Data Collection

Quality data collection

Quality data collection

Portage Health is the agency selected to be followed and like all healthcare organizations they need to have a continuous quality improvement (CQI) plan in place to meet and exceed the expectation of the stakeholders, which includes the public they serve, the board of trustees, administration, physicians, employees, and vendors. It is also necessary for Portage Health (PH) to meet the regulatory agencies standards, such as the Joint Commission (JC), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Provider Systems (HCAHPS), Michigan Peer Review Organization (MPRO), and Michigan Health & Hospital Association (MHA). This paper will review several areas for potential improvement, the data necessary to monitor, types of tools that would be used to collect data, means to display the data, and how these tools could be useful for PH.

Areas for Potential Improvement

PH serves both inpatient and outpatients at their facility, with a 24-hour Emergency Department, and two operating rooms all of which are areas where QI can take place. According to Dlugacz (2006) “In health care, planning involves collecting information and analyzing current processes, identifying gaps in care, establishing improvements, and monitoring their effectiveness” (p. 75). Quality measurements fall into one of four main groups: patient satisfaction, financial performance, clinical quality, and functional status (Ransom, Joshi, Nash, & Ransom, 2008). For the purpose of this paper PH will focus on patient satisfaction and clinical quality issues. To make improvements it is necessary for PH to know what data they need to collect, what tools they should use to collect the data, how to interpret the data collected, and how they can turn that data into performance improvements.

Data Needed to Monitor Performance Improvements and Collection Tools

When starting out it is important to know what areas need to be...