A. Lauren needs to start with doing a quality assessment. Within this quality assessment she will be looking at how they are doing overall, analyze to see if areas need improvement, and then make a plan on how they can overall improve. Within this scenario it is shown that both the CEO and an employee have informed Lauren of a deficiency in the care of a patient. So therefore all the points mentioned above are within the scenario. So basically Lauren needs to first understand exactly why patients are being delayed in getting to their scheduled therapy appointments. After this a Quality Improvement team will need to be constructed.
A1. The reason behind patients getting to their scheduled therapy appointments is area of concern that needs to be addressed for improvement. In order for this to be resolved it is possibly that a rerouted overall workflow needs to be established between the staff that ensures patients get to appointments. The staff that would generally handle this type of thing would be your certified nursing assistants, and patient transporters. Due to patients not getting to complete their full therapy sessions billing for therapy is not being billed for the full therapy charge. So therefore if the issue with patients being delayed is resolved it should overall fix the billing problem. The supervisor of the rehab department is upset overall the decrease in billing, and as mentioned if patients get to therapy on time it should resolve this issue. Another issue of concern is a patient is upset overall the care of her husband at the facility. Another situation at hand is a Quality Improvement team needs to be formed by staff, and a Quality Improvement Project needs to be identified. The CEO is also upset from the amount of calls he is receiving with complaints on the rehab services.
A2. The Continuous Quality Improvement model will be used for this situation by Lauren. With this model the individual is not really focused on it is more of the actual model (Kritchevsky, 1991). This model is best for the given scenario because a lot of people are involved instead of just one single individual. So within this model there is a strong emphasis on the organization of a system, and this overall builds traditional quality within a system (Kritchevsky, 1991).
A3. Types of data need:
How many patients per nurse
Exact amount of time to transport patient to appointment, and back from appointment
The preparation it takes to get patients ready for patients
How often person attends therapy
Total number of patients currently in therapy
If bedside therapy is possible for any residents
Time of day each patient is receiving therapy
A4. To gather the mentioned data Lauren should assign data to members of the Quality Improvement team to collect. Lauren should be very clear about the data needed to be collected, and assign forms for the data to be collected upon. Lauren should assign a due date for the data to be collected, for this I would assign a two week guideline.
B. Members to be assigned to the team:
Nurse Aide Manager
Rehab Supervisor
HIM Staff
Clinical Nursing Manager
Patient Transportation Manager
B1. Specific Role of Team Members:
Nurse Aide Manager: The manager will be making a list of everything that goes into preparing patients for therapy, as well as a daily schedule of the residents.
Rehab Supervisor: The supervisor will be going through a list of the patients to see if bedside therapy could be offered to save time for any residents. The supervisor will also be providing feedback on the therapy billing, and giving reports of patients delayed.
HIM staff: HIM staff will be constructing reports of how many orders for therapy the facility processes a day, and be pulling specific reports on the exact type of rehab ordered.
Clinical Nursing Manager: Clinical Manager will be constructed a chart that shows all halls with patients on them, as well as the number of aides working with each hall/per shift. This will
