You are the quality director at a long-term care facility. Your manager has asked you to investigate two areas of care: colonoscopy care and pressure ulcer injuries. Your facility has seen a recent increase in their patients needing colonoscopy care that goes beyond what your facility can provide. It would be helpful to gather information on the quality of colonoscopy care by local hospitals.
For pressure ulcer injuries, you are concerned about this quality indicator: the percentage of patients with pressure ulcer injuries that are new or that have worsened since their arrival at your facility. In your facility, that quality indicator is 15% of residents, while the state percentage is 2.5%. Your manager has requested that you investigate how to improve this quality indicator in your long-term care facility so that the percentage will become closer to the state percentage.
Part 1: Explore the following websites that are public sources of healthcare industry data: AHRQ; Find and Compare Nursing Homes, Hospitals, and Other Providers Near You; and About the National Quality Strategy. Take some time to review the content of each of these sites in terms of available data information, and then write a 1-page paper on what you found.
Specifically, you must address the following rubric criteria:
Types of data information: Describe the types of data information that the find-and-compare website contains on providers and hospitals.
Data example: Discuss one example of data from either the AHRQ site or National Quality Strategy site related to colonoscopy care and how this information could be valuable to a healthcare organization (you must provide the link for the data source that you used).
Part 2: Select a process improvement framework from the list in the first item below and then apply that framework to your goal of lowering your facility’s metrics on pressure ulcer injuries. Nursing Home Pressure Ulcer Rates: Spring 2019 provides data on pressure ulcer injuries in long-term care facilities. You should consider preventative measures such as understanding which residents are at higher risk, ensuring frequent changes in their position, providing proper nutrition, and using specialized beds to reduce pressure on the skin. Write 2–3 pages for Part 2.
Specifically, you must address the following rubric criteria:
Differentiate between frameworks: Differentiate between the following problem-solving/performance improvement frameworks by examining their goals and processes:
Root cause analysis (RCA)
Plan-do-study-act investigation (PDSA)
Tracers
Failure mode effect analysis (FMEA)
Framework steps: Select one of the four frameworks and discuss each step in the process of your chosen framework.
Benefits of framework: Explain the value and benefits of your chosen framework.
Apply framework: Apply your framework to the problem at your facility with pressure ulcer injuries.
List what you would do in each step of your chosen framework for that issue.
Assess the significance of any data or metrics in each step.
Organizational process improvement: Discuss what healthcare organizational issue or process might need to be revised to improve the performance area.