The purpose of the quality improvement initiative is to implement a clinical technology system to prevent medication errors and improve safety and quality outcomes for patients. The hospital, just like many other health care organizations in the country, faces a considerable challenge and burden of preventable medical errors. The problem affects quality outcomes and increases the cost of care for individual patients and the hospital. Therefore, it is crucial to implement a quality improvement system to reduce the cost and other adverse outcomes. The proposed system will capture patients’ information and match critical data to specific treatment schedule to avoid errors (Agha, 2014). Nurses will have the correct information when administering drugs to their patients to maintain the right treatment. The system will also improve communication across the healthcare sector to improve collaboration between caregivers.
The Target Population or Audience
The proposed system will affect various stakeholders in the healthcare facility. One of the groups that will be affected are the nurses and other health care providers who will use the proposed clinical system. The system will change the way they prescribe and administer drugs to patients. Besides the care providers, the system will affect patients through the achievement of quality objectives. The stakeholders are usually affected by medical errors in the hospital (Pichon-Riviere et al., 2017). Therefore, their care outcomes will improve through the implementation of the proposed clinical system. System execution will affect nurse administrators and other leaders in the healthcare facility. They are expected to provide the necessary resources for the acquisition, implementation, and use of the proposed system. Generally, the success of the quality improvement initiative will depend on the input of the hospital administration.
The Benefits of the Quality Improvement Initiative
The quality improvement initiative will have various benefits to the hospital and the stakeholders. Evidence from past studies and the evaluation of implemented initiatives have indicated the effectiveness of the system in reducing medical errors and improving the efficiency of nurses and other health care providers (Wang, Kung, & Byrd, 2018). Nurses will benefit from enhanced services, safety, and quality outcome of their care delivery. The project will also improve their level of satisfaction and reduce burnout. Patients will benefit from reduced errors in the care they receive. The project will reduce the cost incurred from medical mistakes, such as the need for further treatment, lengthy hospital stays, and readmissions. Hence, stakeholders will be satisfied due to improved care outcomes. The hospital will benefit from improved efficacy in the dispensation, prescription, and administration of drugs. The system will reduce the cost of care through enhanced effectiveness and eradication of the adverse outcomes of medical errors.
The Interprofessional Collaboration
The implementation of the quality improvement initiative will require effective collaboration between various actors in the healthcare system. It will involve the input of the hospital administrators who will work with the information technology team to acquire the necessary technology for the implementation of the clinical system. The technologists will work with nurses, pharmacists, doctors, lab technicians, and other players in the care continuum who will use the system to support the delivery of healthcare to patients. The project implementation team should collect the input of the users through the need assessment phase of the implementation. Notably, the collaboration will occur throughout the project lifecycle to ensure a seamless system that will achieve the quality improvement objectives (Chao, 2016). Besides, users will collaborate in the system use. For example, nurses will collect information on patient history, doctors will use the information to prescribe drugs, pharmacists will dispense the medicines, and nurses administer them. Therefore, all the parties involved should collaborate and communicate effectively.
The Cost or Budget Justification
The initiative will cost the organization a high amount of financial resources to implement and maintain. The yearly cost of the project is estimated at $191,894. The annualized start-up cost will be around 9% of the entire budget, while the rest will be used to implement the project in one year. The cost involves the acquisition of the clinical system and the human resources necessary for its implementation. However, from a cost-benefit analysis, it is evident that the benefits of the system will outweigh the cost of implementation and maintenance. Therefore, the cost is justified by the significance and benefit of the system that will prevent the cost of medical errors for the hospital and patients.
Evaluation of the quality improvement initiative
An assessment of the project is necessary to test the extent to which the system will achieve quality objectives. The primary measure in the evaluation process is the reduction of medical errors and related costs. Evaluators will collect data to compare the prevalence of medical errors before and after the implementation of the quality improvement initiative. If the rate is lower after implementation, the team will provide evidence of the efficacy of the system in achieving the quality improvement goal. Any other outcome will indicate lack of efficacy and need for change to meet the quality objective.