NUR 621 Quality Improvement Essay
Grand Canyon University NUR 621 Quality Improvement Essay-Step-By-Step Guide
This guide will demonstrate how to complete the Grand Canyon University NUR 621 Quality Improvement Essay 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 NUR 621 Quality Improvement Essay
Whether one passes or fails an academic assignment such as the Grand Canyon University NUR 621 Quality Improvement Essay 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 NUR 621 Quality Improvement Essay
The introduction for the Grand Canyon University NUR 621 Quality Improvement Essay 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 NUR 621 Quality Improvement Essay
After the introduction, move into the main part of the NUR 621 Quality Improvement Essay 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 NUR 621 Quality Improvement Essay
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 NUR 621 Quality Improvement Essay
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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Sample Answer for NUR 621 Quality Improvement Essay
The priority of the health professional in any health care organization is the safety of the patients. However, patients are exposed to many risks, thus threatening their security. Among other problems in healthcare, medication errors form the most considerable concern (Inomata et al., 2018). Some of the causes of medication errors include distraction of health care professionals in the course of administering a drug, working environment, lack of proper knowledge about the drug being dispensed, wrong patient information, and systemic problems within a hospital setting (Nanji et al., 2017). However, the elimination of all measures that affect the quality of health care delivery increases the value of services offered within health care institutions. Accreditation or approvals from known institutions increases the quality and establish standards of health care delivery in a country. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate accrediting body appropriate for our health care organization, summarize its requirements, and evaluate quality metrics that would enable the organization to fit in the accreditation body. Again, the study would examine how quality performance affects the organization financially.
Accrediting Body
The most appropriate accreditation body for our organization is joint commission accreditation. Achieving the Joint Commission accreditation signifies that an organization is committed to continuous improvement of patient care (Inomata et al., 2018). The accreditation tells the patients that the organization is committed to offering safe and high-quality services at all times. The safety of the patient is a significant matter of concern in health care systems today. The aspect of accreditation within the care setting has drawn concern among researchers since it forms part of patient safety. The focus of research studies in this area is because it contributes to patient mortality either directly or indirectly (Johnson & Sollecito, 2018). Poor healthcare delivery has been linked to death, injury, and increased medical bills of the patients; hence proper medication process is essential to members of the medical fraternity, including doctors, administrators, nurses, pharmacists, and the patients. Besides, it poses a severe negative impact on health professionals in terms of personal status. These are among the major issues that resulted in the formation of accreditation bodies to ascertain the quality of healthcare delivery and prove the safety that each organization takes on patients.
Requirements to Obtain Joint Commission Accreditation
The accreditation is awarded to an organization upon completion of an on-site survey which is carried out by a skilled and specially trained Joint Commission Surveyor. The professional assess how the organization has been complying with health standards over the past. During the survey, the surveyors randomly selected patients and used their medical records in evaluating the compliance standards (Despotou et al., 2020). Besides, the trace patients experience in health care organization by talking to the doctors, nurses, and other staff who are in close interaction with the patients. In essence, adherence to all health care delivery compliance standards would allow an organization to attain this accreditation which would affect its future operation in the health care industry.
The Performance or Quality Metrics to Focus on for a Quality Improvement Project to Present to the Accrediting Body
Conducting quality measurement before the accreditation survey would allow our organization to understand some of the negative measures that would limit its ability to attain the accreditation process. Measurement is critical when undertaking a quality improvement project. It provides the baseline data on the quality issue to be addressed hence enabling the researchers to determine the current performance of a given healthcare facility on the quality issue. For instance, the measurement tool employed by the committee to collect data on the occurrence of medication errors in our healthcare facility was the use of medication tracking forms (Despotou et al., 2020). The form allows the tracing, assemblage, and systematic arrangement of data on medication errors, thus enabling problem quantification, selection of potential appropriate solutions, and setting preference. This form is usually reviewed by one or two personnel with a good understanding of the medication use process. The individuals could be from relevant departments within the hospital setting, for instance, the pharmacy and therapeutics committee, quality assurance department, or delegation to the department of pharmacy.
