Plan Implementation, Essay Example

Plan Implementation

In order to adequately implement the plan, a range of stakeholders will be in charge of executing certain sections of the plan.  The board of directors, while not directly involved in the day-to-day implementation of the plan, will play a key role in assessing the long-term impact and evaluation of the plan.  The board of directors are given this responsibility for a number of reasons: 1) The board of directors only meet once a month (or quarter) in order to assess potential progress- thus, giving them day-to-day responsibility is beyond the scope of their supervision; 2) The board of directors serve as a key “outside” consulting organizations that lend fresh eyes to assessing how the plan is being implemented without intricate knowledge of exerted effort (Shortell, &Kaluzny, 1999).

The executive leadership of the pain management clinic is responsible for implementing the plan.  There are obviously different responsibilities related to the different executives in the clinic’s  “C – Suite.”  For example, the chief informational office is in charge of details related to the IT systems and how the systems are used for quality measurement purposes; the CFO is involved to directly measure the impact of the plan on the clinic’s finances, including establishing metrics that will measure its ultimate impact of quality improvement.  The CEO is responsible for implementation of the entire plan: That is, the CEO is responsible for making sure that the plan ultimately reaches the goals initially outlined.

Of all the stakeholders involved in the process, the quality improvement committee perhaps plays the most important and direct role in making sure that medication errors are decreased and quality is improved.  This responsibility is a function of several reasons: 1) The quality improvement is directly involved, on a –day-to-day basis, in implementation of the plan to reduce medication errors; 2) The committee has more expertise in the area than other stakeholders; thus, while the CFO and CIO must be involved in order to make sure that the finance and information operations support the plan, they likely lack the knowledge to understand the full picture of change.  Thus, the quality improvement committee, in addition to having weekly meetings on the implementation of the plan, will also have meetings with supervisors in order to understand what information and decisions need to be made moving forward.

The medical staff and management also play key roles in the plan due to their observation of the plan’s ultimate effect.  Clinicians have the unique perspective of not only seeing how the plan impacts patients’ outcome, but also in comparing to how things were before the plan was implemented.  This is an extremely valuable perspectivethat should not only be captured in periodic reports to executives, but also told during key quarterly meetings in order to assess the strengths and benefits of the plan.

The department heads also play a key role in making sure that the plan is implemented fully in their department.  In particular, department heads are more familiar than others regarding what potential medication errors happen in their department and the true progress in treating those errors.

Reporting Structure and Education

The most ideal reporting structure for the project is a two-way information stream.   Clinicians, department heads, and the quality management committee will be responsible for collecting data from their respective spheres and pushing information up to executive decision makers, who in turn, will have to aggregate and report the information to the board of directors.  At the same time, however, these stakeholders should also feed information down in order that clinicians, department heads, and managers are able to understand what the focus and goals should be moving forward.

Education is an integral portion of the plan.  In order to make sure that education is emphasized, and particularly that the right data and messages are directed to the right stakeholders, a special interdisciplinary educational committee will be created by executives in their respective decisions.  Thus, business managers will be responsible for educating other business managers, clinicians will educate clinicians, and administrators will educate other administrators (Liebler&McConnell , 2011).

Although there will be quarterly “goal” meetings assessing what goals have been met, there will also be annual meetings where presentations and data reports will be prepared for key stakeholders.  There will also be a “revaluation” time during this period when executives have the option to recalibrate existing goals or to create or destroy existing goals to make sure the plan is progressing (Zuckerman, 2005).  This period of revaluation will establish the goals to be addressed over the next year and beyond.

Administrators will be the main representation (but some clinicians will also be tapped) in order to give presentations and write journal articles on the lessons that can be learned from the quality improvement plan.  There will also be other dissemination efforts in order to share and learn from other quality management plans that have been implemented nationally. There are numerous ideas proposed to help along this process including holding conferences based on the issue of medication pain errors, sponsoring special publications (in conjunction with journal articles), and having policy events with stakeholders ranging from private providers, health insurance executives, state and federal stakeholders (Horner, Hanson, Wood, Silver, & Reynolds, 2005).

References

Shortell, S.M. &Kaluzny, A.D. (1999). Health care management: organization design and behavior.  Boston: Cengage.

Horner, J.K., Hanson, L.C., Wood, D., Silver, A.G. & Reynolds, K.S. (2005). Using quality improvement to address pain management practices in nursing homes. Journal of Pain and Symptom Management.  30(3), 271-277.

Liebler, J.G. & McConnell C.R. (2011).  Management Principles for Health Professionals.  Boston: Jones and Bartlett.

Zuckerman, A.M. (2005).  Healthcare strategic planning. Boston: Health Administration Press.