Discussion: Healthcare Quality HCA 675
Grand Canyon University Discussion: Healthcare Quality HCA 675-Step-By-Step Guide
This guide will demonstrate how to complete the Discussion: Healthcare Quality HCA 675 assignment based on general principles of academic writing. Here, we will show you the A, B, Cs of completing an academic paper, irrespective of the instructions. After guiding you through what to do, the guide will leave one or two sample essays at the end to highlight the various sections discussed below.
How to Research and Prepare for Discussion: Healthcare Quality HCA 675
Whether one passes or fails an academic assignment such as the Grand Canyon University Discussion: Healthcare Quality HCA 675 depends on the preparation done beforehand. The first thing to do once you receive an assignment is to quickly skim through the requirements. Once that is done, start going through the instructions one by one to clearly understand what the instructor wants. The most important thing here is to understand the required format—whether it is APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.
After understanding the requirements of the paper, the next phase is to gather relevant materials. The first place to start the research process is the weekly resources. Go through the resources provided in the instructions to determine which ones fit the assignment. After reviewing the provided resources, use the university library to search for additional resources. After gathering sufficient and necessary resources, you are now ready to start drafting your paper.
How to Write the Introduction for Discussion: Healthcare Quality HCA 675
The introduction for the Grand Canyon University Discussion: Healthcare Quality HCA 675 is where you tell the instructor what your paper will encompass. In three to four statements, highlight the important points that will form the basis of your paper. Here, you can include statistics to show the importance of the topic you will be discussing. At the end of the introduction, write a clear purpose statement outlining what exactly will be contained in the paper. This statement will start with “The purpose of this paper…” and then proceed to outline the various sections of the instructions.
How to Write the Body for Discussion: Healthcare Quality HCA 675
After the introduction, move into the main part of the Discussion: Healthcare Quality HCA 675 assignment, which is the body. Given that the paper you will be writing is not experimental, the way you organize the headings and subheadings of your paper is critically important. In some cases, you might have to use more subheadings to properly organize the assignment. The organization will depend on the rubric provided. Carefully examine the rubric, as it will contain all the detailed requirements of the assignment. Sometimes, the rubric will have information that the normal instructions lack.
Another important factor to consider at this point is how to do citations. In-text citations are fundamental as they support the arguments and points you make in the paper. At this point, the resources gathered at the beginning will come in handy. Integrating the ideas of the authors with your own will ensure that you produce a comprehensive paper. Also, follow the given citation format. In most cases, APA 7 is the preferred format for nursing assignments.
How to Write the Conclusion for Discussion: Healthcare Quality HCA 675
After completing the main sections, write the conclusion of your paper. The conclusion is a summary of the main points you made in your paper. However, you need to rewrite the points and not simply copy and paste them. By restating the points from each subheading, you will provide a nuanced overview of the assignment to the reader.
How to Format the References List for Discussion: Healthcare Quality HCA 675
The very last part of your paper involves listing the sources used in your paper. These sources should be listed in alphabetical order and double-spaced. Additionally, use a hanging indent for each source that appears in this list. Lastly, only the sources cited within the body of the paper should appear here.
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Discussion: Healthcare Quality HCA 675
Discuss your perspectives on whether patients can adequately understand and judge the quality of health care services that they receive. Include any action items that you believe would improve the current situation and use examples to explain your reasoning.
What is your opinion on the origins and validity of physician resentment toward the push to standardize care by a variety of health care entities? How would you plan your practice for the future if you were a doctor?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of a DRG payor system versus a capitated payor system? Which one would you prefer as a health-care czar, and why?
Week 2 Discussion 2 of HCA 675 Grand Canyon
Discuss the consequences of a large percentage of the population being uninsured and how this affects the health-care system. How do you think the health-care system will react if this trend continues? What are the ethical and practical concerns?