After initiating an appropriate quality improvement plan to prevent incidences of medication errors, data collected through medication care tracking forms can be used to measure the impacts of these interventions. Tracking medication errors while a continuous quality improvement initiative is ongoing enables the healthcare organization to monitor the whole process and identify new opportunities where improvements need to be carried out (Inomata et al., 2018). The medication error tracking form may look simple, but it has proved to be a powerful tool for accelerating growth by reducing the incidences of medication errors. Many healthcare organizations have employed its use to improve numerous processes in healthcare and outcomes.
The successful collection of data using the medication care tracking forms would prompt proper analysis that should be done using a suitable method to uncover actual root causes for the safety problem. With suitable design and structuring, the process can present steps in a quality improvement process very competently and efficiently. The initiatives would then be recommended by the committee on effective measures that would allow the organization to gain accreditation from the Joint Commission (Inomata et al., 2018). In preparing the organization for the accreditation process, the committee would need to approve the plan of the use of computerized physician order entry. This system eradicates handwritten orders and also helps to reduce errors of prescription. Besides, it ensures fullness and legibility of orders, thus helping to improve quality efficiency in the health system hence a vital tool in ensuring patient safety. Also, computerized physician order entry offers clinical decision support to the clinician; therefore, it is very helpful as far as patient safety is concerned.
Besides, the committee could as well approve increased patient monitoring by initiating electronic surveillance, reminders, and alerts in the wards to prevent likely causes of error as a result of poor patient monitoring. With electronic surveillance in place, patients at risk of adverse drug events can be identified and attended to appropriately, thus enhancing patient safety. Information technology with the primary objective of alerting caregivers on changes in the patient is essential in improving the quality of care as it helps in ensuring patient safety and diminishes the expenditure on care services. One study conducted revealed that computer applications established patients at danger for venous thromboembolism and alarm the physicians, thus offering opportunities for prophylaxis prescription (Johnson, & Sollecito, 2018). It was found that patients who got prophylaxis prescriptions from physicians who were alerted attained reduction of venous thromboembolism by forty-one percent at ninety days. These are the effective measures that would prepare the organization for the attainments of accreditation from the Joint Commission.
Effect of the Quality Performance on the Organization Financially
The use of technology is significant in assessing the quality of an organization as it forms the basis of eliminating errors that affect the health care delivery quality. Easy communication among the health care professionals in an organization would be achieved through the use of modern technology, thus enhancing proper coordination and collaboration during the whole process. Technology allows the organization to use automation which provides a uniform way of reporting the information and makes sorting and analysis of data much easier (Jember et al., 2018). This also enhanced reduction in data entry errors by those sorting out the medication error tracking forms, thus ensuring the accuracy of data collected. Technology also allowed easy spot checking of random data collected to determine discrepancies associated with the data to enable early detection.
Improved quality would have a financial effect on the organization. The increased quality of services would increase the number of patients visiting the organization that would as well translate to increased income within the organization. Besides, additional accreditation from Joint Commission would increase the value and appearance of the organization. The increased value would imply that the hospital will be receiving many patients that would pay for the services at the organization (Despotou et al., 2020). The needed power to advance the organization financially would imply that there would be added value on the general services at the company. The success of the use of the modern practice in care provision will be determined by comparing the number of errors before and after the implementation of the initiative. Success is marked by fewer error incidences compared to before execution.
Conclusion
Our organization needs Joint Commission accreditation to advance its level of operation and ensure that the company depicts an inclining trajectory in terms of finances. Preparation for the attainment of the accreditation would require our health organization to install various measures that would be effective in eliminating the errors and increasing the service delivery at the company.
