Assessing Healthcare Quality: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches

This report provides a detailed analysis of methods used to quantitatively and qualitatively measure the quality improvement (QI) process in healthcare facilities. It focuses on quantitative methods such as clinical audits and surveys, highlighting their application in evaluating QI processes using indicators like patient quality, patient safety, pediatric quality, and prevention quality. The report also explores qualitative methods, including interviews and feedback processes, to capture both factual and emotional data for a comprehensive evaluation. The clinical audit process involves issue identification, criteria definition, data collection, analysis, and implementation of changes using Kurt Lewin's change management model, followed by re-audits. Surveys are used to gather data from various healthcare sectors, which is then statistically analyzed. Qualitative methods, such as semi-structured interviews with healthcare professionals and feedback from patients, provide insights into the effectiveness of QI processes, patient satisfaction, and areas for improvement. The report emphasizes the importance of using both quantitative and qualitative data to drive amendments and enhance the overall quality of healthcare services.

Running head: QUALITY IMPROVEMENT
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Abstract:
The purpose of the paper is to provide details the method that you will use to
quantitatively and qualitatively measure your QI process various QI areas in your health care
facility. The first part of the paper described quantitative method of measures which is
measurement used to evaluate quality improvement process. The paper highlighted two
quantitate process such as clinical audit and survey for evaluating the quality improvement. The
paper highlighted two qualitative process such as interview and feedback process of qualitative
method for evaluating the improvement process. The process would be evaluated based on four
indicators such as patient quality indicator, patient safety indicator, and pediatric quality
indicator and prevention quality indicator.

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The quantitative method of measures of quality improvement:
Quantitative method of measurement is the procedure which used for measuring the
quality of the health care facilities in the health care sectors and quality improvement process
(OReilly et al., 2018). In the hospital sectors, the main health care facilities include inpatient,
outpatient, critical care, intensive care, emergency department. According to the agency of health
care search and quality, there are four crucial indicators are used to measure the quality of the
health care and improvements of the quality of the care would amend according to it (McFadden,
Stock & Gowen III, 2015). These indicators include inpatient quality indicator, patient safety
indicator, and pediatric quality indicator and prevention quality indicator (McFadden, Stock &
Gowen III, 2015). In the current context, quantitate method of measurement would be clinical
audit and survey. According to Manzi et al. (2018), a clinical audit improves the quality
improvement process and implements changes. For doing clinical audit first step would
identification of the issues through using these indicators. Then the decision regarding the
defining criteria and standard would be required to take. For example, the involvement of the
patient in the interventions is criteria and standard would be the high patient outcome. The next
step would be data collection in details including these four indicators and patient group;
professionals along with the other health care are involved in the data collection. The data would
be also collected from the billing, how many time a patient visits the hospital. In the data
analysis stage, the data would be compared with the specific criteria of quality of care and
standard set before (Dixon-Woods & Martin, 2016). After identification, once the audit would be
published and discussed the changes in the quality of care would be implemented using Kurt's
Lewin's change management model (unfreeze, changing and unfreezing). After implementing the

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changes to the quality of the care re-audit would be required in order to evaluate the process of
quality improvement and quality of the health care sectors (Chung et al., 2017). On the other
hand, the survey can be involving participants from different sectors of the health care sectors
and these data can be statistically analyzed using the statistical software. After identifying the
issues of the quality improvement process, the changes can be implemented following the
method discussed before.
The qualitative method of measuring qualitative:
Qualitative methods of measuring quality improvement process is an effective process
which helps to obtain not only factual data but also emotional data to evaluate whether the
quality improvement process is effective or not. The technics of qualitative methods include
discussion, comments, interview, and feedback. As discussed before there were four indicators of
the quality improvement process to evaluate (McManus et al., 2015). To evaluate the quality
improvement, the semi-structured interview can be conducted involving focus group of health
care professional and specific set of questionnaire which would provide the idea of the efficiency
of the quality improvement process (McFadden, Stock & Gowen III, 2015). The interview
would be conducted in the specific hall of the health care facility. According to, the interview
method is the effective method of gaining information about the concerns of the health
professionals and obtaining the suggestions of quality improvement. Therefore, the interview
would be an effective method of collecting factual data. On the other hand, the feedback method
can be used for gaining the point of view of the patient. The feedback method would involve
verbal and factsheet where the patient would provide a review of the health care services they
receive from the corresponding departments (Aragona et al., 2016). The feedback method helps

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to obtain the idea of the patient satisfaction and quality of the care they receive. The amendments
can be done according to the feedback of the patients and interview of the health professionals.

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