Assignment: Quality Care and Safety

Unit outcomes addressed in this assignment:

• Understand the important role that performance appraisal plays in managing human resources (HR) in health care organizations.

• See the connection of performance management function with other key HR functions of recruitment/selection, training/development, and compensation and rewards.

• Have an appreciation of the legal implications of performance appraisal. Course outcome assessed/addressed in this assignment:

HA255-2: Examine the ethical and legal issues in performance appraisal and challenges of the human resources manager in healthcare organizations.

Instructions

Please read the following case study scenario and follow the directions below. The senior management of a large Midwestern nursing  home gathered data on its quality of patient care and patient safety. They found that the quality of patient care and safety in thenursing  home was deficient. To solve the problem, the managers, with the help of a totalquality management expert, implemented  a sophisticated continuous quality improvement (CQI) process with structured monthly meetings to review relevant data. Except for the  senior nurse manager, other clinical employees did not participate or receive  information on the deliberations of the meetings.       While the top managers were very satisfied that the CQI addressed the problem in a systematic and formal manner, the  clinical staff employees were very frustrated in their efforts to report medical errors.

This was because, for every medication error,   taff members were assigned one point and  disciplined after three points. They could even be terminated as the disciplinary  process progressed. The points accumulated over the year were also used to determine the annual salary increases and promotions of   he nurses.Based on the above performance appraisal system, the nursing home reported animprovement in the reduction of medication errors. However, adverse clinical outcomes for   HA255: Human Resources for Health Care Organizationspatients remained unchanged. To investigate this problem, the top management team hired a new HR consultant.

After promising that all information would be strictly confidential, the consultant was able to convince the clinical staff to talk freely  about the problem of patients with adverse outcomes. In fact, the clinical staff admitted not filling out incident reports because of the punitive reporting system and expressed concern about the disconnection between the nursing home's goal of improving medication   safety practices and the nursing home's approach to error.

1. What would you do when implementing a CQI process to reduce medical errors?

2. How would you change the incident reporting and performance appraisal systems?

Present your ideas in a 2-3 page APA-formatted paper with a minimum of three references plus the textbook. Additional references must be reliable sources retrieved from the library, Internet, or elsewhere.