What Is Quality Improvement In Healthcare?

When healthcare managers aim to set targets for their company, this is called quality improvement. Quality improvement is an essential part of any healthcare organization. However, this term can be somewhat vague at times.

Therefore, what does quality improvement in health care really mean? Well, in this article, let’s talk about the definition as well as some ways to improve the quality of your organization. That way you can improve patient outcomes and better direct your mission.

Quality improvement can be defined as a systematic strategy that uses data to improve the safety and quality of your healthcare services. In other words, it is a hospital process improvement that ensures that your healthcare program is more efficient, effective, and focused on the patient’s needs.

This idea of improving healthcare is becoming very popular across the healthcare industry. Not only can it help reduce costs, but it can help reduce complications and negative experiences. Let’s talk about what quality improvement entails in more detail.

The Breakdown: Quality Enhancement In Health Care

For a long time, quality improvement had to do with the responsibility of individual nurses or other professionals in the medical space. But today, quality assurance is a more holistic game. Instead of putting pressure on the people, modern quality enhancement puts pressure on the system itself.

The reason is because human error is always going to happen, but a great system or process can mitigate this to the extent possible. Therefore, quality enhancement professionals will take a look at medical data and other processes that have to do with the care provided.

Using the data itself, they will look for areas of potential improvement or areas that are already achieving efficiencies. The advances in technology today allow quality improvement to reduce the time spent on particular procedures or healthcare services.

Ultimately, this can reduce the cost to the organization itself and even to the patients. These are just some examples of quality improvement in healthcare.

The Importance Of Quality Improvement In Healthcare

By focusing on quality improvement, you can make large changes in your medical facility. You can achieve better patient longevity, financial savings, and more. You will also be more prepared to handle large-scale medical events.

For instance, if there is another pandemic like COVID, you won’t be caught off guard. Think about how much time and money you would have saved if you would have had quality improvement measures in place when COVID hit the first time.

Quality Improvement Initiatives In Healthcare

Some of the initiatives in healthcare that have to do with quality improvement are optimized sepsis care, decreased urinary catheter infections, enhanced electronic medical records, better care coordination, and reduced readmissions.

Improving Patient Safety And Hospital Outcomes

It’s never too late to improve your hospital processes. Contact Guideway Care today. We can help you improve your performance and decrease the cost of care.

Ultimately this allows you to serve your patients at a higher level, reduce risk, and lower your budget — improving your operational profitability.