Sample Answer for NUR 630 TOPIC 5 DQ 1 Included After Question
Measurement is required to determine the success of your CQI project. What is the difference between outcome and process measures? Which are more important? Why? Support your reasoning with an example
A Sample Answer For the Assignment: NUR 630 TOPIC 5 DQ 1
Title: NUR 630 TOPIC 5 DQ 1
RAMONA
Outcome measures are the high-level clinical or financial outcomes that concern healthcare organizations. They are the quality and cost targets you are targeting for improvement. These measures are often reported to government and commercial payers. Some examples of metrics for outcome measures include mortality rates, readmissions rates, and surgical site infection rates(Burton, 2019).
Process measures are the specific steps in a process that lead — either positively or negatively — to a particular outcome metric (Burton, 2019). A process metric for a length of stay (LOS) measure for example, might be the amount of time that passes between when the physician ordered the discharge and when the patient was actually discharged. Another example would be is the turnaround time between final take-home medication being ordered and medication delivery to the unit. If it takes the pharmacy three hours to get the necessary medications to the floor — potentially delaying the discharge — you’ve pinpointed a concrete opportunity for healthcare process improvement (Burton, 2019).
Both outcome and process measures are important based on what is being measured. Overall, process measures are crucial to determine the root cause of a problem to get to a solution. Process measures improve quality and cost by enabling organizations to reduce the amount of variation in care delivery(Burton, 2019).
Reference
Why process measures are often more important than outcome measures in healthcare. Health Catalyst. (2021, December 17). Retrieved March 12, 2022, from https://www.healthcatalyst.com/insights/process-vs-outcome-measures-healthcare/
Response
This is insightful Ramona, there is a big difference between outcome and process measures in a continuous quality improvement project. Outcome measures are the goals of the project, while process measures are the means by which those goals are achieved (Fidelia et al., 2021). For example, if the goal of a quality improvement project is to reduce medical errors, then an outcome measure would be the number of medical errors that occur after the project is implemented (Hermann et al., 2019). A process measure would be something like the number of times staff members check patients’ identification bracelets before administering medication. There are several reasons why outcome and process measures are important in a continuous quality improvement project (Casalino et al., 2017). First, they provide essential data that can be used to track progress and identify areas needing improvement. Second, they help ensure that all team members are working towards the same goal. Finally, they help educators and parents gauge whether the initiative is having the desired impact.
References
Fidelia Cascini, Federico Santaroni, Riccardo Lanzetti, Giovanna Failla, Andrea Gentili, & Walter Ricciardi. (2021). Developing a Data-Driven Approach in Order to Improve the Safety and Quality of Patient Care. Frontiers in Public Health, 9. https://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.667819
Hermann, R. C., Chan, J. A., Provost, S. E., & Chiu, W. T. (2019). Statistical benchmarks for process measures of quality of care for mental and substance use disorders. Psychiatric Services, 57(10), 1461-1467. https://ps.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/ps.2006.57.10.1461
Casalino, L. P., Elster, A., Eisenberg, A., Lewis, E., Montgomery, J., & Ramos, D. (2017). Will Pay-For-Performance And Quality Reporting Affect Health Care Disparities? These rapidly proliferating programs do not appear to be devoting much attention to the possible impact on disparities in health care. Health affairs, 26(Suppl2), w405-w414.
https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.26.3.w405
LATRICE
Continuous quality improvement is a must in healthcare. It is important to constantly identify areas of need and address them.
Outcome is the end result of the work done. Outcome evaluations tells whether a program achieved its goal. Process measures are more detailed, they tell you how and why goals are met and are more descriptive. Process measures gives details about the steps performed to achieve the intended goal.
