Healthcare Quality Assignment: STEEEP Model of Health Care Quality

Healthcare Quality Assignment: STEEEP Model of Health Care Quality

Healthcare Quality Assignment: STEEEP Model of Health Care Quality

What is Quality?

Background

Cost, value, and quality

Quality in Health Care

Stakeholders

Defining Quality

What is Quality?

Background

Quality and quality improvement had its start in factories during the 1950s.

The focus of quality improvement in those industries was to decrease error or variation in the final product, while increasing value.

While there is not a universal definition of quality, three common elements are generally accepted:

Quality involves meeting or exceeding customer expectations

Quality is dynamic (it always changes)

Quality can be improved

See Required Reading #1: ASQ History of Quality

Background (2)

Reliability is an important aspect of quality. Quality can not be achieved if reliability is not present.

Reliability is defined as the measurable capability of a process, procedure, or health service to perform its intended function in the required time under commonly occurring conditions.

A reliable process performs as expected a high proportion of the time whereas an unreliable process performs as expected a low proportion of the time.

Unreliable processes in health care result in medical errors that can be costly (both monetarily and in lives lost).

Cost, Value, and Quality

The cost of a product or service is indirectly related to its perceived quality.

Customers expect to receive value when purchasing products or services.

Keep in mind that value is a relative measure and not the same as cost

Source: https://www.pm360online.com/how-do-you-define-value-in-healthcare/

See Required Reading #2: MCM Cost, Quality, and Value

6

Quality in health care

Stakeholders

There are several stakeholders involved in health care quality.

Stakeholders are defined as an individual, organization, or entity with an interest or concern in something.

Types of health care stakeholders:

Purchasers-individuals or organizations that pay for health care services (i.e. insurance companies (public and private), MCOs, etc.) These are also referred to as “payers.”

Consumers-individuals that purchase health care services (i.e. patients).

Providers-the individuals or organizations that provide health care services (i.e. physicians, nurses, hospitals, provider offices, etc.).

Other stakeholders may include: universities, pharmaceutical companies, health departments, local government, policy makers, health care administrators, etc.

Defining Quality in Health Care

During the mid to late 1990s, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published two major reports, To Err is Human (1999) and Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001), that identified significant deficiencies in the quality of US health care.

These reports documented a problem of overuse, misuse, and underuse of health care services in the US, all issues that helped to widen the gap between ideal patient care and actual patient care.

Perhaps the most startling finding from these reports was that approximately 44,000-98,000 inpatient hospital deaths per year were caused by preventable medical errors.**

See Required Readings #3 and #4: To Err is Human (#3) and Crossing the quality Chasm (#4)

**Bonus Opportunity: What is the current rate of deaths due to preventable medical errors? Has this rate increased or decreased since the IOM Reports were released?

9

Defining quality in health care (2)

As a result of these findings, the IOM turned its efforts towards better defining health care quality, identifying ways to measure and evaluate quality, and improving quality.

Many of the definitions for quality in health care refer to quality assurance. This is different than quality improvement.

While quality improvement is a continuous process that focuses on improving processes and systems, quality assurance measures compliance against certain standards

The IOM defines health care quality assurance as:

Quality of care is the degree to which health services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge.

IOM identified six principles or dimensions of US health care quality.

Defining quality in health care (2)

STEEEP Model of Health Care Quality