You should proofread your paper. However, do not rely solely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part, and your grade will suffer as a result. Papers with a high number of misspelled words and grammatical errors will be penalized. Before submitting your paper, go over it in silence and then aloud, and make any necessary changes. It is often beneficial to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Uncorrected mistakes are preferable to handwritten corrections.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point typeface (10 to 12 characters per inch). Smaller or compressed type, as well as papers with narrow margins or single spacing, are difficult to read. It is preferable to allow your essay to exceed the recommended number of pages rather than attempting to compress it into fewer pages.
Large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are also unacceptable, waste trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced, and have a one-inch margin on all four sides of each page. When submitting hard copies, use white paper and print with dark ink. It will be difficult to follow your argument if it is difficult to read your essay.
Sample Answer for Discussion: Healthcare Quality HCA 675
The promotion of safety and quality is important in the provision of nursing care. Safety and quality in healthcare enhances the realization of optimum health outcomes in patient care. Nurses and other healthcare providers utilize sources of evidence-based data and practice guidelines to ensure safety and quality in their care. They also adopt best leadership models that will drive consistency in the provision of excellent care to patients. Therefore, this paper explores the issue of surgical site infections, best practices for its prevention, proposed project to address it and its evaluation. It also explores an effective leadership model that can be adopted to address the problem.
Best Practices or Recommended Guidelines
The selected issue from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) that is relevant to my organization is surgical site infections. Surgical site infections comprise a critical public health concern that causes significant mortality, morbidity and increased cost of care. Surgical site infections are preventable, with the adoption of evidence-based interventions. A number best practices and recommended guidelines have been developed for prevention of surgical site infections. One of them is the World Health Organization (WHO) Surgical Safety Checklist and Getting Started Kit. The kit was developed to improve the quality and safety of patients undergoing surgeries globally. The tool reinforces the accepted safety principles and enhances the quality of teamwork and communication between clinical teams involved in surgical procedures and care of patients requiring and after surgeries. The other guideline that can be adopted to prevent surgical site infections is the How-to-Guide by IHI. The tool provides guidelines for use in the prevention of surgical site infections, implementation of recommended strategies and measures for assessing improvements (IHI, n.d.). Sources of evidence-based data show that best practices exist for use in prevention of surgical site infections. They include the use of aseptic techniques, negative pressure wound therapy, surgical bundles of safety and quality improvement, perioperative antibiotic prophylaxis, and reducing the duration of surgical procedure reduces and minimizes the rate of surgical site infections in a hospital setting (Allegranzi et al., 2018; Balch et al., 2017; Cheng et al., 2017; Javed et al., 2019).
Financial Impact
Surgical site infections have adverse financial implications. The existing evidence shows that surgical site infections cost the US about $3.5 to $10 billion on an annual basis. Additional statistics shows that surgical site infections increase the costs of care for commercial payers to a range of $36249 to $144809 and $17551 to $102280 for Medicare users in the US. The increase in the cost of care is attributable to factors such as prolonged hospitalization; intensive care unit stays, increased rates of hospital readmission, lost productive days, and need for additional care in the community (Leaper et al., 2020). Surgical site infections also increase the need for re-operations, reduced quality of life for patients and increased risk of mortality. The intangible costs that patients incur due to the infections such as anxiety, pain, and delayed wound healing that can cause complications including bacteremia (Badia et al., 2017). Healthcare institutions also suffer from the problem due to increased costs of patient care and resource utilization in the promotion of the optimum health and wellbeing of the patients.
Implementing the Project
The Plan-Do-Study-Act model can be applied in implementing my project. The model can be used to facilitate accelerated improvement in project processes. The PDSA model informs the strategies utilized in the change initiative. It also guides the development of a team that would lead the implementation process. The components of the model such as planning enable the project managers to understand the needs of the organization and the implementers of the project and ways of addressing them. The effective use of the model enables the systematic implementation of change initiatives in a project. Through it, organizations benefit from the gradual and organization wide successful implementation of a project (Newcombe & Fry-Bowers, 2018). Therefore, the PDSA model is applicable to my project, as it will minimize the risk of resistance from the adopters and failure due to ineffective processes.
