Quality Improvement Measures in Healthcare: An Overview

This presentation offers a comprehensive overview of quality improvement in healthcare. It begins with a definition of quality improvement and its significance in enhancing healthcare safety, patient-centered care, and efficiency. The presentation delves into various quality measures, including those used in mental health care, highlighting the challenges in measuring patient outcomes and the importance of continuous monitoring. It also explores specific initiatives like the Strategic Analytics for Improvement and Learning (SAIL) model used by the Veterans Health Administration and the Mental Health Management System. Furthermore, the presentation discusses public reporting of quality measures and the innovations undertaken by the VA, such as the Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI) and the Diffusion of Excellence initiative. The conclusion emphasizes the essential role of quality improvement measures in ensuring quality patient care.

QUALITY IMPROVEMENT IN
HEALTHCARE

INTRODUCTION
 The intent of this presentation is to research
about some of the quality measures that are
used by the healthcare providers with
examples.
 The presentation is comprised of detailed
description of the concept of quality
improvement in the healthcare setting.
 In addition to this, it is highlighting the
importance of use of quality measures.

QUALITY IMPROVEMENT
 Quality Improvement is said to be an orderly
and a formal approach used to analyse the
performance and efforts made to enhance
the performance.
 There are number of approaches of quality
improvement used that support in collecting
and analysing the data and testing the
change.

IMPORTANCE OF QUALITY
IMPROVEMENT IN HEALTHCARE
SETTING
 Improving quality is all about making
healthcare safer, patient cantered, equitable,
efficient, effective, and timely. Generally, it is
considered that there is no single define of
the quality or quality improvement.
 Healthcare safety, equitability, and efficiency
are some of the importance facts which are
essential for every human to be aware about.
With the advancement or improvement in the
technology, science, and enhancing the
quality in the healthcare has become
essential (IPatient Care, 2016).

QUALITY MEASUREMENT
 In the health systems, orderly quality
measurement is required for the quality
improvement liability, and transparency and
well-versed decision making by the patients.
A properly determined and synchronized
quality measures sets using managerial,
clinical and patient reported information is
required in order to track and enhance
clinical care value and quality.

MENTAL HEALTH CARE
MEASUREMENT GAPS
 Patient outcome measures are considered to
be essential for the improvement of the
mental health quality efforts. There are very
limited numbers of patient outcome
measures that are present, which is the
major difficulty in understanding operative
mental care. Besides this, to encounter the
expectations of value in the health care,
monitoring and mental health measurement
has to move towards evaluating outcomes,
quality, and access in relation to the cost to
deliver care (NCBI, 2019).

MENTAL HEALTH CARE QUALITY
MEASUREMENTS
 Mental health information system is said to
be a system of around 200 clinical qualities
as well as procedure of the care measures
that are created to monitor the execution of
the necessities enclosed in the Mental Health
Services. MHIS measures are intended at the
managers of the local facility program and
are envisioned to help in the quality
improvement at every clinic or hospital
(Allen, Balfour, Bell & Marmot, 2014).

STRATEGIC ANALYTICS FOR
IMPROVEMENT AND LEARNING
 Strategic Analytics for Improvement and
Learning Value Model also called as SAIL
which is the system used for briefing the
performance of the hospital system in the
Veterans Health Administration.
 SAIL evaluates 25 measures of the quality in
the setting like patient satisfaction,
complications, and death rates along with
total physician capacity and efficiency at
every Medical Centres of VA (NCBI, 2019).

MENTAL HEALTH MANAGEMENT
SYSTEM
 The Mental Health Management System has
been designed for supporting a mental
health system that is driven by value from
the perspective of the wider systems. This
system make use of organizational as well as
clinical data for offering objective information
for taking decisions related to the facilities to
be used, resources to be procure for the
incessant quality improvement.

PATIENT OUTPUT DATA
 None of the data systems that are used by the
healthcare providers such as MHMS, MHIS, SAIL,
gathers and utilizes standardized patient
outcome data. However, continuous monitoring
of the symptoms of the patient is important to
the improvement and assessment of patient care.
 As per the reports of VA, by the year 2018, it will
finish the first phase development of the detailed
system, the Clinical Outcomes Reporting Systems
and Mental Health Quality System for nursing the
health outcomes with even patient-reported
outcome measures (Carmichael, Jassar &
Nguyen, 2016).

PUBLIC REPORTING
 Public reporting is planned to enhance the
delivery of the healthcare services and patient
outcomes by adopting transparent quality
measures and making easily accessible services.
Literature presented on the public reporting
impact is limited, but some of the positive
examples are evolving.
 For instance, according to the national survey
conducted in 2008, reflected that patient
suffering from vascular disease were suggested
by the 35 to 47% of the doctors to intake
prophylactic aspirin involved in diverse
specialties (Dehmer, Drozda, Brindis & Masoudi,
2014).