“Accurately measuring the cost of nursing care is one of the requirements to more precisely measure the value of nursing care, conceptualized as the comparison of nursing intensity or costs and patients’ health outcomes.” (Perraillon, Welton, & Jenkins, 2019) Process measures are more important because it gives you detailed information on the steps performed. It tells you what happened and why. Process measures allows you to look further into what happened and analyze the information. “Process measures provides a greater understanding of healthcare processes and their complexity which can, in turn, advance research relating to clinical pathways and improve strategies adopted by organizations.” ( Fidelia et al. 2021)
Appropriate use of measurement methods has the potential to answer longstanding questions that will impact patient care and the nursing profession. For example, “The Nursing Value Data Model was developed to extract data from multiple sources in a standardized way, the advantage of having such a framework is that it allows programming and cleaning of the data within a complex bid data infrastructure. Cost data at the patient-nurse encounter can be combined with data on outcomes, nurse characteristics, unit characteristics, and other information to create metrics that measure the components of nursing care value.” (Perallion et al. 2019)
Response
This is insightful Latrice, outcome measures are used to track the results of a continuous quality improvement project, while process measures are used to track the progress of the project. Both types of measures are important for ensuring that a project is on track and achieving its goals (Fidelia et al., 2021). Both outcome and process measures are important for assessing the success of a continuous quality improvement project. Outcome measures help to determine whether the project has achieved its goals, while process measures help to identify areas where improvements can be made (Hermann et al., 2019). Before you can determine your outcome and process measures, you first need to define what “quality” means for your project (Kilbourne et al., 2018). For example, if you are working on a project to improve patient satisfaction, then one of your outcome measures might be patient satisfaction scores. Or if you are working on a project to improve the accuracy of medical diagnoses, one of your outcome measures might be the percentage of correct diagnoses.
References
Fidelia Cascini, Federico Santaroni, Riccardo Lanzetti, Giovanna Failla, Andrea Gentili, & Walter Ricciardi. (2021). Developing a Data-Driven Approach in Order to Improve the Safety and Quality of Patient Care. Frontiers in Public Health, 9. https://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.667819
Hermann, R. C., Chan, J. A., Provost, S. E., & Chiu, W. T. (2019). Statistical benchmarks for process measures of quality of care for mental and substance use disorders. Psychiatric Services, 57(10), 1461-1467. https://ps.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/ps.2006.57.10.1461
Kilbourne, A. M., Beck, K., Spaeth‐Rublee, B., Ramanuj, P., O’Brien, R. W., Tomoyasu, N., & Pincus, H. A. (2018). Measuring and improving the quality of mental health care: a global perspective. World psychiatry, 17(1), 30-38. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20482
CHARLES
CQI can be defined as continuous quality improvement, which is the culmination of all activities that are geared towards improvement of the patient’s health, and are responsive to their needs. Its goals are geared towards improving on patients’ outcomes, performance, accountability, efficiency and effectiveness. Process measures are the measures that a health provider takes in order to promote the healthcare of his healthy patients. Some of measures may include; doing preventative healthcare like conducting prostate exams, giving immunizations, checking for diabetes, giving immunizations, testing for tb etc. Outcome measures tries to show the impact of health care interventions that have been done by the healthcare provider, which may include; the percentage of patients who did not get diabetes as a result of diabetic education, the number of patients who got well or died due to surgery complications, the number of patients who get nosocomial diseases immediately after admission or discharge from the hospital (Rubak et al., 2011). The most important measure between the two is the Process measure. it acts as preventative measure where by patients are educated on ways of staying healthy and taking care of themselves in order to avoid getting sick in the first place.
Reference:
Rubak, S., Sandbææk, A., Lauritzen, T., Borch-Johnsen, K., & Christensen, B. (2011). Effect of “’motivational interviewing”’ on quality of care measures in screen detected type 2 diabetes patients: A one-year follow-up of an RCT, ADDITION Denmark. Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care, 29(2), 92–98. https://doi.org/10.3109/02813432.2011.554271
REPLY
CS
Response
Outcome measures are the results of a process. In other words, a process measure would be something like the number of times staff members check patients’ identification bracelets before administering medication (Mizuno & Bodek, 2020). They are what you are trying to achieve with your process. For example, in a manufacturing company, the outcome measure might be the number of defective products produced. Process measures are how you track whether or not you are achieving your outcome (Kilbourne et al., 2018). In the manufacturing company, a good process measure for defective products would be the percentage of products that have defects. This measure tells you whether or not you are making progress towards your goal of reducing the number of defective products (Akao et al., 2020). This is insightful Charles, process measures are things like the number of customer complaints, or the amount of time it takes to complete a task. These are metrics that can help you track how well your project is progressing and identify areas where improvement is needed.
References
Akao, Y., Watson, G., & Mazur, G. H. (2020). Hoshin Kanri: Policy deployment for successful TQM. Productivity Press.
Kilbourne, A. M., Beck, K., Spaeth‐Rublee, B., Ramanuj, P., O’Brien, R. W., Tomoyasu, N., & Pincus, H. A. (2018). Measuring and improving the quality of mental health care: a global perspective. World psychiatry, 17(1), 30-38. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20482
Mizuno, S., & Bodek, N. (2020). Management for quality improvement: The seven new QC tools. Productivity press.
