Quality Improvement Plan Executive Summary

Quality Improvement Plan – Executive Summary
Wanda B. Grant
HCS/588
October 27, 2014
Lee Tompkins
Quality Improvement Plan
Executive Summary The Veteran’s Affairs health care division has many components and one of those components are community based out-patient clinics (CBOCs). The Greenville North Carolina Veteran’s Affairs Health Care Center is one of the CBOCs in Eastern North Carolina. This CBOC offers primary care and specialty services including behavioral health services and pharmacy. One service the CBOC does not offer is urgent care. Unfortunately, since the opening of the Greenville Health Care Center there has been an extremely high number of urgent/emergent care walk-in patients. This is one area that needs improvement
The two types of data collection that will be used are surveys and Veteran focus groups. Once the data has been collected score cards sent to each administrator, managers, and individual departments will be used to display the results. The chosen methodology consistent with the goal of this quality improvement plan Six Sigma DMAIC which can be accomplished through the information technology application of data collection through the electronic health record to identify areas that need to be addressed to decrease the number of emergent/urgent walk-in visits by Veterans. Benchmarking can be used to see where the facility compares to other facilities and encourage staff to take ownership of the problem and finding ways to improve the problem. Once all the information has been collected education of the staff will take place to teach what areas are being improved, how the facility is going to improve these areas, and the staffs’ role in the plan. All stakeholders involved in this plan will be kept up-to-date and informed on progress and outcomes of this quality improvement initiative.
The survey will be sent out to patients who come into the clinic as a walk-in regardless of what the reason for the visit. Using a survey to find out from the Veterans why they came to the primary care clinic instead of going to the emergency room will be very helpful in identifying ways to improve communication with the Veterans so they will know when to come to the clinic and when to seek emergency care. The other data collection tool that will be utilized for this area of improvement is a focus group of veterans asking about their feelings and attitudes about their health care, what their expectations are from the health care center, and find out their knowledge base for when to go to the emergency room versus being seen at the health care