QUALITY IMPROVEMENT
INNOVATIONS
 Recognizing and spreading best practices could
be considered as the main driver of offering
reliable and health quality health care for the
veterans.
 In consideration to the performance
measurement, the VA has number of initiatives
and centres that provide support to the services
of mental health through assessment, research,
as well as clinical support.
 There are number of initiatives undertaken by the
VA in relation to the enhancing the execution of
the therapies based on evidence and assessing
outcomes at the program at regional level.

QUALITY ENHANCEMENT RESEARCH
INITIATIVE
 The aim of the Quality Enhancement
Research Initiative of VA is to enhance the
veteran’s health by providing support to
quick execution of the effective clinical
practices into routine care system and
assessing the outcomes of those efforts
(Damschroder & Hagedorn, 2011).

DIFFUSION OF EXCELLENCE
INITIATIVE
 In support of the QUERI initiative, the VA
introduced the Diffusion of Excellence
initiative in order to execute and spread
effective practices in the VA at national level
that talks about the precedence areas in
access, engagement of employee, quality,
safety, and care coordination. The particular
objectives of the Diffusion of Excellence
Initiative is to recognize administrative and
clinical best practices, to distribute these
practices to different care sites and to inspire
the practice standardization that convey
encouraging outcomes for the veterans and
also for their families (NCBI, 2019).

SUMMARY OF INITIATIVES
 The diffusion of excellence program and
QUERI talks about the learning approach for
the improvements in the system of health
care. In the learning of the systems of the
health care, informatics, and science,
incentives, culture, and patient–clinician
partnerships are linked to endorse and allow
constant and real-time enhancement
effectively and efficiently (Rittmeyer, Ward,
Gütlein, Ellis, Allison & Reuter, 2016).

CONCLUSION
 The above presentation is discussing about
the quality improvement and its importance
in the healthcare segment. Besides this, the
presentation is also highlighting the
measures of quality improvement. From the
analysis, it has been identified that the
quality improvement measures are very
essential in order to ensure quality care to
the patients.

REFERENCES
 Allen, J., Balfour, R., Bell, R., & Marmot, M. (2014).
Social determinants of mental health. International
review of psychiatry, 26(4), 392-407.
 Batalden, P.B., & Davidoff, F. (2007). What is
“quality improvement” and how can it transform
healthcare? Retrieved from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2464
920/
 Berwick, D. M., & Hackbarth, A. D. (2012).
Eliminating waste in US health care. Jama, 307(14),
1513-1516.
 Carmichael, J., Jassar, G., & Nguyen, P. A. (2016).
Healthcare metrics: where do pharmacists add
value?. American Journal of Health-System
Pharmacy, 73(19), 1537-1547.

REFERENCES
 Damschroder, L. J., & Hagedorn, H. J. (2011). A guiding
framework and approach for implementation research
in substance use disorders treatment. Psychology of
Addictive Behaviors, 25(2), 194.
 Dehmer, G.J., Drozda, J.P., Brindis, R.G., & Masoudi, F.A.
(2014). Public Reporting of Clinical Quality Data.
Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 63(13),
1239-1244.
 Health Education England. (2019). What is Quality
Improvement (QI)? Retrieved from
http://www.wessexdeanery.nhs.uk/quality_improvemen
t/what_is_quality_improvement.aspx
 IPatient Care. (2016). Why Quality Improvement in
Healthcare is Important? Retrieved from
https://ipatientcare.com/blog/why-quality-improvement
-in-healthcare-is-important
/

REFERENCES
 Kpobi, L.N.A. (2015). Barriers and facilitators to the use of the
mental health information system in Ghana: A qualitative study
amongst users at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital. Retrieved from
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f7f0/703d54fcec9438a56d8b65
f4177cc2687409.pdf
 NCBI. (2019). Evaluation of the Department of Veterans Affairs
Mental Health Services. Retrieved from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499488/
 Rittmeyer, S. P., Ward, D. J., Gütlein, P., Ellis, J., Allison, W., &
Reuter, K. (2016). Energy dissipation during diffusion at metal
surfaces: Disentangling the role of phonons versus electron-
hole pairs. Physical review letters, 117(19), 196001.
 US Department of Veterans Affairs. (2019). Strategic Analytics
for Improvement and Learning (SAIL). Retrieved from
https://www.va.gov/QUALITYOFCARE/measure-up/Strategic_Anal
ytics_for_Improvement_and_Learning_SAIL.asp
 Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute. (2018). Department of
Veterans Affairs MISSION Act Quality Standards. Retrieved from
https://www.veteranspolicy.org/dva-quality-standards