Can any scholar suggest the easiest ways of monitoring and measuring Quality Performance of hospitals through some major/easy Key performance Indicators, without deep involving or bothering the busy hospital administration?
I've found it is important to keep a number of things in mind when pursuing QI projects. 1) Know the outcomes you wish to accomplish, this facilitates targeted discussions, 2) Know what measures you would like to create and what data elements you would need, 3) Understand (if possible) internal data structures, current data flow, and possible existing reports you could derive your project from, and 4) Specify how this will help leadership in their role. Every hospitals will have a slightly different approach, but knowing as much as possible about existing structures and processes has proven useful in my projects. Good luck.
The Quality in any Hospital can be measured through two means: (i) Stakeholders perspective and (ii) Customer perspective. Moreover, relying on factual data (KPIs) is most important. To incorporate these, a viable option is to develop a new software that will automatically capture both managerial and clinical indictors.
Thanks Dr. Arun for your comments and giving the framework to determine quality of a hospital. Will you kindly explain if how you will judge quality of hospital while visiting the facility without bothering the administration or giving impression that you are auditing them?
Thanks Dr. Akkeneel for your post. Please highlight some more detail supposing that you are appointed to visit a hospital and check the its quality through your visual observations or least bothering the hospital administration?
@ Dr. Muhammad Shoaib. Yes, the quality of care can be assessed by means of assessing the process in place (undisturbed flow of activity). This can be done by developing a Process-oriented approach. It is an integrated approach and several quality tools are available to facilitate that. Also to sustain that, we need to cultivate a quality mindset among the process owners as such, "There is a place for everything and everything in its place". A control chart needs to be developed in each department and the optimal upper specification limits to be fixed for each and every activity. During the time of uncertainity, a process design program chart (PDPC) needs to be developed and be readily available in each department so that the flow of work will be smooth and undisturbed. It is hard to implement, but it is possible.
@ Dr. Muhammad Shoaib. One metrics is available-"A patient management scorecard" which presents a comprehensive framework that helps healthcare managers to define strategies, track performance and provide information to show whether their institution is performing well in terms of its mission. We can develop it electronically. The complete paper is available in this web link: http://www.isixsigma.com/industries/healthcare/patient-management-scorecard-checks-health-hospital/
Hope this will be useful for you.