Overview

As a student of healthcare quality management, it is vital that you are able to identify problems that arise in healthcare organizations and propose strategies for their improvement. A critical part of this process requires you to be familiar with quality and accreditation standards and navigate the communication channels of the organization.

For your summative assignment, you will identify a departmental problem within a healthcare organization and develop a collaborative performance improvement initiative to address it. Ideally, the proposed evidence-based solution will serve to improve the departmental problem, thus contributing to the overall success of the healthcare organization. The project is divided into three milestones, which will be submitted at various points throughout the course to scaffold learning and ensure quality final submissions. These milestones will be submitted in Modules Two, Four, and Six. The final product will be submitted in Module Seven.

In this assignment, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following course outcomes:

• Evaluate appropriate methods of healthcare data collection and interpretation for informing organizational decision making
• Assess healthcare performance improvement initiatives for addressing gaps in organizational performance
• Evaluate requirements of current quality and safety initiatives for how they promote the culture of safety in healthcare organizations
• Formulate communication and teamwork strategies in quality management that engage diverse stakeholders within healthcare organizations
• Evaluate information management systems and patient care technologies that promote healthcare quality

Prompt

Begin by identifying an organizational problem within your own workplace healthcare setting or a hypothetical healthcare organization. Propose an initiative that addresses this chosen problem, utilizing evidence-based literature and quality standards. If you choose a problem in your workplace, be sure to utilize data from that healthcare organization; if you have created a hypothetical healthcare organization, you may use a public domain database with instructor permission. As this is a scholarly initiative, this assignment must adhere to all APA requirements and formatting and include peer-reviewed and evidence-based sources to support any and all claims.

Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed:

1. What Is the Organizational Problem?
   1. Provide the organizational problem that you have chosen. How does this problem fail to meet quality or other regulatory requirements?
   2. Articulate organizational challenges posed by the problem (e.g., interdepartmental conflicts, communication failure, budgeting issues).
2. Evidence-Based Support
   1. Provide data that supports the existence of the problem. You may utilize public sources to find data related to your selected problem.
   2. How has this problem been addressed in the past? What information management systems or patient care technologies have been utilized when addressing this problem? Be sure to use peer-reviewed literature to support your answer.
   3. Discuss relevant accreditation standards, safety standards, compliance standards, and quality initiatives. How do these standards promote a culture of safety within the department? Be sure to cite the appropriate standards within your answer.
3. Performance Improvement Initiative
   1. Propose an initiative that will address this problem within the department of your chosen healthcare organization. What specific relevant quality standard will this quality initiative address?
   2. Describe the type of data that will reveal a quality outcome.
4. Implementation of the Plan in the Organization
   1. How will this implementation plan be communicated among departments?
   2. How will the ?data ?be displayed and shared with the organization?
   3. If the plan for this initiative was implemented, what do you believe would be the hypothetical effect(s) on patient care outcomes? How will health information systems support those improvements in patient care?
   4. What do you think the hypothetical effect of the quality or performance plan would be on the culture of safety within the organization?
5. Success of the Performance Improvement Plan
   1. If this initiative is successful, how would the organization monitor the financial implications?
   2. How would the current information management systems contribute to the success of your plan?
   3. What current organizational processes will help the plan be successful?
   4. How will the plan be communicated among departments? How will this communication help team members commit to the performance improvement plan?