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Syllabus

Quality Improvement in Healthcare
HR208

YEAR:

2023-2024

CREDIT HOURS:

2.00

PREREQUISITES:

IS104 Microcomputer Applications, or Departmental Consent.

COREQUISITES:

None

COURSE NOTES:

None

CATALOG COURSE DESCRIPTION:

Introduction to concepts in healthcare quality improvement with an emphasis on performance improvement, utilization, and risk management.

HutchCC INSTITUTION-WIDE OUTCOMES:

  1. Demonstrate the ability to think critically and make reasonable judgments by acquiring, analyzing, combining, and evaluating information.
  2. Demonstrate the skills necessary to access and manipulate information through various technological and traditional methods.
  3. Demonstrate effective communication through reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
  4. Demonstrate effective interpersonal and collaborative skills.
  5. Demonstrate effective quantitative-reasoning and computational skills.

AREA OR PROGRAM OUTCOMES

  1. Demonstrate the Hutchinson Community College institutional outcomes.
  2. Display entry-level knowledge and skills fundamental to the health information management profession.
  3. Demonstrate good communications skills.
  4. Demonstrate skills in technology.
  5. Demonstrate problem-solving and critical-thinking skills.
  6. Comply with AHIMA Code of Ethics and maintain professional conduct.

COURSE OUTCOMES AND COMPETENCIES:

  1. Examine the Performance Improvement (PI) Model.
    1. Trace the historical events including key legislation, individuals, and organizations that have contributed to modern PI programs and healthcare quality intiatives..
    2. Define terminology and standards common to PI activities including Six Sigma, Lean, Systems Thinking, brainstorming, and distinguish between organization-wide and team PI activities.
    3. Define the steps involved in PI and name areas that should be addressed in the development of a healthcare organization's PI plan.
    4. Identify improvement opportunities based on performance measurement.
    5. Describe the significance of outcomes and proactive risk reduction in PI methodology.
    6. Identify the effective use of teams in PI activities and describe the contributions team charters, team roles, ground rules, listening, and questioning can make to improve the effectiveness of PI teams.
  2. Differentiate among the various PI and healthcare data collection tools.
    1. Differentiate between internal and externa. benchmark comparisons.
    2. Introduce the concept of data aggregation in support of data analysis.
    3. Describe the various data types and recognize the correct graphic presentation for a specific data type.
    4. Design graphic displays for a given set of data and analyze the data for changes in performance displayed in a graphic form.
    5. Apply communication tools such as minutes, quarterly reports, and presentations in PI processes and recognize key elements in a PI presentation.
    6. Identify the tools commonly used to manage the recruitment and retention of human resources.
    7. Outline the credentialing process for independent practitioners and employed clinical staff.
    8. Describe the information management tools commonly used in the PI process.
  3. Explain the processes developed to optimize the continuum of care.
    1. Discuss the method used to develop a continuum of care in a community healthcare setting and identify the steps in the case management function.
    2. Describe how utilization review, criteria sets and core measures contribute to the management of care in the US healthcare system.
    3. Identify four core processes in the care, treatment, and service of patients and recognize the common means by which healthcare organizations monitor and improve the quality of these elements of care.
    4. Describe how the National Patient Safety Goals, including those related to infectious disease, interface with the PI cycle during the patient care process.
    5. Define the roles clinical practice guidelines and evidence-based medicine plays in standardizing patient care.
    6. Identify the differences between internal and external customers and summarize the reasons customers' perspectives are important to PI process.
    7. Describe the difference between surveys and interviews, outline the characteristics that make them effective and critique a survey or interview format.
    8. Explain the seven programs and plans that are key elements in a healthcare organization's environment of care.
    9. Identify the relationship between the Join Commission Environment of Care (EC0 standards and the National Incident Management System (NIMS)in the development of an emergency operations plan.
  4. Examine the importance of risk management in healthcare organizations.
    1. Define risk management and its purpose and describe a risk assessment and a hazard vulnerability analysis.
    2. Describe why the control of infection is so important in healthcare organizations.
    3. Differentiate healthcare-associated infections from community-acquired infections.
    4. Explain the various approaches healthcare organizations use to incorporate risk reduction strategies regarding the occurrence of infection including regulations and regulatory approaches.
    5. Describe the importance of managing risk exposure in today's healthcare organization, analyze the importance of using occurrence reporting to decrease risk exposure and outline the safety monitoring process.
    6. Define the concept of a Sentinel event and discuss how sentinel events can point to important opportunities to improve safety in healthcare organizations.
    7. Explain how risk managers use their skills in patient advocacy and National Patient Safety Goals to lessen the impact that potentially compensable events can have on healthcare organizations.
    8. Identify how health policy, national initiatives, the private sector, and professional advocacy all contribute to the design of safe medication management systems.
    9. Use the failure mode and effects analysis (FEMA) tool as a proactive risk reduction strategy in anticipating medication system failures.
    10. Recognize the need to integrate PI and patient safety data into the management of the human resources function in healthcare.
  5. Identify the processes in management of PI programs.
    1. Differentiate the roles of an organization's leaders, the committee and reporting structures that integrate PI, and the various leadership configurations responsible for PI activities.
    2. Explain how healthcare organizations train and orient their governance, leaders, and employed staff in PI strategies and methods.
    3. Delineate the best ways to organize PI data for effective review by a board of directors.
    4. Define ways PI activities are implemented and findings are communicated throughout the organization including the importance of closure with regard to reporting back to organizational leadership.
    5. Explain the PI perspectives of accreditation, certification, and licensure organizations and identify approaches that lead to success in the survey process.
    6. Identify reasons contemporary information technologies are important to quality improvement (QI).
    7. Summarize current developments in healthcare information technologies that will enhance PI activities in the future.
    8. Define how information resources management professionals can help PI teams pursue their improvement activities.
    9. Describe the function of project management in PI programs.
    10. List specific knowledge and skills required for team leadership and identify the steps a team leader should follow to successfully implement and complete a project.
    11. Outline project life cycles and the group dynamics of team life cycles.
    12. Apply change management techniques to implement PI, describe the three phases of change, and identify key steps in change management.
    13. Explain why PI programs are evaluated, identify the aspects of the program that should be evaluated and describe what organizations should do with the information gathered from the PI program evaluation.
    14. Describe the legal aspects of PI activities conducted in healthcare organizations.
    15. Explain the significance and relationship or tort law to QI activities.
    16. Define the concepts of protection and privilege with respect to QI activities and distinguish these activities from research activities.

