Nashville General Hospital - Paper Example

Health care is paramount for all human beings, and as a result, many health facilities have put in place quality assurance policies to help cope with the high demand in the health sector (Dimsdale, 2017). One of such health facilities in Nashville General Hospital (NGH) in the United States is that it is precisely located in Tennessee. According to a recent survey, the hospital holds about 116 beds; serves 27,000 patients annually which include 4,016 admissions. About 822 in patients and 2,286 outpatients had surgery performed on them last year. Some of the procedures offered at NGH are Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) which has a rating of average according to the patients served and heart failure which is also rated at average (Nashville General Hospitals, 2017).

The hospital barely performs major Colon Cancer Surgery as well as hip and knee replacement and as the rating body does not rate such these procedures in the United States. The rating comes about as a result of evaluation of patients who get treated during the assessment period and not necessarily the whole year. Some of the Doctors in the hospital are Dr. Phillip Bourne who deals with Obstetrics and Gynecology and Dr. Jaime Bryan who is the MD of General Emergency Medicine. The mission of the Hospital is to improve the wellness and health of the Nashville community by ensuring equitable access is provided to access a coordinated patient-centered care. They have the vision to lead exceptionally in community health care. NGH offers to school for those interested in health sciences and utilizes this has one of its facility to help them improve their quality assurances policies as well as programs (Nashville General Hospitals, 2017). Other present facilities are clinics which are Digestive Health clinic and Breast Health Center just but to name a few. Other facilities available at NGM include radiology, rehab therapies, respiratory and finally laboratory. These facilities are most times classified as services, and the hospital continues to offer them for continually improving their quality assurance.

Organizational Structure of Nashville General Hospital

The organization chart of NGM is not as complicated as it seems. The executive leadership team oversees all the facilities. The team is in charge of all activities at the hospital and ensures that everything is running smoothly. The executive leadership comprises of different people and positions. The overall leader is the Chief Executive Officer, Joseph Webb, and D.SC. FACHE, who is in charge of all the operational duties at the NGH? Other people who are a part of the executive team are Dawn L. Alexander (Chief Nursing Officer), Mark Brown (Chief Operating Officer), Dr. Leon Dent (Chief Medical Officer), Kimberly Lamar (Chief Population Health and Quality Officer), and Bruce Naremore who is the Chief Finance Officer. The above person together with six others comprises of the executive, and each of them heads their departments to ensure that all the quality assurance policies are upheld (Nashville General Hospitals, 2017). The same ensure that all the equipment required is made available, and all the research needed are well financed, and support was given. They operate the hospital with the stallholders in mind. The leaders also blend governance structures that ensure the success of the NGH mission, vision and Core Values (National Quality Forum, 2011).

Quality Assurance at Nashville General Hospital

Nashville General Hospital upholds their quality assurance programs to promote quality under patient safety by reducing risks and continuously improve their various processes. The CEO of NGH has an excellent reputation when it comes to upholding superior quality control as well as assurance. Brown is an advocate for patient healthcare improvement and safety and as such oversees the quality control programs and policies. The thorough understanding of program development and budget maintenance makes it easier to operate the NGH as well as oversee daily workplace system functionality. The services offered at NGH aims at providing a full range of adult specialty and primary caregiving services and the physicians, nurses, as well as the ancillary staff, support the NGH environment for continually promoting quality improvement; customer satisfaction included.

The clinics specifically provide both specialty and primary services which include internal and family medicine, cardiology, dermatology, ophthalmology and general surgeries among others. The above services day in and day out require improvement. The nurses and physicians not only care how they will improve them but also ensure that they are up to date and answer some of the questions they have in mind on how to provide quality standards. NGM has received recognition for upholding its quality assurance policies, and this has been a motivation for the employees. Quality assurance at the NGH is used as a management tool for improving and monitoring various programs. The success in implementing or improving their quality assurance programs is solely dependent on human participation (Gleeson et al., 2016).

Requirements for Quality Assurance

The purpose of the quality control programs especially in medicine is to make sure that all the employees of any given hospital demonstrate a commitment to ensuring continued competence and upholding quality improvements. Most colleges and universities do this through knowledge assessment, skill assessment as well as the judgment of members. NGM ensures these since they operate a school of health sciences which ensures that all the nurses, as well as doctors, are skilled when it comes to quality assurance programs. This alone makes it stand out from the neighboring hospitals in Nashville and thus, the high ranking in various surveys. All the employees who are considered of the general class are required to at least develop two goals each year (Gleeson et al., 2016). The primary purpose of this is to ensure that the quality does not in any way lose its purpose and that it's continually improved. The CEO is mandated to make sure that all the employees meet the required quality assurance which is mostly evaluated by the end of the year. The quality assurance program requirement was developed to regulate and improve the overall performance or quality of the healthcare system and eventually the health profession. Therefore, NGH is mandated to ensure that all the health professionals have set personal goals that are helpful in the improvement of the already available health quality assurance programs. NGH provides its employees with online self-assessment and a completed notified and well-documented verification of judgment and skills.

Never Events

Patient safety researchers are keen to estimate that in one of the thirty-nine operations, surgeons leave at least one foreign object in a patients body. It is also estimated that wrong procedures are performed on wrong body sites at least twenty times a week. The same also perform wrong procedures at least twenty times a week and as such it is notably clear that there are mistakes in the medical profession that cannot be prevented (Agency for Health Care Research and Quality). As stated by Marty Makari an associate professor of surgery at John Hopkins Hospital, infections rate will never get down to zero even if all the procedures are done right. It is therefore certain that NGH occasionally experiences the never event since it's hard to prevent (Nguyen & Moffatt-Bruce, 2016). Quality assurance programs are therefore enacted to ensure continuous improvement in case of such incidents. Quality assurance is paramount in all health facilities (Dimsdale, 2017).

References

Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (n. d.). Never events. http://psnet.ahrq.gov/primer.aspx?primerID=3Nashville General Hospitals (n.d.). About http://nashvillegeneral.org/clinics-services accessed on September 24, 2017, at 12.20pm.Dimsdale, J. E. (2017). Assuring quality health care outcomes: lessons learned from car dealers? Patient Related Outcome Measures, 8, 16. http://doi.org/10.2147/PROM.S116766Gleeson H, Calderon A, Swami V, et al. (2016). A systematic review of approaches to using patient experience data for quality improvement in healthcare settings. BMJ Open 2016;6:e011907. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2016-011907

National Quality Forum (NQF). Serious Reportable Events in Healthcare-2011 Update: A Consensus Report. Washington, DC: National Quality Forum (NQF); 2011.

Nguyen, M. C., & Moffatt-Bruce, S. D. (2016). What's New in Academic Medicine? Retained surgical items: Are zero incidences achievable?. International Journal of Academic Medicine, 2(1), 1.