It's a balancing act that hospitals and health systems undertake every day: providing high-quality care while simultaneously finding ways to improve clinical practice and the overall patient experience. Patients don't see your QI, EBP, and research projects, but they definitely benefit from their outcomes. However, staff members may be struggling to do their assigned jobs and complete projects that impact your organization.
QI leaders likely do not have day-to-day insight into all the projects underway, let alone the ability to demonstrate their progress. C-suite executives may not have an updated day-to-day, high-level view of projects across the hospital or system, making it difficult to prioritize resources and requests.
You need a single application that supports every person in a hospital or health system involved in a QI, EBP, or research project — from team members to influencers to managers to the executive suite — who would universally benefit from the overall transparency and time savings it provides. Let's take a look at how the right solution could improve the impact of your projects for all stakeholders.
The C-Suite needs a comprehensive top-level view and easier reporting
If your hospital or health system has a quality improvement champion in the C-suite, that person would immediately recognize the value of the right workflow management solution. It should include an executive-level dashboard, where a hospital's or health system's C-level administrators could quickly and easily see which projects contribute to the organization's operational goals. It could allow them to determine how to allocate resources best and report progress to the board.
The ideal application would also have readily available information to respond to regulatory requirements and requests — and in the US, maximize reimbursements. With a cohesive view of all QI, EBP, and research projects, such a solution could help drive both quality improvement and cost control.
QI leaders need greater ability to show project progress
The leader responsible for the hospital's or health system's quality improvement program or performance excellence program has a dedicated list of projects addressing everything from sentinel events to new devices to the emergence of a new COVID variant. That individual must see every step of every project planned, underway, and completed.
The right workflow management solution can enable that oversight, giving your senior QI leader an early warning of projects behind schedule or those that might be an immediate game-changer for the hospital. You need an application to assure your QI leadership that teams are accessing top-quality, current clinical literature from multiple sources, thus applying the best information to answer the question or solve the problem. QI leaders should have all the details at their fingertips to efficiently show progress and make recommendations.
Hands-on project team members need efficient participation, comfort, and shared governance
Nursing and medical residents, as well as other employees undertaking QI, EBP, and research projects, want to feel confident in their contributions to patient outcomes and the facility's goals. Find an application that's easy to use and offers a standardized process, so both novice and expert project participants have a seat (and voice) at the table. The right solution would teach and engage every participant throughout the process, making their task less daunting.
The tool should also enable team members to determine upfront whether their project will be unique and beneficial — or if it's just reinventing the wheel. By putting the best information and a useful methodology into their hands, they would be more likely to embrace the effort rather than push back. Staff are understandably eager to commit to an organization where projects lead to continuous improvement.
Influencers need better facilitation of communication and collaboration
Whether a medical librarian, a department head, or a director of nursing, your QI influencers can make QI, EBP, and research projects more appealing and efficient for the project team members. If your influencers could endorse a comprehensive workflow management solution, projects would leap from manual to automated, empowering the participants with more significant opportunities for thoughtful engagement and easier communication. They could benefit from an application that improves transparency between librarians and staff while increasing cross-department, multi-disciplinary participation in projects.
When everyone can see the project as a whole, from the original question of the project to the revealed evidence to the areas where more information is needed, they are more likely to be invested in the QI project.
Your organization needs qualitative and quantitative results
The right workflow solution for clinical practice improvements could help you improve staff retention. Overall satisfaction would grow, enabling higher caliber training and building individual and team confidence. The best application should help you realize impressive enhancements to your quality improvement programs:
- Reduced duplication of effort
- Increased project participation
- More high-quality projects
- Better project dissemination
When you're looking to maximize the ROI of your quality improvement efforts, consider what would benefit each group of participants. Being able to check off all those boxes with a single application could be an advantage for your hospital or health system, benefitting employees at all levels as well as the patients who rely on receiving top-quality care.