COURSE ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION:

1. Assignments 2. Examinations 3. Reports on outside reading assignments/projects 4. Participation/discussion

ACCOMMODATIONS STATEMENT:

Any student who has a documented disability and wishes to access academic accommodations (per the 1973 Rehabilitation Act and Americans with Disability Act) must contact the HCC Coordinator of Disability Services, at 620-665-3554, or the Student Success Center, Parker Student Union. The student must have appropriate documentation on file before accommodations can be provided.

ACADEMIC HONESTY:

Education requires integrity and respect for HutchCC's institutional values. HutchCC students are required to maintain honesty through a "responsible acquisition, discovery, and application of knowledge" in all academic pursuits. Preserving and upholding academic honesty is the responsibility of Hut chCC students, faculty, administrators and staff.

I. Student Responsibilities

All HutchCC students are required to:

  • Submit all work in all courses without cheating, fabrication, plagiarism, dissimulation, forgery, sabotage, or academic dishonesty as defined below.
  • Provide all academic records such as transcripts and test scores that are free of forgery.
  • Refrain from participating in the academic dishonesty of any person.
  • Use only authorized notes and student aids.
  • Use technology appropriately, including refraining from submitting AI (Artificial Intelligence)-generated work without express written consent from your instructor.
  • Protect the security of passwords/login/privacy/electronic files, and maintain sole individual access for any online course information.

II. Definition of Academic Dishonesty

  • Academic dishonesty is any intentional act, or attempted act, of cheating, fabrication, plagiarism, dissimulation, forgery, or sabotage in academic work.
  • Cheating includes using unauthorized materials of any kind, whether hard copies, online, or electronic, such as unapproved study aids in any academic work, copying another student's work, using an unauthorized "cheat sheet" or device, or purchasing or acquiring an essay online or from another student.
  • Fabrica tion is the invention or falsification of any information or citation in any academic work, such as making up a source, providing an incorrect citation, or misquoting a source.
  • Plagiarism is the representation of words, ideas and other works that are not the student's own as being original to the student. A no n-inclusive list of examples includes work completed by someone else, work generated by an external entity (such as AI), omitting a citation for work used from another source, or borrowing the sequence of ideas, arrangement of material, and/or pattern of thought of work not produced by the student, even though it may be expressed in the student's own words.
  • Dissimulation is the obscuring of a student's own actions with the intention of deceiving others in any academic work, such as fabricating excuses for absences or missed assignments, or feigning attendance.
  • Forgery of academic documents is the unauthorized altering, falsification, misrepresentation, or construction of any academic document, such as changing transcripts, changing grades on papers or on exams which have been returned, forging signatures, manipulating a digital file of academic work, or plagiarizing a translation.
  • Sabotage is any obstruction or attempted obstruction of the academic work of another student, such as impersonating another student, stealing or ruining another student's academic work.
  • Aiding and abetting academic dishonesty is considered as knowingly facilitating any act defined above.
  • Academic honesty violations can also include the omission or falsification of any information on an application for any HutchCC academic program.

