Question

How do resources in any of the HRSA Sample Clinical Quality Measures aid in maintaining the improvement of patient outcomes?

Answer 1

Ans) Overall, an organization’s goal is to improve care delivery and improve patient outcomes. As complex systems underpin the clinical care change, it is important to ensure an organization’s performance is improving toward its goal. Performance is generally tracked on a monthly, or at minimum, a quarterly basis. A graphic depiction of performance over time assists an organization to know that its efforts are resulting in improved performance.

- Examples of data displays used by other organizations can be found in the Managing Data for Performance Improvement module.

- To make improvements, an organization needs to understand its own delivery system and key
processes. The concepts behind the QI approaches in this toolkit recognize that both resources (inputs) and activities carried out (processes) are addressed together to ensure or improve quality of care (outputs/outcomes). A health service delivery system can be small and simple, such as, an immunization clinic, or large and complex, like a large managed-care organization. QI can assume many forms and is most effective if it is individualized to meet the needs of a specific organization’s health service delivery system.

- The process mapping tool may also be used to evaluate or redesign a current process. Additional information, including tools and resources to assist an organization that wants to adopt process mapping as an improvement strategy, can be found in the Redesigning a System of Care to Promote QI module.
Specific steps are required to deliver optimal health care services. When these steps are tied to pertinent clinical guidelines, then optimal outcomes are achieved. These essential steps are referred to as the critical (or clinical) pathway. The critical pathway steps can be mapped as described above.

- By mapping the current critical pathway for a particular service, an organization gains a better understanding of what and how care is provided. When an organization compares its map to one that shows optimal care for a service that is congruent with evidence-based guidelines (i.e., idealized critical pathway), it sees other opportunities to provide or improve delivered care.