Project: Final Project—Analysis of a Quality Improvement Program This week the Final Project is designed to give you an opportunity to analyze a quality improvement program. You will analyze data...

Final Project- Analysis of a Quality Improvement Program
(Case study- Patient Safety at Grand River Hospital & St. Mary’s General Hospital)
Student Name:
Submitted to:
Walden University
    Introduction
The Quality Improvement Plans enable the healthcare organizations outline how they can improve the quality of their services in the next time duration. The Grand River Hospital (GRH) has a specified quality framework, a senior quality team, service quality council, patient safety committee and various other clinical programs designed to make the hospital accountable for the safety and quality. The hospital consistently evaluates its services in the areas of appropriateness of care, access to care, patient experience with care and safety of care to access its progress. The hospital is a leader in delivering 24x7 care through surgery, emergency and ambulatory services.
St. Mary General Hospital (SMGH) is the most effective and safest hospital in Canada. SMGH facilitated deep analysis of actions in the hospital. It has lean management techniques, a quality guiding committee framework and proper algorithm of actions to handle the critical incidents.
The report analyzes the Quality Improvement Plan (QIP) related to patient safety at both of these hospitals. The ongoing patient safety program at these hospitals involves medical e
ors and a significant gap between the care being delivered and that is required to be delivered. There is a significant lack of safety culture for the clinicians to feel comfortable in seeking solutions to the e
ors and discussing them. The report finds that there is a high potential of quality improvements that can be made in these hospitals.
Data analysis against benchmarks and national standards
Research shows that around 10% of medical e
ors at the primary care centers in US each year result into patient harm. It shows the medical e
ors are the 8th leading cause of deaths which is even more than the deaths caused from road accidents and
east cancer. In 2003, the Canadian Patient Safety Institute (CPSI) was established to improve the quality and safety of patients. The measures like evidence based research, partnership; transparency and open communication are promoted at all the levels of healthcare delivery. The flagship program ‘Safer Healthcare Now’ provides the clinicians all the necessary resources and tools to enhance safety and quality.
The Canadian legislation also Developed Bill 46 which ensured the formation of a quality committee to directly report to the board of directors, survey the employees and the patients every second year to collect their views about the QIP. Ontario Public Hospitals also framed Regulation 156 which required the reporting of critical incidents to hospital administrators and medical advisory committee (MAC). In 2012, the Ontario Ministry of Healthcare launched a 3 year patient centered funding model which emphasized on improving the waiting and access times, cost containment and evidence based care.
Dr. Ashok Sharma, as a chief of staff at both the hospitals made adjustments to the Organizational structures to enhance accountability in leadership designations and also at the grass root levels.
The implementation of three year funding reforms exhibited an increase in fund allocation in Quality Groupings from 6% in 2012 to 30% in 2014. The Ontario Ministry of Health Funding Reforms allocated 70% of the funds to Quality based funding and 30% was allocated to Global Funding. The Quality based funding included 40% Health based Allocations while 30% included clinical quality groupings. It is a good initiative in the plan of the hospitals to increase the fund allocation for quality improvement.
The Grand River Hospital Quality Framework involves a Quality and Patient Safety Committee, Medical Advisory Committee, Clinical Programs and Services Quality Management and a Senior Quality Team. The Quality Framework relies on the Quality plans, targets and goals, and Reports and score cards.
The aim of the quality framework is to improve the quality of care while consistently reducing the risks. The Quality Improvement plans are required to guide the physicians, students, employees and the volunteers in routine performance. Regular assessments of service quality and communication tools are done to ensure that the hospital meets the objectives set by the government. Internal patient feedback and patient satisfaction surveys are done to collect the information. The outcome of the key indicators and the data analysis is assessed to identify new approaches to improve the performance and service quality (Hawkesbury and District General Hospital, 2015).
Observations about where quality improvements are needed
Before Bill 46, there were reported several problems related to critical incident reporting in the health care organizations. The first issue was unde
eporting as the clinicians fear of legal repercussions or professional criticism. After the Announcement of Quality of Care Information Protection Act (QCIPA) the clinicians now got protection from legal actions. After reporting of each critical incident, the hospital administrators conduct reviews with all the people involved in the critical incident. The clinicians often found not attending the QCIPA reviews, as they had fear of legal...