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A few low-tech ways to improve quality

Accreditation Connection, July 9, 2004

Your organization doesn't have to spend millions to make long-lasting improvements to its patient outcomes, quality of care, and safety. Consider these low-tech strategies:

Use standardized orders: Write them into discharge instructions. Doing so is one of the most reliable ways to improve your organization's adherence to the quality measures that CMS will begin tying to Medicare reimbursement on October 1.

Do a walk-through: Looking at a unit from the patient's point of view can help staff identify lapses in quality and patient safety.

Consider recruiting a nonclinical person, such as someone who works in the finance or maintenance departments, and a clinician who works on a different unit to walk through each unit. Ask them to scrutinize the facility as if they've never been there before and to suggest ways to make patients' experiences more comfortable and less confusing.

Tweak your patient-satisfaction surveys: Don't make the mistake most of your peers make when it comes to querying patients about their experience at your facility. Most surveys ask patients to rate the care they received. Although that's helpful for high-level benchmarking purposes, it doesn't provide the kind of personal feedback that organizations need to make point-of-care improvements. Research shows that patients crave information, support, physical comfort, and a smooth transition from one care setting to another, Adams points out.

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