Quality Improvement and Safety in Care Provision - Essay Example

"Quality Improvement and Safety in Care Provision" is a great example of a paper on the health system.
According to Improvement Science Research Network (n.d), the main objectives of healthcare in relation to the attainment of preferred outcomes relate to quality improvement and safety in care provision. To achieve these preferred or desired outcomes, implementing improvement strategies or action plans is necessitated. Suffice to say, identifying workable action plans is imperative for the attainment of positive outcomes. It is of significance to note that any attempts to improve quality ought to be based on facts and statistics rather than theory. This paper summarizes my quality improvement action plan.

Action plan

The improvement plan in this course project is geared towards reducing the overall clinic wait times. To achieve this, it would be important to create an effective improvement action plan. Firstly, the action plan, as reiterated by Polk (2011) will involve the lean six sigma strategy in an effort to "reduce the amount of variation from the mean" (p. 38). The mean, in relation to the course project, is optimal clinic wait times. Therefore, any strategies or activities that would skew the wait time from the optimal ought to be avoided as it pushes the outcomes from what is desired or from the positive. These activities are referred to by Polk (2011) as wastes and include unnecessary steps in the process map. Steps on the process map deemed unnecessary will be assessed and eliminated on the first day of implementation of the action plan.  According to Polk (2011), achieving the lean six sigma as an improvement plan will require evaluation, analysis of the strengths and weakness proposed strategies, formulation of processes aimed at improvement, and measurement of processes to determine whether the desired outcomes have been achieved. Thus, all activities or processes formulated and implemented to optimize clinic wait times will be appraised, scrutinized, and measured to determine their potential outcomes (Murphree, Vath, and Daigle, 2011). The action plan will also involve the adoption of innovation in terms of technology. In this aspect, all care processes and activities will be computerized within the first week in order to ensure the efficiency of service delivery. This will ensure all patients receive apposite wait times at the clinic. Conversely, all individuals involved in the process of care will be trained on ways or techniques they can adopt in order to optimize wait times for their patients within the first one week.   

However, it is imperative to note that this action plan will not be implemented overnight. In other words, a timeline must be created in order to have a clear outlook of activities to be conducted and at what point in time. I would undertake the process of determining the timeline for planning, implementing, and evaluating this quality improvement plan on the basis of sustainability. Activities that will skew the wait time from the optimal will be addressed, evaluated, and monitored on a daily basis. For instance, the receptionist may forget to book a patient's appointment on time. Thus, the process of booking appointments will be evaluated and monitored on a daily basis to ensure appointments are made in a timely manner. Other processes such as evaluation of the use of technology will be appraised on a monthly basis to investigate whether the intended goals or objectives have been achieved.

In conclusion, the quality improvement plan involves activities that will be conducted on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. For instance, wasteful or unnecessary steps in the organization's process map ought to be eliminated on the first day, and all processes can be computerized within the first one week of implementation of the action plan. Processes must be evaluated and analyzed to find out whether the desired outcomes have been achieved.