Project to Address the Problem
A project that I could implement to address the issue of surgical sites infection in the institution is antibiotic prophylaxis. The administration of antibiotic prior to surgery has been shown to reduce the risk and rate of surgical site infections. The type of surgery determines largely the prophylactic antibiotics that patients should receive (Balch et al., 2017). The development and implementation of an antibiotic prophylactic protocol for use in the organization may therefore reduce the vulnerability of post-surgical patients to surgical site infections.
The PDSA model can be applied in the implementation of the prophylactic antibiotic protocol to be used in the organization. Activities such as recruiting a team to implement the project will be undertaken in the planning stage. The team will develop the mission and vision of the project in facilitating the realization of the desired safety and quality goals in the organization. The team will also develop an aim statement that would guide the development of the strategies. They will determine the causes of the problem and alternative interventions that can be used to address the problem. The team will lead the implementation of the selected alternatives in the do phase. They will embrace interventions such as training the healthcare providers about the implementation of the protocol and guiding its use in practice. The team will also collect data related to the effectiveness of the adopted strategies and consistency of protocol use by the staffs in this phase (Newcombe & Fry-Bowers, 2018). The assessment data informs the improvement strategies utilized to ensure the successful and organization wide implementation of the project.
The team evaluates whether the data answers the aim statement in the study phase. They utilize the results obtained in the do phase to evaluate the effectiveness of the project in reducing surgical site infections and improvement strategies that are needed in the organization. The implementation of organization wide use of the protocol occurs in the act phase. The phase occurs if the team determines the protocol to be effective in addressing the critical safety and quality needs in the organization (Katowa-Mukwato et al., 2021). They also communicate the success of the project to the organizational stakeholders, including the nurses and physicians.
Quality Improvement Measures
Quality improvement measures provide insights into the effectiveness of a project in delivering its expected outcomes. Outcome and process measures will be used to track improvement in the project. Outcome measures will focus on the evaluation of whether the desired results of the project were achieved or not. Outcome measures reflect the effectiveness of the adopted strategies in project implementation. Some of the outcome measures that will be used to track improvement will include the rate of surgical site infections, average hospital stay an costs incurred by patients in the organization. Process measures will facilitate the tracking of the effectiveness of the strategies used to achieve the project outcomes. It will focus on the effectiveness of strategies such as training, coaching, mentoring, and institutional support in ensuring the success of the project. Tools such as interviews and surveys will be used to obtain provider insights into the effectiveness of the strategies that were used in the implementation of the project (Zywot et al., 2017). The consistency of use of the protocol by the healthcare providers will also be used as a way of tracking the effectiveness of the project.
Quality Improvement Tools
A flow chart will be used for analyzing and monitoring the effectiveness of the project in addressing the issue of surgical site infections in the organization. A flow chart will be desirable, as it will provide efficient tracking of the project activities. It will also facilitate the determination of effective and ineffective strategies in the implementation of the project. Through it, redundancies and duplication of processes and roles will be eliminated. A flow chart is also desirable, as it will facilitate effective ordering and organizing of the activities needed to achieve the desired project objectives.
Leadership Theory
The leadership theory that would be applied in the implementation of the project is servant leadership theory. Servant leadership theory is a model where leaders aim at serving and meeting the needs of those they lead. Leaders focus on creating a synergistic relationship with those they lead that than controlling relationship. The leaders recognize the need for the prioritization of the needs of those they lead in project implementation. As a result, they motivate them to play a proactive role in the different phases of project implementation such as assessment, planning, monitoring, and evaluation. Servant leaders also aim at promoting innovation. They encourage their followers to explore effective ways in which optimum outcomes in strategy implementation can be achieved (Best, 2020). They also empower their followers by encouraging their active participation in the project initiatives. Servant leaders also promote open communication between and among the followers. They recognize the importance of openness in communication in fostering trust and honesty among the project members (Neville et al., 2021). Therefore, I believe that servant leadership will facilitate the realization of optimum outcomes in the implementation of the protocol to reduce surgical site infections in the organization.
