Quality Improvement Model

Providing quality health care should be a goal for anyone working in the healthcare industry today. The National Committee for Quality Assurance ([NCQA], n.d.) estimates that around 90 million Americans are living with chronic, common health conditions, including cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, and asthma. Primary care providers are an important resource for these patients, acting as an entry point to the health care system, providing referrals if necessary, as well as coordinating the care and attention that is required to manage these complex and often difficult medical conditions. The purpose of this paper is threefold: 1) to explain the importance of quality improvement in primary care settings, 2) to describe how one rural family practice clinic monitors and implements quality improvement measures, and 3) to describe a quality improvement model and how it could be integrated into the rural family practice clinic.
The negative effects of inefficient, outdated, and poor quality care are numerous, in terms of the associated economic costs as well as the impact on morbidity and mortality for individuals seeking health care. Medical errors resulting in avoidable health costs and lost productivity cost the United States between $17 billion and $29 billion every year (NCQA, n.d.). More than 100,000 Americans receive the wrong care and suffer injury as a direct result, and more than …show more content…
Comprised of six major elements (community resources, health care organization, self-management support, decision support, delivery system redesign, and clinical information systems), the goal of the Chronic Care Model is to create an interaction between a motivated, informed patient and a proactive group of healthcare providers, which both increases the productivity of patient visits and improves patient outcomes (Bodenheimer, 2003; Wagner,