Home Health Care as a Quality Assurance Program

Running head: NURSING ASSIGNMENT 1
Nursing Assignment
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

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Nursing Assignment
Introduction
Quality assurance refers to the process of monitoring of the activities of client care to
determine the degree of excellence attained to the implementation of activities (Dye et al. 2014).
Assessing the quality of healthcare has been considered one of the main issues of global agenda
reforms in healthcare. For the quality to be ensured, a combination of planned and systematic
action is required. This is to ensure the services provided meet the requirements given for quality
services and achievement the patients’ needs. Quality assurance is based on good planning,
presentation and excellent training of nursing staff (Strickland et al. 2015). An organization may
have a variety of quality assurance programs. Therefore, this report explores “home healthcare”
as a quality assurance program, the principles which underline the implementation approach of
the program, the personnel involved in the program together with the effectiveness of their role,
and the recommendations that will enhance the success of the program.
Definition and Background Information
To begin with, Home health care refers to home-based healthcare services provided in
support of patients (Murdaugh, Parsons & Pender, 2018). Provision of these home health
services is of great importance to those patients who are out of the hospital but still require
special attention while at home. These patients can be adults or children. According to an article
by Home Care Ontario, Canadians who require home care have to register for healthcare services
which are fully funded by the government. The government cares for home-based health care
services for old people and persons with complex medical conditions who must be closely
monitored. The issue is that not everyone qualifies to receive the services. At times some people
may fail to get the free health services offered at the residential. These people can however

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appeal through the Ontario Health Services Appeal and Review Board. The community support
services are also available to offer aid to the people who require home care services. In Ontario,
for instance, Local Health Integration Network is assigned the responsibility of deciding who
receives care, the level of care and how long to provide healthcare. A specific procedure has to
be followed in order to arrange home care and community services. Some of the home health
services offered include short-term nursing, physiotherapy, speech-language therapy, social
work, occupational therapy and rehabilitation services. There are also home making services as
well as personal care. Home health care allows people to acquire treatment services while in their
homes rather than being under institutional-based care (Rijnaard et al. 2016). Healthcare services
can be professional or just home care. Some of the professional health services which can be
delivered in homes include care for wounds, education on diseases and their management,
therapeutic services, psychological and medical assessment.
On the other hand, home health care services include transportation, helping with house
chores such as laundry and meal preparation, companionship among others (Leff, Carson, Saliba
& Ritchie 2015). These services help in post-hospital recovery after hospital discharge. Usually,
it is one thing to provide patients with medication and treatment in the healthcare institution and
another thing to make a follow-up after the medication process. In most cases, patients die not
because of poor medication, but due to lack of a follow-up after being discharged from the
hospital. Therefore, home health care is a quality assurance program as it aims at promoting a
100% recovery of the patients.
Principles of the Program
However, home health care has some standards of conduct that guide the professional
health care service providers. The conduct forms the principles that underline the implementation

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approach of the program. According to Varkey, Reller & Resar (2007), continuous quality
improvement is essential as it goes in hand with the principle that every process has
opportunities for improvement. Most organizations use various QI methodologies, common ones
are plan-do-study-act, six sigma and lean strategies. The principles guiding this quality assurance
program include the following. Firstly, professional health care providers are required to provide
competent medical care with honor and respect for human rights and dignity. There must be a
rule that should guide the medical health provider to deliver services as per human rights and
dignity (Nelson et al. 2014). This principle guides the quality of the services by protecting the
patients through assurance of quality service delivery. Secondly, home care medical service
providers are expected to maintain high standards of professionalism by telling the truth to the
authorities. It is necessary to make a follow up in ensuring the delivery of services to the patient
is up to the standard. Thus, the health care providers are bound to report the truth to the
authorities who later make an assessment and take action on any false information. This principle
aims at not only promoting the quality provision of healthcare services to the clients but also
enhancing satisfaction among the patients. Thirdly, home care professionals are required to put
the interest of the patients as their professional priority (Lang et al. 2014). This means that the
decisions made by the home care service provider should not be influenced by personal goals.
Patient complaints should be fully addressed. Over the years, a lot of deaths have been reported
due to the negligence among the nursing staff. At times, the patient is assumed to be okay and
discharged from the hospital. In such a case, the home health care provider has to me keen
without making any assumptions toward the complaints presented by the patient. This is a
fundamental approach in ensuring that the patient recovers fully from the ill-health condition.
Fourthly, the professional home care service providers are to respect the law and recognize their