References
Despotou, G., Her, J., & Arvanitis, T. N. (2020). Nurses’ perceptions of joint commission international accreditation on patient safety in tertiary care in South Korea: a Pilot Study. Journal of Nursing Regulation, 10(4), 30-36. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2155-8256(20)30011-9
Inomata, T., Mizuno, J., Iwagami, M., Kawasaki, S., Shimada, A., Inada, E., … & Amano, A. (2018). The impact of Joint Commission International accreditation on time periods in the operating room: A retrospective observational study. PloS one, 13(9), e0204301. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0204301
Jember, A., Hailu, M., Messele, A., Demeke, T., & Hassen, M. (2018). Proportion of medication error reporting and associated factors among nurses: a cross sectional study. BMC nursing, 17(1), 9.https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-018-0280-4
Johnson, J. K., & Sollecito, W. A. (2018). McLaughlin & Kaluzny’s Continuous Quality Improvement in Health Care. Jones & Bartlett Learning.https://catalog.nlm.nih.gov/discovery/search?vid=01NLM_INST:01NLM_INST&query=lds04,exact,101556953
Nanji, K. C., Patel, A., Shaikh, S., Seger, D. L., & Bates, D. W. (2017). Evaluation of perioperative medication errors and adverse drug events. Anesthesiology: The Journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, 124(1), 25-34. DOI: 10.1055/s-0041-1736339
Sample Answer 2 for NUR 621 Quality Improvement Essay
In the healthcare system, quality improvement refers to the framework used to systematically improve ways by which care is delivered to the patients. The processes geared towards improving quality have characteristics that can be analyzed, measured, controlled and improved. In every healthcare facility, quality improvement involves continuous efforts to achieve predictable and stable process results that are, to reduce variations and advance the outcome both for the healthcare organizations and the patients. Attaining sustained quality improvement requires commitment from the entire organization, especially from the top level management. Alternatively, quality improvement may refer to the set of focused activities intended to analyze, monitor, and improve the value or worth of the processes in order to ensure effective healthcare outcome within a given organization. Through gathering and analyzing data in some of the main areas, a hospital can effectively implement required changes for the benefits of the patients. In the healthcare industry, the hospital’s more cyclical activities are meant to increase the levels of performance such as improving patient’s safety and lowering the rate of mortality. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the accrediting bodies responsible for quality improvement in a healthcare organization.
Accrediting Body: National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA)
The most appropriate accrediting body for the healthcare organization is the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). NCQA is an autonomous non-profit institution in the United States of America that play significant roles in improving healthcare quality through the administration of evidenced-based measures, standards, accreditation, and programs (Sultz & Young, 2016). The organization, operates on a formula of measuring, analyzing, and improving the quality of healthcare delivered, and in addition build consensus within the healthcare industry through engaging policymakers, doctors, employers and patients in the implementation of different policy issues (Cobb, 2015). NCQA controls voluntary accreditation programs for healthcare plans, individual’s physicians, as well as the medical groups. It provides devoted programs targeting software certification, vendor certification, and compliance auditing. NCQA efforts are organized around the performance and accreditation measurements in areas including quality care, member satisfaction, and services. The organization uses a team of independent managed care experts and physicians to evaluate managed care organizations against more than sixty quality related standards.
National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) certifies and accredits a wide range of healthcare institutions and also management the evolution of healthcare effectiveness data and information set (HEDIS), the performance measurement tool applied by over 90% of the country’s health plans. HEDIS was formulated to provide consumers and purchasers with the required information to dependably equate performance. Through the influence of NCQA HEDIS has undergone tremendous changes to become the gold standard in the management of care performance measurement. NCQA reporting enhances consultants, employers, and consumers to compare and evaluate the performance of different health plans in areas ranging from preventive care and consumer experiences to cancer and heart diseases.
Requirements to Obtain Accreditation
Any organization that deliver managed healthcare services are eligible to apply for the NCQA accreditation only if they meet the requirements outlined by the institutions. In some cases, some healthcare institutions fail to acquire NCQA due to inability to meet all the requirements. For any healthcare institution to become eligible for the NCQA accreditation, they need to operate under insurance licenses such as the Health Maintenance Organization (HMO), Point-Of-Service Plan, Preferred Provider Organization (PPO), or Exclusive Provider Organization (EPO), among others. Secondly, an organization also need to issue a contract for the insurance service for a given population or contracts with the employer to give managed care services for the self-insured population. NCQA accreditation offers certification to healthcare organizations that provides services through an organized delivery system that includes ambulatory and impatient healthcare sites. Also, an organization need to perform functions addressed in the standards such as quality improvement, utilization management, care coordination, member rights and responsibilities, and credentialing either through service agreement or directly.
