A Summary Of Quality Improvement

Leading to better health outcomes through a systematic focus on allocating the use of resources in the most cost-effective manner while maintaining quality of care quality improvements allow a health care facility to evolve and improve. According to Huber (2014), quality is defined as the characteristics and pursuit of excellence. The purpose of this paper is to explain the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction’s quality improvement management structure, including the program goals and objectives, the methodology and management of improvement projects, the process of nursing input for quality improvements, staff training and communication of quality improvement projects, and finally, past examples of successful quality improvement

This review process is conducted by the QIC, who, gathers data statistics from clinical practice, interviews patients, and observes clinical procedures. Then, when the quality improvement committee meets again in thirty days, the gathered data will be presented to the whole team and a decision of successful change, work in progress, or unsuccessful change will be given. Because this process is routinely in place, it provides a means for evaluating, then reevaluating whether corrective measures have achieved and sustained a desired result. The success of a new quality improvement project is only as strong as the process in place for continually evaluating the latest ideas and processes initiated (Davis, Mahanna, Cornett, See, & Randolph, 2016). If the quality improvement initiative is not found to be successful, the team will then seek other ways to correct the error or improve the process. Often, a collaboration with other state institutional QIC personnel occurs to seek more insight, hopefully leading to an

Recently, there was found to be an error in the way drug allergies where being placed into a patient’s electronic healthcare record. Nurses were found to be placing wrong allergies and unverified reactions into the electronic record. Therefore, after a patient sustained a drug allergy reaction, after a nurse unknowingly removed the listed allergen from the electronic health record, a new process was implemented by the quality improvement committee. Now, when an allergy is edited in the electronic health care record, a warning window states that the allergen was altered or deleted and prompts the user to enter their user badge number to save the change. In this case, patient safety was strengthened from an accidental listed allergy modification. Another example, includes the change of transferring medications when a patient moved to another facility. Before the quality improvement change, when a medication was not available, it was simply not sent. This caused a great deal of confusion, missed medication doses, and medication administration delays. Finally, the quality improvement team placed a new directive to send four doses of medications from the transferring institution pharmacy stock if a patient did not have the refill medication to send. This process change has improved patient outcomes dramatically by allowing medications to be administered as prescribed.