence of any sort of preventable harm to any patient in any healthcare institution during the process of the healthcare. It also includes the reduction of risk of any unnecessary harm to the minimum which can be caused to him/her during the healthcare process. The context of the delivery of the care, availability of resources and current knowledge are a few factors which impact the patient safety. For ensuring patient safety and achieving sustainable improvements in the healthcare facility, data for driving safetyimprovements,clearmanagementpolicies,skilledhealthcareprofessionals, organizational leadership capacity, and effective involvement of patients in their own care are required(World Health Organization, 2019). The healthcare quality and patient safety are two different concepts. Patient safety is one of the major components of the healthcare quality which was reported by 2001 Institute of Medicine report known as “Crossing the Quality Chasm. The quality is a broad concept which has to do with the purposeful, effective and efficient care of the patient done at the right time within the right cost. Safety, on the other hand, is concerned with the lack of harm which can be done to the patient. Safety focuses mainly on avoiding the bad events, whereas, quality focuses on doing the things well so that no bad events take place. Quality makes sure that the entire healthcare process is good for the patient, whereas, safety reduces the chances of occurrence of mistakes(Sharecare, 2019). Risk management can be defined as the concept which helps the management to identify the risks associated with a process, measure the intensity of the risks and take effective measures 5
to make sure that the impact of the risk on the patients is not very critical. Patient safety is also related to preventing the patient from the potential risks in the healthcare industry. According to the studies conducted at Virginia Mason in 2015, patient safety program is one of the most critical tools which can be used for risk management in healthcare. The patient safety helps in identifying the safety risks so that the mitigation measures can be taken immediately for reducing the risks(Manuel, McCarthy, Berry, & Dwyer, 2010). The patient safety can reduce risk in following three ways: Leadership training and engagement Encouragement of reporting of events through establishment of culture of safety Early collaboration and notification with risk management(Manuel, McCarthy, Berry, & Dwyer, 2010) Tools that can be used for risk analysis can be: Root Cause Analysis (RCA):This tool will help the risk manager to identify the underlying causes of adverse occurrences, which will further help the authorities to modify the existing processes in order to prevent the future losses. Risk score calculation and likelihood assessment: The risk score calculation is done by multiplying the likelihood score with the severity of impact score. Likelihood score helps in analyzing the probability of occurrence of the risk in future(Alam, 2016). Answer 3 – Safety culture and measurement Safety culture can be described as “the way patient safety is thought about and implemented within an organization and the structures and processes in place to support this”. It can also be referred to as the culture of the staff in an organization to ensure patient safety. Measurement of safety culture is very important as the attitudes of the management as well as 6
the staff of the hospital tends to impact the outcomes of patient’s safety and these measures can be utilized to monitor the change over time(Strahlendorf, 2015). The safety culture in a healthcare organization can be measured using the following tools: Safety Attitudes Questionnaire: this questionnaire focuses on development of the safety culture and asks the healthcare units and their teams for describing their attitudes in the context of patient safety and safety culture under six domains using a Likert scale. The SAQ not only measures the safety culture in a hospital but also makes comparisons between the safety cultures of different industries and identifies the common human factor issues(The Health Foundation, 2011). Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture: this tool contains questions pertaining to the safetycultureinahospitalandassessesthesafetycultureatindividual,unitand organizational level. The questionnaire is displayed on the website of the organization and contains questions related to frequency of event reporting, patient safety grade, organizational learning, communication openness and such others. Patient Safety Assessment Framework: This assessment tool is based on a theoretical framework, which is developed on the basis of the study of the previously established literature in the space. It contains 10 major dimensions describing the safety culture including system errors and individual responsibility, continuous improvement, personnel management, staff education and training, teamwork and such others. A poor safety culture allows a healthcare organization to understand the discrepancies that are occurring and what are the areas where the attitude of the staff as well as the management needs to be improved for establishing safety culture in the organizations and ensuring patient safety(Ghahramani, 2017). References 7
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Alam, A. Y. (2016).Steps in the process of risk management in healthcare.Retrieved from Elynsgroup.com: https://www.elynsgroup.com/article-download/steps-in-the-process- of-risk-management-in-healthcare Ghahramani, A. (2017). Diagnosis of poor safety culture as a major shortcoming in OHSAS 18001-certified companies.Industrial Health, 55(2), 138-148. International Six Sigma Institute. (2019). Six sigma DMAIC process - Analyze phase - analysis examples. International Six Sigma Institute. Kapoor, P. (2011). Why quality in healthcare.Medical journal, Armed Forces India, 67(3), 206-208. Manuel, B. M., McCarthy, J. L., Berry, W., & Dwyer, K. (2010).Risk management and patient safety.United States: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Patel,G.(2010).TotalQualityManagementinHealthcare.Retrievedfrom Semanticscholar.org: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/dd85/406962b2c19f57b70a11002cf7f6327b7d5f.pdf Sharecare. (2019).What is the difference between patient safety and quality?Retrieved 2019, fromSharecare.com/:https://www.sharecare.com/health/health-care-basics/what- difference-patient-safety-quality Strahlendorf,P.(2015).Measuringsafetyculture.Retrieved2019,from Energysafetycanada.com: http://www.energysafetycanada.com/files/Comms_Uploads/events/events_psc/2015/ PSC-2015-measuring-safety-culture-strahlendorf-peter.pdf TheHealthFoundation.(2011,February).Evidencescan:Measuringsafetyculture. RetrievedfromHealth.org.uk: https://www.health.org.uk/sites/default/files/MeasuringSafetyCulture.pdf 8
World Health Organization. (2019).Maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health: What is QualityofCareandwhyisitimportant?Retrieved2019,fromWho.int: https://www.who.int/maternal_child_adolescent/topics/quality-of-care/definition/en/ WorldHealthOrganization.(2019).Patientsafety.Retrieved2019,from https://www.who.int/patientsafety/en/ 9