SCENARIO
Health Network Now (HNN) is an integrated healthcare delivery system in the Pacific Northwest. HNN includes five regional acute care hospitals, a children’s hospital, HNN rehabilitation, and HNN home care and hospice. In addition, more than 750 community-based healthcare providers are affiliated with it HNN through HNN medical associates.
You are a healthcare manager in one of the five regional acute care hospitals that are owned and operated by Health Network Now. You have been selected to partner with the system’s quality improvement (QI) department to seek ways to improve both the quality of care within the organization and the patient experience of care throughout the HNN organization. The committee recently examined system-wide data and identified a need to improve performance on these three core measures of quality:
Average length of inpatient stay (in days) = Total inpatient days of care / Total admissions
Patient satisfaction = Discharged patients that stated they would recommend the hospital / Total discharged inpatients
Hospital readmissions = Number of admissions to an acute care hospital within 30 days of discharge from an acute care hospital
The director of the QI department has acknowledged that each of these three core measures are actionable and requested that your team selects one to propose to the entire QI department next month. For your contribution to the proposal, you have been asked to prepare presentation on how data can be used to ensure and improve quality in healthcare organizations. You will address how data can be used to improve quality at both the patient level and at the organizational level.
Directions
To begin, your team has collaborated to create an outline for each section of the presentation. The goal of your section of the presentation is to articulate how gathering actionable data drives improvement of both the quality of care and the patient experience in healthcare organizations. You will select one of the three core measures to address in your presentation. Be sure to explicitly state which core measure you select. In your presentation, address the following regarding the core measure you selected:
Describe the purpose and importance of collecting data to measure quality and patient experience in healthcare organizations. Why do healthcare organizations and networks collect data for this core measure? Consider whether the core measure is typically used for an exploratory one-time study, quality assurance, continuous quality improvement, or a quality improvement project.
Identify appropriate data sources and explain how the data are collected. Consider the various sources of data and data collection methods that are available for the core measure you selected—for example, medical records, surveys, administrative databases, lab and pharmacy databases, and electronic health records (EHRs).
Discuss the limitations and challenges faced by healthcare organizations collecting and using data in quality improvement. What are the key barriers or challenges that impede collecting data and using quality measures that impact the quality of care? Consider data privacy and protection of personal medical information, regulations set by federal agencies such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), financial barriers, and so on. Consider how this relates to the patient experience.
Discuss how healthcare organizations can leverage data to ensure and improve the quality of care and patient experience in the organization. Consider how data on the core measure you selected is used retrospectively, prospectively, and in real-time to inform quality-related decision making in healthcare organizations.
Explain how the use of data impacts each of the four quality measure domains (structure, process, outcome, and patient experience) within a healthcare organization. How does the core measure you selected relate to a healthcare organization’s performance in each of the four domains? Consider the relationship between the four domains.
Describe the benefits of using evidence-based data for ensuring and improving the quality of healthcare organizations and the patient experience. Why do we collect all this data? How can data-driven decision making improve the way healthcare organizations practice quality assurance and improvement?
What to Submit
Every project has a deliverable or deliverables, which are the files that must be submitted before your project can be assessed. For this project, you must submit the following:
Presentation to the QI Department
Create a presentation that explains how data are used in healthcare to ensure and improve the quality of care and the patient experience in healthcare organizations. Professional presentation should outline your main ideas in bullet form using minimal text. Consider including images to enhance your presentation when referring to specific examples. Cite all sources appropriately.
Include References and in text citations.
