Lacretia DuVal HCS 310 June 24, 2010 Susan Miedzianowski Quality Improvement Organization’s are private, most of the time, not-for-profit organizations, which staff consists of professionals.
This staff consists of doctors and other health care professionals, who are trained to review medical care and help beneficiaries with complaints about or problems with the quality of care and to implement improvements in the quality of care available throughout the spectrum of care. The mission of the Quality Improvement Organization Program is to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, economy, and quality of services delivered to Medicare beneficiaries to make their lives a lot easier. A major project of the Quality Improvement Organization Program is Care Transitions. This program aims to greatly improve the quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries who transition among care settings through a comprehensive community effort. These efforts aim to reduce readmissions following hospitalization and to yield sustainable and replicable strategies to achieve high-value health care for sick and disabled Medicare beneficiaries.
To be able to achieve these gains, one possible quality improvement strategy or tool that could be implemented in the Care Transitions Program is the standardized assessment instrument, referred to as CARE (Continuity Assessment Record and Evaluation). Through research, it is proven that most stakeholders are happy with the assistance offered from organizations that offers Quality Improvement programs. …… more than three quarters “ strongly agreed” that “ providers were providing better care because of the QIO. ” (Vol.
13, Issue 8, p95). There are many organizations that monitor and/or participate in the activities of different external agencies and organizations dedicated to improving and enhancing the quality of healthcare given to individuals. Three stakeholders who utilize and are pleased with the Quality Improvement Services are as follows; Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance (AQA), American Board of Pediatricians (ABP), American Medical Association physician Consortium for Performance Improvement (AMA-PCPI). These three organizations have used quality control and have experienced a great outcome o9f results by doing so. Quality Improvement has not always been available to organizations, and when it became available and accessible to them they took advantage of it and in return their clients are pleased and their business have become more successful.
The Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance (AQA) is a broad based collective unit of physicians, consumers, purchasers, health insurance plans and others. Their mission is to improve health care quality and patient safety through a collective and collaborative process in which key stakeholders agree on a strategy for measuring performance at the physician or group level. The company goes forward by collecting and aggregating data in the least burdensome way, and reporting meaningful and important information to consumers, physicians, and other stakeholders to inform them of their choices and improve outcomes across the board. Ambulatory Care has grown faster than inpatient services for many years.
The impact of the healthcare reform on the ambulatory care in hospitals in the U. S stands out. Hospitals have begun to give more importance to ambulatory care in their missions. The bottom line is that they are preparing for the implementation of the healthcare reform law. It expresses the fact that healthcare reform will improve ambulatory care services and the dire need for more integrated care.
One important area that ambulatory care services should address is service delivery and market share. This will have a positive effect and help ambulatory care continue to grow (Johnson, T. 2010)). Maintenance of Certification (MOC), which is one of the quality improvement projects with meeting standards set by the American Board of Pediatricians (ABP) can be approved and physicians participating in approved QI projects are eligible for credit toward maintenance of their (American Board of Pediatricians) ABP certification.
This allows the company room for improvement and success. As the pediatricians’ meet these standards set by Maintenance of Certification, they reap the benefit of receiving maintenance toward their certification. This has improved the quality of service and the quality of the response of the recipients receiving service from the American Board of Pediatricians. Maintenance of Certification (MOC) is the most recent stage in the evolution of specialty board certification.
The concern is increasing over the quality and safety of medical care. Maintenance of Certification (MOC) represents a change in the frequency and the nature of the requirements of existing recertification. There are no exceptions with these requirements. The organization stands firm on them and they are across the board with little or no adjustments. Maintenance of Certification (MOC) adds the assessment of practice performance to these measures and represents a philosophical change as well as a requirement change. The focus of these assessments is for improvement rather than judgment.
The extent to which MOC succeeds will reflect surgeons’ ability to improve the quality of care through voluntary efforts (Rhodes, R 2007). The American Medical Association (AMA) convened Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement (PCPI) is committed to enhancing quality of care and patient safety by taking the lead in the development, testing, and maintenance of evidence-based clinical performance measures and measurement resources for physicians. This organization was founded in 1847. Its goals are simply to protect the interests of American physicians and what they stand for, advance public health in a way that will be beneficial, and support the growth and advancement of medical science. The American Medical Association (AMA) investigates alleged cases of medical quackery or doctors who are fake and don’t know what they are doing, engages in medical research on prescription drugs, all types of foods, an array of cosmetics, and other substances, and sponsors health education programs to educate those who are in the field as well as those who just need the knowledge.
The organization also approves in-hospital doctor training programs; it was largely responsible for the upgrading of American medical education in the early 20th cent (American Medical Association. 2008)). Organizations that participate in quality improvement subsequently end up being successful in the end. The success is evident in the way the problems are handled and taken care of in a timely and professional manner.
Any organization that deals with health care at all should consider quality control because it will only make their business more successful. References American Medical Association. (2008). In The Columbia Encyclopedia.