An organization seeking for accreditation also need have a process of monitoring, evaluating and improving safety and quality of care provided to the members. For every healthcare institution, management of data and information is an essential process that must always be considered in the accreditation processes. Hence NCQA often consider healthcare effectiveness data and information set (HEDIS) as one of the main element in the accreditation processes. To achieve, NCQA accreditation, an organization need to ensure that they have reports audited HEDIS results for designated HEDIS measures, as well as CAHPS ratings and composites, as needed for the chosen evaluation option.
Performance or Quality Metrics
For organizations to present themselves to the accrediting body, they need to focus on certain performance and quality metrics. In every clinical workplace, quality metrics are essential components of an effective quality management plan. They are measures used in ensuring that patients and other stakeholders receive acceptable services or deliverables. Usually, the quality metrics directly translate the client’s need into acceptable performance measures both in processes and products; in other words, it is the measurement of the performance and value of services or products rendered. One of the quality metrics that one would focus on for quality improvement is quality rating. Rating the quality of services received from a clinical setting is one of the best approaches for enhancing quality metrics. In my clinical workplace, for every service delivered, clients are supposed to leave ratings indicating their level of satisfaction.
Quality ratings increase the patient’s reliability on the products and services offered, leading to confidence towards the workers and the entire facility (Rodrigues, 2017). Anther performance or quality metric is the customer satisfaction. In many cases, it is possible to measure the quality of a clinical service by quantifying the opinion of the patients. The most common way of doing this is by asking the clients to rate their levels of satisfaction (Rodrigues, 2017). For instance, in the clinical environment, there is no perfect way of knowing the quality of service beyond asking the patients if the kinds of services received were good. Reviewing the customer’s satisfaction can lead to an improvement in service delivery and the general success of a healthcare facility. The results of the quality metrics are often shared with the nursing staff to increase general improvement in the quality of services. The quality metrics often reveals the areas of weaknesses that require improvements; it is, therefore, beneficial when it comes to the enhancement of services to the patients.
Impacts of Quality Performance to the Financial
Income of an Organization
The quality performance financially impacts a healthcare organization in different ways. Improvement in performance often attract many patients and the stakeholders who may be interested in being part of the organization. Also, quality performance attract many health Insurance companies, a situation that may improve the financial activities in terms of full pay-offs. In most cases, insurers work with quality healthcare deliverers knowing that they often tend to attract more patients. With the quality performance, an organization to obtain rewards or incentives from the healthcare organizers, a situation that may improve the financial performance. For instance, there is always pay-for-performance that tend to create financial inflow to a healthcare institution. Pay-for-performance is a general term for the initiatives that aimed at improving efficiency, quality, and the overall value of the healthcare system (Rubino, Esparza & Chassiakos, 2018). The provision of rewards in terms of financial incentives to the well-performing physicians, hospitals, and other healthcare providers and actors may create motivations, a scenario that may lead to the overall improvements in performance and quality delivery to all the patients (Cylus, Papanicolas & Smith, 2017).
Conclusion
National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) is an authentic accreditation body that that ensures certification of healthcare institutions. However, before the authorizations, there is always the need for the healthcare institutions to meet specific criterions. For instance, they need to operate under insurance licenses such as the Health Maintenance Organization (HMO), Point-Of-Service Plan, Preferred Provider Organization (PPO), or Exclusive Provider Organization (EPO), among others. NCQA provides different related programs for the healthcare institutions that are eligible for the health plan certifications. Each of the program enable an organization to improve their initiatives and operations in the targeted areas and demonstrate their commitment to quality.
References
Cobb, C. G. (2015). The project manager’s guide to mastering Agile: Principles and practices for an adaptive approach. John Wiley & Sons.
Cylus, J., Papanicolas, I., & Smith, P. C. (2017). How to make sense of health system efficiency comparisons?. World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe.
Rodrigues, L. L. R. (2017). Service quality measurement: Issues and perspectives. Hamburg: Anchor Academic Pub.
Rubino, L. G., Esparza, S. J., & Chassiakos, Y. (2018). New leadership for today’s health care professionals. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Sultz, H. A., & Young, K. M. (2016). Health care USA: Understanding its organization and delivery. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.