PLEASE ANSWER EACH OF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS IN A WELL-WRITTEN OPEN ENDED RESPONSE. CITE REFERENCES IF USED (APA FORMAT)

1. Provide examples of clinical outcome measures.  Why are these measures important for improving clinical care?  What are the important features of effective outcome measures? 

2. Customer satisfaction measures have become much more important to healthcare organizations in recent years.  Why are these measures important?  How do organizations determine their performance relative to competitors? 

3. Define the concept of the Electronic Health Record.  How are EHRs at the heart of a clinical improvement system? 

 4.The Donabedian Model uses three types of measures in quality work to examine health services and evaluate quality of care. The information gathered are from three measures: structure, process, and outcomes. Define and describe the difference between each and provide an example of each. 

 5.What is “systems thinking”?  Why is the concept important in quality improvement? 

 6.Define special cause and common cause variation.  How do they differ?  What approaches are taken to eliminate these causes of variation? 

7.Describe the Lean Improvement Cycle.  Give an example of how the cycle would be applied in a healthcare setting (clinic, physician’s office, hospital, long term care facility).  

8. Why do practitioners resist efforts at standardization?  How does standardization help the problems facing the healthcare system of high cost and poor quality? 

 9.What is Value Stream Mapping?  How is this tool used in a Lean Improvement Cycle? 

 10.How are Clinical Practice Guidelines examples of standardization?  Discuss three benefits of CPGs in the healthcare delivery system. 

 11.STEEEP is the acronym used for the IOM’s healthcare industry goals and represents care that is Safe, Timely, Efficient, Effective, Equitable, and Patient-Centered. Provide an example of each of the 6 AIMS.  Why are these concepts important for healthcare practitioners? 

12. Describe Shewhart’s PDSA cycle.  How is it applied to quality improvement in healthcare? 

 13.What are the major steps in the Plan phase of PDSA?  Which lean tools might be involved in this phase? 

 
14.Name three challenges to CPG implementation and describe how they create barriers to implementation. 

15.What are “never events”?  How are they being used in healthcare to promote quality care?

16. What is an “episode of care”.  How does this concept apply to CPG development?