Conclusion
Overall, surgical site infections comprise a critical issue in healthcare organizations. Surgical site infections are attributable to organizational factors that can be controlled. The financial impacts of surgical site infections to patients and healthcare institutions are enormous. Protocols such as prophylactic administration of antibiotics are effective in preventing and minimizing surgical site infections. The PDSA model can be used in the implementation of a project aiming at the use of the protocol in the institution. The model guides systematic implementation of the project with a focus on minimizing resistance from the staffs. Servant leadership should therefore be applied to ensure the realization of the desired institutional outcomes in the prevention and minimizing of surgical site infections using the protocol.
References
Allegranzi, B., Aiken, A. M., Zeynep Kubilay, N., Nthumba, P., Barasa, J., Okumu, G., Mugarura, R., Elobu, A., Jombwe, J., Maimbo, M., Musowoya, J., Gayet-Ageron, A., & Berenholtz, S. M. (2018). A multimodal infection control and patient safety intervention to reduce surgical site infections in Africa: A multicentre, before–after, cohort study. The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 18(5), 507–515. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(18)30107-5
Badia, J. M., Casey, A. L., Petrosillo, N., Hudson, P. M., Mitchell, S. A., & Crosby, C. (2017). Impact of surgical site infection on healthcare costs and patient outcomes: A systematic review in six European countries. Journal of Hospital Infection, 96(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhin.2017.03.004
Balch, A., Wendelboe, A. M., Vesely, S. K., & Bratzler, D. W. (2017). Antibiotic prophylaxis for surgical site infections as a risk factor for infection with Clostridium difficile. PLOS ONE, 12(6), e0179117. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179117
Best, C. (2020). Is there a place for servant leadership in nursing? Practice Nursing, 31(3), 128–132. https://doi.org/10.12968/pnur.2020.31.3.128
Cheng, H., Chen, B. P.-H., Soleas, I. M., Ferko, N. C., Cameron, C. G., & Hinoul, P. (2017). Prolonged Operative Duration Increases Risk of Surgical Site Infections: A Systematic Review. Surgical Infections, 18(6), 722–735. https://doi.org/10.1089/sur.2017.089
IHI. (n.d.). Surgical Site Infection | IHI – Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Retrieved October 23, 2021, from http://www.ihi.org:80/Topics/SSI/Pages/default.aspx
Javed, A. A., Teinor, J., Wright, M., Ding, D., Burkhart, R. A., Hundt, J., Cameron, J. L., Makary, M. A., He, J., Eckhauser, F. E., Wolfgang, C. L., & Weiss, M. J. (2019). Negative Pressure Wound Therapy for Surgical-site Infections: A Randomized Trial. Annals of Surgery, 269(6), 1034–1040. https://doi.org/10.1097/SLA.0000000000003056
Katowa-Mukwato, P., Mwiinga-Kalusopa, V., Chitundu, K., Kanyanta, M., Chanda, D., Mbewe Mwelwa, M., Ruth, W., Mundia, P., & Carrier, J. (2021). Implementing Evidence Based Practice nursing using the PDSA model: Process, lessons and implications. International Journal of Africa Nursing Sciences, 14, 100261. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijans.2020.100261
Leaper, D. J., Holy, C. E., Spencer, M., Chitnis, A., Hogan, A., Wright, G. W. J., Po-Han Chen, B., & Edmiston, C. E. J. (2020). Assessment of the Risk and Economic Burden of Surgical Site Infection Following Colorectal Surgery Using a US Longitudinal Database: Is There a Role for Innovative Antimicrobial Wound Closure Technology to Reduce the Risk of Infection? Diseases of the Colon & Rectum, 63(12), 1628–1638. https://doi.org/10.1097/DCR.0000000000001799
Neville, K., Conway, K., Maglione, J., Connolly, K. A., Foley, M., & Re, S. (2021). Understanding Servant Leadership in Nursing: A Concept Analysis. International Journal for Human Caring. https://doi.org/10.20467/HumanCaring-D-20-00022
Newcombe, J., & Fry-Bowers, E. (2018). Improving Postoperative Neonatal Nutritional Practices in an Intensive Care Unit Using the PDSA Cycle. Journal of Pediatric Health Care, 32(5), 426–434. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pedhc.2018.03.004
Zywot, A., Lau, C. S. M., Stephen Fletcher, H., & Paul, S. (2017). Bundles Prevent Surgical Site Infections After Colorectal Surgery: Meta-analysis and Systematic Review. Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery, 21(11), 1915–1930. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11605-017-3465-3
Sample Answer 2 for Discussion: Healthcare Quality HCA 675
For many years, health information privacy has been a critical issue on patient’s safety and overall health care. Health information privacy concerns well custody of patient’s health information. Notably, poorly kept health records of a patient can be obtained by unauthorized persons and be used to attack the patient in different ways including access to the patient’s bank accounts and credit cards among other concerns. Maintaining patient’s privacy is very crucial for healthcare organization. With the advanced use of technology, weak information systems can highly lead to the hacking of Electronic Health Records and hence compromising patient’s safety. The purpose of this paper is to discuss health information privacy as a major patient’s safety concern in healthcare with the aim to establish how research, PI and Evidence-Based-Practices can help to address the concern.
