Patient Safety Strategic Plan - Overview and Instructions
Objective: Students will work in small groups to analyze and determine improvements in the culture of safety and reliability in a community healthcare system based upon a given case study. At the end of this 5-week assignment, each group will submit a Patient Safety Strategic Plan using the provided template.
Background: Knights Consulting Group (KCG) provides healthcare safety and quality consulting services to organizations who see the importance of becoming highly reliable. Your team has been hired by a community hospital to help them become an HRO within 5 years.
The final deliverable for this client is a 2-page Patient Safety Strategic Plan using the provided KCG template. Keeping healthcare improvement plans brief and concise is a critical component of an HRO. To maintain consistency, all consulting groups have a standard format for project plan communication, such as an A3, PDSA, DMAIC, etc. Knights Consulting Group uses SBAR. The Situation and Background sections of the template have been completed.
Case Study: Your team has completed an organizational assessment over the past 2 weeks, which included interviews with leaders, staff, providers, patients, and families. For the next two weeks, you and your group will analyze the assessment data collected and identify patient safety gaps, prioritize future improvement work, and draft the Patient Safety Strategic Plan. You'll present your findings to the senior leadership team via the Discussion Board and provide feedback to others during Week 9. You'll incorporate the feedback from your peers and then submit the final plan and supporting attachments during Week 10.
Week 6: Read the required readings and complete the web activities. Get to know your group members and establish a plan for completing this assignment. Begin your literature search on High Reliability Organizations (HROs).
Week 7: Using the performance improvement tools that you have previously learned in this course, complete an analysis of the organizational assessment data collected with your group members. Complete the Assessment section of the SBAR template.
Week 8: Prioritize the opportunities for improvement and determine which ones should be completed short-term and which could be long-term. Draft a high-level list of opportunities for improvement for both short and long-term priorities to become an HRO. Summarize your recommendations on the Patient Safety Strategic Plan, keeping them concise and brief.
Week 9: Present your final plan (as a group) to the Leadership Team using the Discussion Board. Respond individually to at least one group with suggestions for recommendations they may have missed. Provide references to support your suggestions.
Week 10: Revise and Submit your final Patient Safety Strategic Plan (in a paper format), Title page, a reference list, and any appendices that may help to reinforce the message for the senior leadership team and provide future direction.
Case Study Supporting Materials
Required Readings
Articles
- Chassin, M.R., & Loeb, J.M. (2013). High-reliability health care: Getting there from here. Milbank Quarterly, 91(3), 459–490. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0009.12023 (Links to an external site.)
- Institute for Healthcare Improvement. (2017). A framework for safe, reliable, and effective care. http://www.ihi.org/resources/Pages/IHIWhitePapers/Framework-Safe-Reliable-Effective-Care.aspx Links to an external site.
Web Activities
Review these websites:
- AHRQ: High Reliability. https://psnet.ahrq.gov/primer/high-reliability (Links to an external site.)
- AHRQ: Quality and Safety Indicators. https://www.qualityindicators.ahrq.gov/Default.aspx (Links to an external site.)
- AHRQ: Surveys on Patient Safety Culture. https://www.ahrq.gov/sops/surveys/hospital/index.html