Identify which one of the following approaches you would choose to assist in determining and measuring outcomes: FMEA, Pareto principle, and control charts. Describe the best approach and explain why you chose it.

Discussion 5-2: Determining and Measuring Outcomes

Numerous tools are available for healthcare organizations to guide them through their quality improvement processes. While the goal of using any one of them is to ensure positive outcomes at the end of a quality improvement initiative, it is important to note that not all tools are appropriate for every situation that an organization might be facing at any given time (Institute for Healthcare Improvement, 2022). Among the quality improvement tools that are commonly used by healthcare organizations include; the Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA), Pareto principle, and control charts. Among these tools, control charts would be the most appropriate tool for determining and measuring outcomes in a continuous quality improvement project (Cho et al., 2021). The rationale of selecting a control chart is that it enables an organization to monitor changes in outcome measures over time during the intervention period.

A control chart, when compared to the FMEA and Pareto principles, gives a graphical representation of the impacts of a quality improvement intervention over a specified period of time. Using the tool, an organization is able to assess the variations of outcomes against a quality control. Scores above the control limits signify that a meaningful change has occurred (Cho et al., 2021). Conversely, an organization uses FMEA to evaluate processes for possible failures and offers insights for correcting potential causes of failure before the occurrence of adverse events. The Pareto principle identifies the degree of impacts that different factors have on the outcomes (Institute for Healthcare Improvement, 2022; Kammoun et al., 2021). Therefore, these two tools are not effective enough to determine and measure outcomes. An example of an outcome measure that an organization can evaluate using a control chart is changes in fall rates in a unit during the implementation of a patient education program aimed at preventing falls.

References

Cho, J., Shin, S., Jeong, Y., Lee, E., Ahn, S., Won, S., & Lee, E. (2021). Healthcare quality improvement analytics: An example using computerized provider order entry. Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland), 9(9), 1187. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare9091187

Institute for Healthcare Improvement. (2022). Tools. http://www.ihi.org/resources/Pages/Tools/default.aspx

Kammoun, A., Hachicha, W., & Aljuaid, A. M. (2021). Integrating quality tools and methods to analyze and improve a hospital sterilization process. Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland), 9(5), 544. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare9050544