MSN-FP6016 : Quality Improvement Initiative Evaluation

Quality Improvement Initiative Evaluation

Systems of healthcare delivery aiming at improving patient experience can sometimes encounter daunting challenges that reflect the need to align changes in behaviors and practices across various levels and sections of the healthcare institution. As a result, healthcare institutions can create principles and approaches to quality improvement that are already familiar to many healthcare providers involved in clinical quality improvement, thus bringing the issue of quality improvement. Quality improvement is a vital element of every healthcare institution that wants to enhance the quality of care and improve patient experience (Mortimer et al., 2018). Besides, due to the advancements in technology, the healthcare environment has become dynamic and continuously change as technology makes people transform and get better to enhance the services they offer over time (Kruse & Beane, 2018). As a result, healthcare organizations find it necessary to find ways to continuously improve the health of patients through the provision of more patient-centered interventions. 

According to Gupta & Rokade (2016), quality improvement initiatives lead to positive feedback from the patients resulting in goodwill of the service providers in the market. This provider goodwill directly results in the expansion of the healthcare sector. Quality improvement initiatives also align the healthcare institution's objectives with the patients’ expectations, making them feel at peace within the healthcare environment (Mortimer et al., 2018). More important, because today’s patients know their rights and are knowledgeable about their health, healthcare institutions must always strive to continuously improve their healthcare service to attract and retain more patients who seek healthcare services. Notably, in most cases, quality improvement initiatives are often directed towards the patients' well-being (Gupta & Rokade, 2016). As a result, this paper intends to evaluate and discuss the efficiency of the hospitalist skilled nursing facility (SNF) quality improvement initiative in improving patient outcomes by reducing the rate of readmission at my current place of work. 

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Analysis of the Quality Improvement Initiative

My current healthcare organization designed a quality improvement initiative aimed at reducing the number of hospital readmissions. The stakeholders in the hospital realized that medical readmission is common and is costly to oh patients and the hospital. Moreover, research indicates that medical readmissions in the US have become a significant problem in recent years. For instance, according to El Morabet et al. (2018), statistics show that medical readmissions affect 20% of Medicare beneficiaries within 30 days after being discharged from the hospital. The annual cost of medical readmissions is about $17 billion (El Morabet et al., 2018). Due to this increased medical readmissions, nurses have been encountering an increased workload, which results in other problems like compassion fatigue and high turnover rates for the hospitals. Besides, increased readmissions also lower the quality of life of the patient while raising the expenses healthcare payers have to reimburse providers. Specifically, the elderly individuals are at increased risk of hospital-acquired infections and loss of functions when they are readmitted to the hospital after discharge. Therefore, due to the healthcare issues and increased cost of care associated with hospital readmissions, the hospital saw the need to lower the rates of readmissions.

A team was created and task with the responsibility to start the initiative, which began with the crafting of reforms that aimed at decreasing the confusion in prescription and dispensing of drugs to enhance the safety of patients. The team noted that hospital readmissions in the hospital result from limited access to physicians and compromised information exchange during care transition. Within the facility, inappropriate drug prescription was attributed to 5% to 30% of the readmissions (Lemor et al., 2019). Therefore, there was a necessity to implement quality improvement measures to avert readmissions from drug intake. 

The quality improvement team implemented a two-step review on medication during hospital admission and at discharge. The team also introduced documentation of home medication and medication reconciliation during admission as proposed by Braet, Weltens, & Sermeus (2016). Further, the team then implemented the hospitalist SNF model to improve the quality of services offered during medication dispensation and reduce readmission rates (Petigara, Krishnamurthy, &