Vision:
Safe Healthcare through Quality Service.
Mission:
Promote the Productivity, Quality and Safety Healthcare service delivery to the People of Kalmunai Health Region.
What Is Quality Management in Health Care?
It’s not easy for patients to know whether they’re getting quality care from their doctor. Even medical professionals can’t always judge this. Quality management in health care works to measure the health benefits of doctors’ and hospitals’ work and improve patient outcomes. Quality management in health care works to reduce errors and improve patient care. The safety and effectiveness of treatment are two of the most critical measures of quality.
The Challenge of Measuring Quality
The quality management in health care is harder than in businesses where the metrics are more routine, such as the number of widgets made per hour or the sales revenue per quarter. In health care, different patients may have widely different problems, even in a specialty such as OB-GYN or oncology. Solutions to patients’ conditions have to be individually tailored, not mass-produced. The health care industry initially thought of quality management in terms of telling doctors and nurses what to do and how to do it. Now the industry sees it as a broader perspective on the process of care. Any patient/professional interaction involves multiple procedures and processes. Managing them makes it possible to improve the results for patients.
Obstacles to Quality Management
Every doctor, nurse or hospital administrator wants their treatment and patient interactions to be top quality, but it doesn’t happen automatically. Whether you want quality control management in a hospital, a doctor’s office or a walk-in clinic, Tefen identifies the same barriers that crop up again and again:
- The organization doesn’t have a good policy for reporting errors. The reporting process is often time-consuming, and employees write off some mistakes as par for the course and not worth telling anyone about.
- Lack of confidentiality makes staff reluctant to admit mistakes.
- Instead of looking for the root cause of a mistake and fixing it, organizations settle for punishing whoever screwed up. That makes staffers even less willing to report their errors.
- Modern medicine involves a lot of teamwork, collaboration and communication. Quality management often overlooks the ways different people or departments interact and the possible problems there.
- Trying to fix problems can create a big, complicated, burdensome set of new rules.
An even bigger problem occurs when organizations wait until something goes wrong and then look for solutions. While it’s necessary to look at mistakes and their causes after something bad happens, it’s also essential to be proactive and fix weak spots before disaster strikes.
Six Important Standards
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality(AHRQ)says the role of a quality manager in a hospital or any other health care organization is most effective when they focus on six key issues:
- Patient safety. Medical care should make patients healthier and not cause them harm.
- Effectiveness. Provide services that benefit the patient. Don’t withhold services they need and don’t push treatments that won’t make a difference.
- Patient-centered care. The patient’s preferences, needs and values should guide all clinical decisions.
- Timeliness. Delays can be harmful. Reducing them benefits the patients.
- Efficiency. Quality goes up if you don’t waste equipment, supplies, energy or ideas.
- Equitable. Regardless of your patient’s class, gender, ethnicity, or other personal characteristics, the quality of care should stay the same.
The effectiveness and safety of treatments are particularly important. Prioritizing quality management in these areas yields the best results.
Principles for Improving Quality Management in Healthcare
The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) defines quality as “systematic and continuous actions that lead to measurable improvement in health care services and the health status of targeted patient groups.” In health care, improved quality management helps reduce waste, decrease mistakes, and improve patient care.
Useful Links:
- National Guidelines for Improvement of Quality in LIne Ministry & Provincial Hospitals
- National Guidelines for Improvement of Quality in Primary Medical Care Units
- National Guidelines for Improvement of Quality in Offices of Medical Officer of Health
- National Guidelines for Improvement of Quality in Specialised Public Health Units & Campaigns
- National Guidelines for Improvement of Quality in Health Management Units
- National Guidelines for Improvement of Quality in Training Instituions
- Guideline on Quality Indicators Related to Hospital Acquired Infections
- Guidelines for Adverse Event and Readmission
- Guideline on Hand Hygiene Compliance
- Guidelines to Calculate Waiting Time of Patients in OPD, Clinics