Building an effective team is essential for healthcare facilities to support a quality improvement initiative that requires various activities and includes diverse responsibilities. The group must be capable of completing measuring tasks, timely addressing the issues, and maintaining the authority to make profound changes in an organization (Nash et al., 2019). This paper aims to discuss a strategy for building effective quality improvement teams, identifying the stakeholders, and explaining potential challenges which might threaten their operations.
The quality improvement team must address the technical, human recourses, and safety aspects of the organization’s healthcare providence. The participants must be selected according to their key skillsets and knowledge. The strategy for building an influential group depends on a facility’s size and on the range of issues necessary to confront. For instance, Kindred Hospital is a multi-unit organization, and the quality improvement team might face diverse challenges while measuring safety and reliability for implementing efficient measures (Nash et al., 2019). Consequently, team-building tactics must prioritize selecting practitioners with the most appropriate skill sets and capabilities. Quality improvement requires technical experts, clinical executives, day-to-day leaders, and additional members such as educators, assistants, quality experts, managers, and sponsorship providers to work collaboratively (Institute for Healthcare Improvement [IHI], n. d.). The strategy for building such a team for Kindred Hospital will include interviewing the potential participants, considering more extensive facilities’ experiences, and involving local healthcare administration.
Quality improvement team stakeholders should measure and address the diverse challenges related to a facility’s safety, patient care, and performance. A leader and an analytical assistant must make up the group because the latter can identify the problems, and the former can assign the responsible employees (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ], 2017). Quality measurement also requires technical experts and each unit’s representatives to work together; thus, the team must include these stakeholders. A sponsoring manager who can represent the group in front of the government and timely provide it with resourceful support is also essential for such a facility as Kindred Hospital.
The members’ roles must be precisely identified and assigned in accordance with their jobs and skillsets to make the quality improvement team efficient. The leader’s responsibility is to maintain the performance and conduct meetings to discuss key problems and measurement results. In an acute care facility such as Kindred Hospital, unit representatives should work with the nursing team’s specialist to reveal what aspects of safety, patient care, or clinical operations require improvement (AHRQ, 2017). The technical expert’s role is to create the improvement methods, assist the team in selecting proper measurements, and guide data analysis (IHI, n. d.). A multi-unit quality improvement group also needs an administrator to make appointments and document the meetings’ outcomes.
Quality measurement team building also depends on the particular challenges an organization faces, and specific members can comprise the group to address them. For instance, Kindred Hospital experienced issues with infection control in several units during the last two years (Kindred Hospital, n. d.). Including a technical expert skilled in gathering data and building strategies to decrease contagious disease rates in a facility is crucial for the hospital’s quality improvement team. Moreover, the government’s regulations about safety, ethical considerations, or challenges related to providing care for a diverse population might require specific employees to join the group.
Building an effectively working quality improvement team can impact a healthcare organization’s operations. Such groups must include responsible stakeholders with specific skills related to their fields of expertise and leaders capable of uniting and maintaining their willingness to enhance a facility’s performance. Quality improvement teams can address the problems of safety, patient care, and workspace environment, and their main activities include challenge identification, selection of measurement, data analysis, and execution.
References
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2017a). Forming a comprehensive unit-based safety program team: Facilitator guide. Web.
Institute for Healthcare Improvement. (n. d.). Science of improvement: Forming the team. Web.
Kindred Hospital. (n. d.). About our hospital. Web.
Nash, D. B., Joshi, M. S., Ransom, E. R., & Ransom, S. B. (Eds.). (2019). The healthcare quality book: Vision, strategy, and tools (4th ed.). Health Administration Press.