Quality Comparison and Improvement in Healthcare Industry

Running head: QUALITY IMPROVEMENT
Quality comparison and Improvement
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

2QUALITY IMPROVEMENT
Introduction
Quality improvement is a systematic approach in healthcare industry that allows any
organization to increase the efficiency of their services to a sustainable, satisfactory and
profitable level. The process of improvement often consists of several essential phase namely
gap analysis; implement theory of knowledge, development planning, implement changes,
monitoring and evaluation (Kaplan et al., 2012). The aims of any improvement in healthcare
service are safe structure to avoid any injuries of patients, Timing that ensures the punctuality of
the process, Effectiveness that provides more stable outcomes, Efficiency for sustainable
development, Equitability to ensure unbiased service providing and Patient Cantered approach to
prioritize patient’s perspectives.
In this paper the healthcare service provided by the organization named Aventura
Hospital and Medical Centre will be assessed to find the scope for improvement. For this the
service quality will be compared with other state level organizations and regional as well as
national average records. For this comparing the chosen organizations are Bartow Regional
Medical Center and Bethesda Hospital East. All these three institutes are situated in the state of
Florida. In this paper the development plan will be also developed with the discussion of
implementation process. Furthermore, the strategy to develop adequate support and promotional
scope for this improvement will be discussed.
Essentiality of Rate of readmission
Returning to the hospital after discharging the patient from the hospital as an unplanned
care disrupts the regular life and wellbeing of the patients. This type of repeated readmission also
increases the risk of harmful events such as healthcare associate infection. Apart from that this

3QUALITY IMPROVEMENT
repeated procedure also cost extra money from the patients and extra energy from the healthcare
workforce (Al-Abri & Al-Balushi, 2014). The rate of readmission also directly emphasize the
quality of the healthcare system and the communication level with patient care integrity. In some
cases after reappearing the symptoms of treated problems the patients go to another healthcare
organization for having better experience. In these cases, the healthcare organization even does
not have proper records of rate of readmission for the patients with COPD, Heart issue,
Pneumonia, Stroke, CABG surgery, hip or knee replacement and other issues (Unützer et al.,
2012). Many healthcare measures can be utilized to monitor and keep records of the rate of
readmission for patient after discharge from the healthcare facilities. In most of the hospitals and
healthcare organizations the returning of the patients within 30 days after previous discharge are
counted. Apart from that for chronic diseases the rate of readmission also helps the healthcare
professionals to formulate the existing condition of patients and to find their potential immunity.
Gap in healthcare practice
After comparing the records of chosen three healthcare organizations namely Aventura
Hospital and Medical Centre, Bartow Regional Medical Center and Bethesda Hospital East it has
been found that in Aventura Hospital the rate of readmission is higher than the other two
competitors. In this hospital the rate of readmission after discharge from hospital is worse than
the national rate (13%) (medicare.gov., 2018). At the same time, where Bethesda Hospital East
has lower rate in after hi[ or knee replacement, Aventura Hospital remains at the national rate of
readmission ration for this orthopedic procedure. In colonoscopy Bartow Regional Medical has
very low rate of readmission, however Aventura Hospital remains same to the national rate in
this case as well. In case of Heart attack, hospital return days for heart attack patients is higher
than the average rate for 100 discharge in Aventura Hospital. However, both of competitors

4QUALITY IMPROVEMENT
Materials Method Workforce
Measures Environment Investment
High
Readmission
Rate
Lack post
discharge
Management tool
Lack of advance e-
health monitoring
and evaluation
Poor
communication
Lack of information
providing for post
discharge period
Lack of
knowledge in
discharge planning
and
Poor performance
monitoring system
Lack of safety
measures for
patient
engagement
Lack of
cleanliness
Poor sound
protection
system
Poor financial
investment for
workforce
development
show some promising report in this scenario. In case of Hear failure the rate of readmission is
worse than the national rate and hospital return days are higher than the average (ihi.org., 2018).
In this measure Aventura shows very poor performance issue. Similar poor performance of this
hospital can be found in case of Pneumonia patient as well.
Figure1: Fishbone analysis for root cause analysis of high readmission rate
Source: (Created by author)
Therefore from the fishbone analysis it has been found that the major dispute of the
healthcare system in Aventura Hospital is its poor patient discharge management plan. Due to
lack of training of healthcare stuffs for improving their capabilities to make effective discharge