Health Information Privacy
Safeguarding patient privacy is one of the requirements of the bioethics nonmaleficence principle. Notably, leaking of personal privacy and confidentiality is harmful and affects ones dignity. Disclosure of some confidential health information to other parties including family members, insurer or employers can easily lead to discrimination, stigma or embarrassments. Patients are highly likely to hold back some crucial information to the physicians when they learn that their privacy is not guaranteed (Zhang, Chen, Wang, Gao & Zhu, 2018). As such, promoting health information privacy can effectively enhance communication between the patient and the doctor. Although the perceptions of privacy varies from one person to the other, it is important for the prevention from harm, discrimination, embarrassment and the overall quality of health care.
Placing high levels of health information privacy and confidentiality is important for various reasons. Firstly, privacy is a fundamental human right that has inherent value. Privacy is not only valuable in itself but is also a critical component for the wellbeing of the patients. Therefore, lack of health information privacy ignores patient’s moral uniqueness. A consensus view is that privacy has high value since it promotes and facilitates other basic human values such as the ideals of personhood. Some of these ideals include respect, individuality, dignity and personal autonomy or the ability for individuals to make good decisions. In light of this, lack of health information privacy injures the patients’ psychological health in addition to other physical damages including fraud using obtained data from Electronic Health Records or other sources.
Enhancing Health Information Privacy Through Research, PI and EBP
Both privacy protections and ethical health research are essential because they provide valuable benefits to the community. Health research is important towards improving wellbeing of individuals and overall human health. For instance, it is essential to protect patients involved in research from harm while preserving their fundamental and essential rights. As such, failure to protect patient privacy violates the concept of doing no harm because the latter is harmful to the patient in terms of social and psychological integrity and human dignity.
Evidence based practice have various benefits to the patient and the entire society. EBP allows the nurses to assess research to clearly understand the efficacy and risks of particular diagnostic tests and treatment. Implementation of EBP enables healthcare practitioners to include the patients in their healthcare plans. As such, EBP can significantly help the practitioners to address the issue of health information privacy because it demonstrates high level of confidentiality and scientific reasoning. Also, EBP enhances compliance to the HIPAA regulations as well as the HITECH act requirements. EBP demands the nurses and physicians to use high-quality information by implementing successful prevention policies and programs. The HIPAA privacy rule requires the organization to carry our regular audit trail to identify the weaknesses of the information systems before any information lands on to unauthorized persons. While engaging in evidence based practices, nurses and physicians manage privacy by careful handling of information while exercising professionalism and ethics.
