Develop a strategic plan that establishes top priorities for a department or division, aligned with the organization’s strategic plan, which you appraised in Assessment 3.

Develop a strategic plan that establishes top priorities for a department or division, aligned with the organization’s strategic plan, which you appraised in Assessment 3.

Solution

Quality Improvement Proposal

Introduction

The healthcare sector is under continuous transformations, hence the need for appropriate changes to adapt to the various changes. Besides, the patient needs constantly change, emphasizing the need to make appropriate changes that will enable the healthcare sector to address these changes effectively. Various changes also affect the delivery of high-quality and safe care to patients. This emphasizes the need to continuously evaluate either departmental or the entire organization’s performance, identify existing gaps, determine the contributing factors to such gaps, and develop strategic plans and quality improvement initiatives aimed at addressing those problems and improving the quality of care delivery (Niñerola et al., 2020). The departmental strategic priorities at Elsie Owens Health Center, located in Coram, New York, focus on improving patients’ quality of care. This aligns with the organization’s strategic plan and vision, which is to create relevant advancement, collaborative partnerships, and capacity building to achieve the organization’s vision and ensure a healthy and sustainable community. This paper presents a proposal for a high-level quality improvement initiative for providing high-quality and safe care for the patients as the selected departmental strategic priority. The proposed quality improvement initiative is the provision of a favorable working environment for the caregivers to improve the provision of high-quality and safe care to patients.

The rationale for Establishing the Strategic Priority

Patient safety and the quality of care they receive significantly impact their health outcomes. Ensuring patient safety and improving the quality of care is critical in increasing patient satisfaction by improving their health outcomes, reducing healthcare costs, and building the facility’s reputation, which is an essential determinant of its ability to run its various operations smoothly. Therefore, the quality improvement initiative aims to provide a favorable working environment that facilitates improved care delivery. Some of the measures to provide a favorable working environment as required by the initiative include; adequate staffing, effective leadership, management styles, and proper caregivers’ motivation in terms of salaries and allowances (Mannion & Davies, 2018). Adequate staffing will help reduce workload, which is associated with fatigue and burnout among caregivers, which may compromise the quality of care and patient safety.

Effective leadership styles, for instance, servant leadership, enable the leaders to address various concerns affecting the caregivers, which, when left unaddressed, could also affect care delivery. Effective leadership also enhances collaboration among different stakeholders to ensure adequate resources to drive specific initiatives to improve the quality of care. The excellent motivation of the caregivers also enables them to be committed to their work, hence improving the care quality. Quality Improvement Proposal.

The initiative will help create a conducive working environment for the healthcare providers through these measures. A favorable working environment enables the caregivers to provide high quality and effective care for the patients, thus improving their health outcomes, satisfaction, and experience (Randhawa & Ahuja, 2017). Quality Improvement Proposal.

Failure to provide high-quality and safe care to patients, which could be due to various reasons, including an unfavorable working environment for the caregivers, could result in adverse impacts. Quality Improvement Proposal. These include poor patient health outcomes, low levels of satisfaction and bad experience, and a damaged facility’s reputation that may eventually affect the facility’s reputation.

Key Points from A SWOT Analysis of the Chosen Strategic Priority

The strategic priority chosen has its associated strengths and weaknesses. It also presents opportunities and threats which must be addressed adequately. The primary strength of this strategic priority is that with enhanced quality and safety of care, improved patient health outcomes will also benefit the facility. However, the significant weakness is that other factors can also affect the quality of care and patient safety, thereby making it difficult to determine the effectiveness of the initiative developed to improve patient safety and care quality. The strategic priority also presents opportunities in that the department and the facility can continuously evaluate performance and determine other appropriate ways of improving patient safety and the quality of care they receive. Lastly, the main threat to this strate