Healthcare Quality and Consumer Expectations

Consumers Expectations

• Consumers expect high-quality healthcare services.

CS Tech's Customer Base

• CS technicians serve internal customers including physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals.
• Satisfying the needs of these internal customers is crucial for CS success.

Impact of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria

• Emerging antibiotic resistant bacteria increase the complexity of surgical instrumentation.
• This complexity presents challenges and rewards for CS personnel in consistently providing quality products and services.

The Importance of Quality

• High-quality patient care is the ultimate goal of CS.
• Achieving world-class quality requires a multi-year plan.
• Top-level administrators must emphasize quality due to its critical role in success.

Root Causes of Work-Related Problems

• Many work-related problems stem from systems and procedures implemented by top-level leaders.

Departmental Quality

• Departmental quality should involve multiple disciplines.

Empowerment

• Empowerment involves delegating decision-making and implementation to lower levels of the facility's chain of command.
• This allows supervisors and frontline staff to make decisions traditionally made by managers or department heads.
• Empowerment is typically limited to well-defined areas of responsibility.

Responsibilities of Employees and Managers

• Employees must be trained to properly perform all work tasks before being empowered.
• Managers should provide training on empowerment concepts and encourage idea sharing and suggestions for improvements.

Leadership in Quality

• Quality requires committed leaders to manage data, plan opportunities, set priorities, and empower people to implement process improvements.
• Effective leaders define quality standards, develop strategies for customer satisfaction, and ensure alignment with the facility's goals.
• Departmental leaders, such as shift supervisors and lead technicians, act as first-line guardians of the quality program.
• Employees contribute to the program by helping teammates follow established guidelines, participating in training, and conducting daily quality control checks.

Data Management

• Each department must select data to monitor its quality processes.

Quality Planning

• Quality planning aims to reduce existing problems and prevent future issues.
• Steps include:
  • Identifying customer needs and requests.
  • Defining an ideal process to consistently meet those needs/requests.
  • Comparing actual steps and outcomes to the ideal.
  • Planning process control activities for improvement.
  • Measuring errors.

Success in Quality Programs

• Full staff engagement is essential for successful quality programs.
• Providing staff with a solid education foundation supports their use of critical thinking skills.

Empowering Employees

• Employees should be empowered to address immediate problems within their area of expertise.
• They should be able to assist other employees, enlist help in problem-solving, and pursue additional responsibilities in long-term projects.
• Cross-functional teams can be used to analyze process problems, develop alternatives, offer solutions, and implement suggestions.
• Recognizing superior staff members and teams is important.

Process Management

• Studying processes is crucial because process problems cause errors.
• Resolving errors improves patient/customer experience and enhances staff success.

Processes Studied for Improvement

• Instrument set turnaround times.
• Instrument set accuracy.
• Surgical case cart accuracy.
• Inventory fill rates.

Challenges of High Quality

• High levels of quality are difficult to attain and maintain.
• Lack of quality emphasis can lead to inconsistent products, service delays, negative patient outcomes, and employee conflicts.
• These issues contribute to higher costs for the facility and patients and lower facility revenue.

Quality Control Indicators

• Quality control indicators determine how well a department meets its objectives.
• Examples include:
  • Customer departments receiving STAT supplies within five minutes of request.
  • Only sterile supplies with current dates being available on unit supply carts.
  • Acceptable sterilization processes based on physical, chemical, and biological indicators.
  • Instrument sets containing clean, functional, and correct contents.
  • Patient care equipment and supplies being available and in proper working condition.
  • Instruments being available for scheduled procedures to avoid IUSS.
  • Biological indicators accompanying every load requiring biological monitoring.
  • Case carts containing correct contents.

FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) & RCA (Root Cause Analysis)

• These methods are used to analyze quality system issues.
• FMEA is a proactive approach used to identify and prevent problems before they occur.
• RCA is a reactive approach used to analyze adverse events and prevent their recurrence.

FMEA Origin and Purpose

• FMEA originated in the military and industrial fields.
• It aims to:
  • Define the topic to be addressed.
  • Assemble a multidisciplinary team to identify hazards and causes.
  • Identify actions and outcomes for potential problems.

RCA Process and Participants

• RCA examines contributing factors to adverse events.
• It involves analyzing a series of events following an adverse outcome to understand potential causes and prevent recurrence.
• Participants in an RCA meeting can include the surgeon, scrub technician, circulating nurse, CS manager, technician who assembled the tray, risk manager (as facilitator), instrument repair technician, and Infection Prevention personnel.

The Joint Commission (TJC) and RCA

• TJC standard LD 5.2 requires facilities to conduct root-cause analysis on recurring sentinel events.

Total Quality Improvement (TQI)

• TQI involves measuring the current output of a process, then modifying it to increase output, efficiency, and/or effectiveness.
• It recognizes that improvement can occur at individual, team, organizational unit, or organizational levels.

Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI)

• CQI is a statistical method to improve work processes.
• CQI programs for instrument processing involve input from decontamination staff, processing employees, clinicians, physician personnel, and others involved in equipment use.
• CQI helps identify training needs, process changes, and desired quality outcomes.

Total Quality Management (TQM)

• TQM is an organization-wide approach that aims for long-term success through customer satisfaction and benefit to all members of the organization and society.
• It emphasizes maintaining quality standards throughout the business, performing work tasks correctly the first time, and eliminating defects and waste.

Six Sigma & Lean

• Six Sigma focuses on delivering high performance, reliability, and value to the end customer.

• It involves eliminating variations in products and processes to prevent defects.

• Two main processes used in Six Sigma are:

  • DMADV (define, measure, analyze, design, and verify): Used for developing new processes.
  • DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, and control): Used for monitoring and improving existing processes.

• Lean aims to preserve value with less work by eliminating waste.

• It reduces production time, costs, increases productivity, reduces errors, and improves customer lead times.

• Both Six Sigma and Lean focus on refining processes and reducing defects to an extremely low rate.

This quiz explores the critical elements of healthcare quality that affect consumer expectations. It covers the challenges posed by antibiotic-resistant bacteria and emphasizes the importance of internal customer satisfaction for clinical service technicians. Understand the root causes of work-related issues and the necessity of a multi-year quality improvement plan.