Executive Summary: Quality Improvement Initiative

Quality improvement programs are designed to help an organization improve its quality of healthcare. In the organization, to optimize its performance while improving the care provided to the patients served. The QI program that needs to be implemented focusses on improving health outcomes by enhancing patient safety. In addition, the QI program seeks to have the organization improve its managerial and clinical efficiency. Costs can be reduced, and this would result in better budget allocation which would improve the overall efficiency of the organization. The quality improvement initiative focusses on elimination of medical errors through the use of information technology. 

The focus of the quality improvement program is patients. It is necessary to create quality and safety improvement initiatives that improve healthcare provision to the patients. In any healthcare organization, the patients are the primary area of focus (Weant et al., 2014).  The effectiveness of a healthcare organization can be measured by assessing the degree to which the services of the organization result in desired health outcomes (Adubofour et al., 2004). It is therefore important to reduce the medical errors and in so doing improve the level of patient safety in the organization. Medical errors in the organization are as a result of faulty systems. The healthcare organization is increasingly becoming complex with various additional layers of service delivery being added. It is important to ensure that the faulty systems are checked to ensure that the organization achieves its set objectives. 

Reduction of medical errors has several advantages. Medication errors have an adverse effect on patient safety. Error detection can help in encouraging safe practices. Medication errors are preventable. Medication errors mainly occur at different stages of drug delivery. Medication errors are the leading causes of adverse effects, especially to patients who are hospitalized. Medication errors result cause the healthcare organization to have a bad reputation since it reduces the patients’ confidence in our healthcare service delivery. Medication errors cost the organization a substantial amount of money. Patients who get adverse conditions have to be treated by the organizations, and this substantially adds on the costs. It is important to reduce medical errors to ensure that the organization meets its financial goals. With medication errors, the organization cannot achieve its mission and vision. 

Reducing medical errors in the organization requires the cooperation of different departments. The prescribing process in the organization poses a significant challenge. The prescribing stage involves the physicians attending to the patients. Physicians often give prescriptions orally, and this poses a challenge to the pharmacists and other staff members in the organization (Hughes, 2008). Oral prescriptions need to be eliminated, and instead an automated system put in place. The prescription stage is followed by the transcribing stage. The transcribing stage involves the individual dispensing the medicine to the patients transcribing instructions that they have received. In some cases, the physicians write down the prescriptions and request the patients to hand it over to the pharmacists. It can be difficult to interpret the handwriting of the physicians, and this creates a problem (Hughes, 2008). Communication failures can result in transcribing errors which can manifest themselves as medication errors. The doctors and the pharmacists will hence have to collaborate to eliminate the transcribing errors. After drugs are dispensed, nurses are actively involved in the administration stage. Errors occur when nurses administer the wrong drug or administer the wrong doses. The nurses will have to cooperate with doctors and pharmacists to ensure the correct drugs are administered and in correct doses. 

Improvement of patient safety is critical to the organization. As a result, the budget of 3000 dollars of procuring a hospital management system is justifiable in order to achieve patient safety. Human factors significantly contribute to the problem. As a result, the quality improvement initiative focusses on eliminating the human factors that result in a medication error. The medical errors in the organization are not only a result of human error but also a result of systems that humans interact with in their daily activities. To this end, the budget allocation will go a long way in improving the systems that exist in the organization and help in ensuring that the organization saves on costs (Hughes, 2008). The cost and benefit analysis is one of the methods that is utilized in evaluating the viability of projects. The benefits of the system outweigh the costs associated with the system. It is, therefore, a viable quality improvement project. 

The success of the system will be evaluated based on the objective of reducing medical errors. An analysis of the medication errors will be conducted, and that will inform the basis of evaluating the project. The project will also be evaluated based on the improvement of patient satisfaction. Patients will be interviewed, and their responses will center on patient satisfaction. The evaluation will gauge whether or not the system has achieved its core objectives. 

References

Adubofour, K. O., Keenan, C. R., Daftary, A., Mensah-Adubofour, J., & Dachman, W. D. (2004). Strategies to reduce medication errors in ambulatory practice. Journal of the National Medical Association, 96(12), 1558.

Hughes, R. G. (2008). Tools and strategies for quality improvement and patient safety. In Patient safety and quality: An evidence-based handbook for nurses. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US).

Weant, K. A., Bailey, A. M., & Baker, S. N. (2014). Strategies for reducing medication errors in the emergency department. Open access emergency medicine: OAEM, 6, 45.