While EBP enhances the patient’s information security through compliance to various regulations, research help to identify new strategies and policies for increasing privacy protection (Zhang, Chen, Wang, Gao & Zhu, 2018). Besides PI allows the patients to develop trust necessary for disclosure and hence quality health care. Notably, PI depicts high performances among healthcare practitioners, an element that highly makes the patient to give their opinions and suggestions concerning the areas of improvement and possible weaknesses (Rangraz Jeddi, Adib Haj Bagheri, Akbari & Esmaili, 2017). The latter permits effective communication that significantly contribute to correction of any existing mistakes concerning health information privacy including health information exchange mistakes, weak health systems and ignorance of simple clinical procedures.
Applicable Quality Improvement Process
Quality improvement processes are the programs that evaluate the performance of an organization while determining the most appropriate procedures for improved quality of care. As such, the most applicable quality improvement process is the enhanced readiness and change competences for reduced clinical variations. While clinical variations might be essential in some areas, healthcare practitioners demonstrate unwarranted clinical variations that increase the risk of breach to healthcare information privacy. As such, reducing clinical variations through patient engagement increases trust and hence improved patient safety. The primary reason for choosing this process is because of its patient engagement level. Usually, lack of patient engagement among the nurses increase the likelihood of healthcare information breach. Therefore, changes in attitude help to improve communication amongst nurses and patients. The success of these process is evident when the patients show increased trust and level of disclosure.
Data Sources and Outcomes
For credible information, this document uses various data sources including enrollment forms, community needs assessments and the client satisfaction forms. It is apparent that most of the patients would be hesitant to record some of their confidential information in the enrollment forms or provide some of the community needs. Besides, the client satisfaction forms indicate the areas that the client was not satisfied and those that require high levels of improvement. For instance, a patient may suggest the implementation of Electronic Health Record to reduce delays in the retrieval of patient’s information. In most cases, delays in patient record retrieval reduces the number of patients that the nurse or physician can serve in a given time. The latter creates a negative image and poor reputation. Thus, adoption of HER increases the chances of healthy reputation.
Data Gathering and Dissemination
The most appropriate data capture method for this qualitative evaluation will be note taking in observation, interviews and focus groups. Note taking is a very credible method of data capture as it depicts the reality on the ground as observed by the researcher. When patients complain about a process or procedure, the researcher can easily record and give to the necessary authority. Interviews are traditional data gathering methods that provide the researcher with a platform to interrogate the desired sample population (Rangraz Jeddi, Adib Haj Bagheri, Akbari & Esmaili, 2017). In this regard, interviews can provide necessary information towards quality improvement and increased health information privacy. Dissemination of the captured data will be through formal reporting and other meetings.
Essential Organizational Culture Considerations
Different characteristics of organizational culture demonstrate the organizations level of success. This work will consider an array of these essential elements. One of the most critical consideration will be the level of team work and cooperation. Often, minimal or lack of cooperation influence information breakdown or distortion. The latter can influence performance of inappropriate procedure to the patient and eventually causing harm to the patient. This factor is very essential because healthcare practitioners must observe increased patient care through teamwork. However, it is not possible to have teamwork without effective means of communication.
Another consideration will be the level of creativity and innovation. In the modern world, creativity has become the core factor of growth and development. Creativity will help to establish various ways to address challenges before they arise. Aggressiveness is also an important factor to consider as it depicts the likelihood of success in different activities.
Conclusion
This paper concludes that health information safety is one of the most challenging concerns in the modern healthcare setting. While the adoption of Electronic Health Records improve efficiency, they pose some challenges of ensuring that the patient’s health records remain safe at all times. Besides, healthcare organizations should conduct regular audit trails of the systems to establish any unwarranted traffic. Nonetheless, the adoption of evidence based practices, ethical research, QI and PI significantly addresses the challenges involving patient safety.
References
Rangraz Jeddi, F., Adib Haj Bagheri, M., Akbari, H., & Esmaili, S. (2017). Assessment of Legal Feasibility of Clinical Nursing Information System. International Journal of Hospital Research, 6(2), 54-49.
Zhang, X., Liu, S., Chen, X., Wang, L., Gao, B., & Zhu, Q. (2018). Health information privacy concerns, antecedents, and information disclosure intention in online health communities. Information & Management, 55(4), 482-493.