III. Sanctions for Academic Dishonesty

Students who violate the Academic Honesty Policy may be subject to academic or administrative consequences.

Instructor Sanctions for Violation:

Students suspected of violating the Academic Honesty Policy may be charged in writing by their instructor and any of the following may apply:

  • Assign Avoiding Plagiarism Bridge Module
  • Receiving written warning that could lead to more severe sanction if a second offense occurs
  • Revising the assignment/work in question for partial credit
  • Voiding work in question without opportunity for make-up
  • Reducing the grade for work in question
  • Lowering the final course grade
  • Failing the work in question

Institutional Sanctions for Violation:

Students charged with academic dishonesty, particularly in instances of repeated violations, may further be subjected to an investigation and any of the following may apply:

  • Instructor recommendation to the Vice President of Academic Affairs (VPAA) to dismiss the student from the course in which the dishonesty occurs
  • Instructor recommendation to the VPAA to dismiss student from the course in which the dishonesty occurs with a grade of 'F." Student will not be allowed to take a 'W' for the course
  • Instructor recommendation to the VPAA that the student be suspended and/or dismissed from the program
  • Student barred from course/program for a set period of time or permanently
  • May be recommended by the instructor (after documented repeated offenses) to the VP AA that the student be placed on probation, suspended and/or dismissed from the institution.

IV. Procedure

  • Instructor will communicate in writing via the student's HutchCC email account and/or LearningZone email account to the student suspected of violating the Academic Honesty Policy.  That communication may include sanction(s). Department Chair will notify the student's academic advisor upon receipt of the Academic Honesty Violation Form.
  • For each violation, the instructor will submit a completed Academic Honesty Violation Form to the Department Chair. Department Chair will notify the student's academic advisor upon receipt of the Academic Honesty Violation form.
  • Should the instructor choose to pursue institutional sanctions, the instruct or shall notify the student in writing via the student's HutchCC email account.  Instructor shall also submit a completed Academic Honesty Violation Form and all prior completed forms regarding said student to the Department Chair and the office of the VPAA with recommendation to proceed with specific Institutional Sanctions. Department Chair will notify the student's academic advisor upon receipt of the Academic Honesty Violation Form.
  • The decision of the VPAA on Institutional Sanction is final. The VPAA will notify the student's academic advisor of any institutional sanctions.

V. Due Process Rights

Students charged with violations of academic honesty have the right of appeal and are assured of due process through the Academic Honesty Appeal process.

Academic Honesty Appeal Process

I. Due Process Rights: Students charged with violations of academic honesty have the right of appeal and are assured of due process through the Academic Honesty Appeal process.

  • If an instructor has recommended course or program dismissal, the student may continue in coursework (provi ding there are no threatening or security behavioral issues) until appeal processes are concluded. However, if an issue has been documented at a partnership location (e.g., clinical sites, secondary institutions, correctional or military facilities), then the student is no longer eligible to continue participation in internships, apprenticeships, and/or clinical-based practice. For clinical sites, this sanction is immediate.

II. Process

If the student disagrees with the charge of a violation of academic honesty, the student has the right to due process as described in the Academic Honesty Appeal process below:

  • If the matter is not resolved upon communicating with the instructor about the violation, the student shall, within five business days of the issuance of the written notice of violation, submit a completed Academic Honesty Appeal Form and supporting documentation to the appropriate department chairperson to initiate an Academic Honesty Appeal.
  • Within two business days of receiving the student's completed Academic Honesty Appeal Form, the Department Chair and VPAA will review and the VPAA will render a decision.
  • Within two business days, a response will be sent to the student's HutchCC email address. The VPAA's decision is final.

INCOMPLETE GRADE:

Instructors may give a student a grade of Incomplete (I) under the following conditions:

  1. The student must initiate the request prior to the time final course grades are submitted to Records.
  2. The request must be made because of an emergency, illness or otherwise unavoidable life-event.
  3. The instructor must agree to the request before a grade of Incomplete can be submitted.
  4. A written contract between the instructor and student, signed by both, will document the work required and date needed to complete course work.
  5. If a student does not complete the course requirements within the time frame established by the instructor, a grade of "F" will be recorded on the student's transcript at the end of the next semester.

PROGRAM ACCREDITATION:

Commission on the Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education (CAHIIM)
233 N. Michigan Ave, 21st Floor
Chicago, IL 60601-5800

HLC ACCREDITATION:

Hutchinson Community College is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC). The Higher Learning Commission is one of six regional institutional accreditors recognized by the US Department of Education and the Council on Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA).

Last Revised: 03/19/2020