Quality is an essential ingredient in achieving universal health coverage (UHC). High-quality services provide patients with preventive, curative, and rehabilitative care without financial hardship.

Delivery Excellence is a systematic approach that enables teams to deliver product quality by embracing Business Agility, process optimization, and customer-centric flow. This includes planning, executing, and providing products with quality standards that exceed expectations.

High Work Standards

Healthcare providers like Rock Bordelon, On the Road face numerous quality challenges, including rapidly rising health costs and the need to deliver safe, effective, timely, patient-centered, and equitable care. Regulatory compliance is another challenge, given the massive paperwork and complexity of healthcare regulations at the national and state levels.

Healthcare organizations must rely on quality improvement methods to address these quality challenges. These involve structured processes, measurable outputs and performance targets, and Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles. These methods can help organizations improve productivity and achieve customer satisfaction.

However, many healthcare professionals may need to be trained in quality improvement techniques. In addition, the existing licensing and credentialing processes often need to provide adequate means of assessing the continued competence of medical professionals. For example, a nurse may be dismissed from one hospital for safety issues with no way for the next employer to know that the previous employer had concerns about her. This can lead to inconsistent standards of care. Moreover, these standards must be balanced with cost containment and the ability to invest in innovation.

Customer Focus

Customer focus is a company philosophy that keeps consumer preferences at the center of all business decisions and development. Companies often implement this approach through marketing departments and gather the needed information to understand customer behaviors, patterns, and trends.

The benefits of a strong customer focus include increased customer loyalty, which leads to repeat purchases and referrals. This can lower the cost of bringing in new customers and help businesses develop a more profitable customer base.

Creating a customer focus is an essential strategy for companies that want to grow and stay competitive in today’s market. One way to do this is through purposeful cultural initiatives, such as holding company-wide meet-and-greet events and encouraging employees to go above and beyond for their clients. Another way to promote a customer focus is by rewarding team members who consistently deliver high-quality service. Ultimately, this can inspire other team members to follow suit. It can also increase employee satisfaction and loyalty.

Continuous Improvement

A crucial part of continuous improvement is measuring and analyzing data. This allows you to see the impact of your gains and identify areas that need further work. There are a variety of tools that can help you with this.

Employees can also be a valuable resource when finding opportunities for improvement. They are often closer to the issues that need attention and can offer a fresh perspective on addressing them. A great way to engage employees in continuous improvement is by holding regular “stack up” meetings.

Many organizations need help to implement continuous improvement initiatives successfully. This is due to various factors, including a need for more resources and effective leadership. However, by following best practices such as creating a clear vision and strategy, encouraging innovation, providing regular feedback, and empowering employees, you can overcome these challenges and succeed with your continuous improvement initiatives.

Innovation and Learning

Although there are tremendous improvements in healthcare quality, consistently high standards still need to be achieved. This makes the focus on continuous improvement all the more vital to healthcare delivery systems.

Healthcare facilities must be able to identify potential barriers to quality improvement and overcome them promptly. This requires thoroughly analyzing organization design, servicescape design, personnel, medical care, marketing, and finance. This is best accomplished using tools and processes such as quality mapping, process modeling and reengineering, performance monitoring, and implementing change management techniques.

Integrated health information systems are critical to supporting this effort. For example, built-in safety and screening alerts enable physicians to consult in real-time with colleagues on a patient’s status and ensure that no missed opportunities for prevention are overlooked. In addition, electronic health records provide a single source of truth about patient outcomes and allow for data-driven decision-making and evidence-based advances in clinical practice. This enables healthcare providers to deliver better, more cost-effective, personalized care.