The evolution of quality improvement in healthcare: Patient-centered care and health information technology applications

Abstract

Objective: Quality improvement in the healthcare industry has evolved over the past few decades. In recent years, an increased focus on coordination of care efforts and the introduction of health information technology has been of high importance in improving the quality of patient care. Methods: In this review, we present a history of quality improvement efforts, discuss quality improvement in the healthcare industry, and examine quality improvement strategies with a focus on patient-centered care and information technology applications via patient registries. Results: Evidence shows that the key to quality improvement efforts in the healthcare industry is the coordination of patient care efforts through better data evaluation processes. By utilizing patient registries that can be linked to electronic health records (EHRs) and the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) framework, the quality of care provided to patients can be improved. Conclusions: While many healthcare organizations have quality improvement departments or teams in place that may be able to handle these types of efforts, it is important for organizations to be familiar with processes and frameworks that employees at different levels of the organization can be involved in. In order to ensure successful outcomes from quality improvement initiatives, managers and clinicians should work together in identifying problems and developing solutions.

Nurse managers' perceptions of nurse staffing and nursing care quality: A cross‐sectional study

“…The model also underpins the importance of innovation in promoting quality of care by introducing new working methods, techniques and tools into the care process. This association was analysed in previous studies which found, for example, that namely the new information technologies are a way of promoting personalized care by improving the decision‐making process and the quality of care (Cantiello, Kitsantas, Moncada, & Abdul, ).…”

Introducing quality improvement to theEmergency Medicine Journal

“…There are also several recent papers suggesting that internationally and across medical specialities this pattern continues 4 5. During the 1990s, there was an increase in the application of QI techniques and processes to healthcare settings, which has accelerated over the past two decades 1. Knowledge of QI is now an established part of many emergency medicine curricula and engagement in QI often a requirement of regulatory bodies.…”

Evaluation of the Management of Hospital Radiological Protection.

“…Since the 1930s, there have been debates about the improvement in the quality of hospital services, since decision-making in the health sector requires an awareness of professionals and managers, since they live in a constantly changing scenario of care to ensure quality patient care and services. Since then, the creation of systems, cheklists, fiches, protocols, questionnaires, programs and policies have been gaining space and visibility in the discussions about hospital management planning (Feldman et al, 2005;Cantiello et al, 2016). Among the various sectors of a hospital there is radiodiagnosis, an extremely complex sector because it has different modalities of image acquisition that is used as one of the main tools for diagnosis of pathologies, monitoring of treatment and prediction of results, through ionizing radiation.…”