Healthcare Quality Management Assessment 2022

Running Head: Healthcare Quality Management
Assessment
Title: Healthcare Quality Management
(Case Study: Patient Safety at Grand River Hospital & St. Mary’s General Hospital)
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Healthcare Quality Management 2
Abstract
Patient Safety refers to a responsibility and discipline that focuses on prevention, reduction,
reporting and analysis of medical errors which often result into adverse events. The Grand River
Hospital and St. Mary General Hospital aims to address the concept of patient safety by
identifying the deficiencies and opportunities present in the Organization System and providing
effective measures of quality improvements in patient safety. The hospitals adopt the approach of
changing the attitudes in patient care and technical up-gradation. The report analyzes the case
study of both these hospitals against the benchmarks and national standards, explains the
observations about where the quality improvement is needed, lists the goals for initiatives that
address those deficiencies in quality, the anticipated outcomes and expected timeframes to re-
evaluate the data.
Keywords: Healthcare; Office; Quality; Management;

Healthcare Quality Management 3
Introduction
Patient Safety refers to a responsibility and discipline that focuses on prevention, reduction,
reporting and analysis of medical errors which often result into adverse events (World Health
Organisation, 2018). The patient safety includes how the Healthcare Organizations protect their
patients from the adverse incidents like accidents, hospital borne infections, medical errors and
injuries (Ghahramanian, Rezaei, Abdullahzadeh & Sheikhalipour, 2017). The government and
healthcare Organisations take effective measures to maintain the safety of patients. According to
CBC News, “Inadequate patient safety costs more than half million deaths in US hospitals, every
year mainly due to preventable medical errors”(CBC News, 2018). Effective measures to
maintain the patient safety involve reducing the infection rate, facilitating transparent
communication with the patients and putting quality checks to mitigate the medical errors.
However, few hospitals have no such mechanisms in place which results in experiences of fatal
complications, reduced rate of recovery and preventable death incidents. The Grand River
Hospital and St. Mary Hospitals have best effective patient safety standards.
Grand River Hospital (GRH) has its own quality framework with a quality and patient safety
committee, quality councils and teams to make the hospital responsible for the safety and quality.
According to Canadian Institute of Health Information, GRH uses five benchmark indicators to
assess its performance: Mortality after major surgery, Nursing-sensitive adverse events in
surgical patients, Nursing-sensitive adverse events in medical patients, Readmissions after
surgery and Readmissions after medical treatment (CBC News, 2018).

Healthcare Quality Management 4
St. Mary’s General Hospital (SMGH) uses lean management approach to bring consistent
improvement in delivery of quality healthcare. The hospital has an objective of bringing 1000
improvements in a year and has a quality committee framework with ‘algorithm of actions’ to
mitigate the adverse events. It is known as the safest hospital in Canada with a vision of
‘Respect, Innovation and compassion’ (GRH Strategic Plan, 2017). Even after all this, these
hospitals still lack in quality standards and need to eliminate their medical and surgical errors
more effectively.
Data analysis against benchmarks and national standards
There are several areas of improvement in both of these hospitals to make them actually safe for
the patients. The hospitals do not follow a true culture of safety at both the frontline and
administrative positions.
For both the hospitals the evidences of poor attendance and underreporting at QCIPA (Quality of
Care Information Protection Act) reviews show that there is a shortage of agreement of
physicians about the existing quality improvement measures (Grand River Hospital, 2019).
Though the attendance of Physicians in these reviews is mandatory, most of them do not attend
it. They assume that the attendance is not to be enforced. Moreover, they are afraid of the legal
outcomes of reporting the medical errors (St. Mary Hospital Improvement Plan, 2011).
Both the hospitals have poor Critical Incident Reporting Records (CIRR) (Grand River Hospital,
2019). The data collected through the reports is generally variable and inadequate. Even the
consistent pressure from IOM for more than a decade, legal protections of QCIPA for the