Management healthcare

Part 1

Complex Systems, Organizational Learning, and Improving the Quality of Care"  Please respond to the following:

• Elaborate on the major reasons why, according to the text, health care systems can be considered complex. Next, argue a case for double-loop against single-loop learning in organizational learning. Support your response with at least one (1) example of the advantages of double-loop learning.
• Common industry knowledge dictates that in order to achieve desired outcomes in quality improvement in health care organizations, the leadership must consider multiple factors. Speculate on the main reasons why focusing on "people" processes is a highly regarded practice for improving the performance of health care organizations. Support your response with at least two (2) examples of increased value and / or performance in the researched hospital from the e-Activity.

Part 2

You can agree or disagre in the following

In complex systems, it is comprised of people and activities that mutually influence each other in complex ways with often unpredictable outcomes. Elements of the system co-evolve as people and activities move forward together and interact over time. Health care systems can be considered complex because, they respond to stimuli in both expected and unexpected ways. Also, mistakes and unexpected outcomes can serve as the basis for novelty and innovation, provided learning occurs. If 2 provider offices implement the same workflow, what 1 providers office will see as the outcome compared to what the other providers office will see could be 2 very different things, therefore making it a complex system. 

Double-loop learning analyses why something went wrong, versus just correcting what went wrong and not doing it again. Double-loop take an in-depth look at why something went wrong and how to avoid it in the future. Not all learning needs to be to learn from your mistake by just fixing your error because a policy or procedure tells you too, but because to actually solve the problem of why the mistake occurred in the first place. Using double-loop learning in organizational learning will take into effect all the different levels and influence of knowledge, whether it be from an individual or a group. 

One advantage of double-loop learning is uncovering where a policy and/or procedure might be outdated. If mistakes keep occurring and everyone uses single-loop learning nothing will be solved. However, with double-loop thinking they may find a policy or procedure that is outdated and needs to be changed. Possibly something in the EHR has changed or maybe something that never needed to be documented now needs to be documented on a regular basis. If we just keep going back and "doing what we missed" we'll never realized that maybe the EHR isnt' prompting us to do the documentation.

Focusing on "people" process is highly regarded practice for improving the performance of health care organizations because people want to be treated well whether at a physician's office, hospital or a restaurant. Years ago, doctors were treated like they belonged on a thrown. They would talk down to patients and it didn't really matter. Now times have changed and roles have changed. Providers now need to treat their patients with respect. Research has proved that the #1 thing patients look for in a provider is how nice they are and how well they listen. If you have a patient that likes their physician and their staff, they will be happy and continue to return to that practice. Also, when patients are happy they will have better health outcomes, improving quality scores.

My own personal example from the local hospital, I was seeing and Endocrinologist who was constantly running late, was rude to me when I was in his exam room and never listened to me. It got so bad, that at one appointment I walked out in the middle of the exam and never returned. He lost my business and I went out of town and sought out another Endocrinologist.

Another example is our local hospital has a reputation for providing poor care and having rude staff. As a paramedic, I often pick up patients who do not want to be transported to the local hospital because of those reasons. The initials for the hospital are WCA and has earned the nickname "Worst Care Around." They have a hard time keeping staff and are constantly using traveling nurses, so you don't have the ability to get to know staff or the patients.