Quality Improvement is a Team Effort The Whiddon Group Tweed Heads Community Care

Sally Clarke
Community Care Coordinator

The Whiddon Group Tweed Heads Community Care began participating in QPS Benchmarking in January 2012. Our involvement in the collection and reporting of QPS data for benchmarking purposes has proven invaluable in identifying areas of strength and opportunities for quality improvement in our service. Our whole team participates in our quality program and demonstrates our organisation's commitment to improve the quality of client care services that we deliver.

Quality improvement opportunities are identified in a number of different ways, including QPS KPI data collection. The quarterly benchmarking results give a clear insight into areas in which our service could be performing better, and we have found that opportunities for improvement are often identified each quarter at the data collection stage and prior to data entry. If there is an indicated area for improvement identified at this stage, the team meet to analyse the data. Discussion is held and information of what and why this result has occurred is captured and documented. Causes of the issue are explored and action items are identified and implemented. This is documented and all these comments are placed next to the results section of the data entry sheet ready for data submission.
The information provided to QPS clearly identifies the issue, action that has or will be taken, and the planned evaluation which is captured in our report. An example of this is our medication incidents and errors, which although minimal, still demonstrated the need for system improvement. System improvements were implemented following the first medication incident, and when reporting to QPS we noted the reason for the error, and the action that was taken to prevent this from reoccurring. Over the past three quarters, we have continued to improve our medication management with further improvements made including revised documentation and staff education.

When it comes to quality improvement projects, The Whiddon Group values team involvement and participation. We use a systematic collaborative problem solving approach, called Nominal Group Technique (NGT), to plan all system improvements, and prioritise quality actions. This technique enables all parties to contribute their ideas, and then collectively decide (via a voting process) on the priority and method for improvement.
The NGT process involves staff and clients in the quality improvement projects that impact on them, allowing all parties to contribute their ideas. Working with QPS benchmarking has enabled us to identify a number of opportunities for quality improvement projects, particularly through satisfaction surveys and staff competencies. As a result of the client satisfaction survey in Quarter 4 2012 we are in the process of developing an activities program for our CACP and EACH clients, and a resource directory for our clients. Clients and team members are involved in these quality projects, and progress will be reported to QPS when the next client satisfaction survey is complete.

The Whiddon Group Tweed Heads has already found that our quarterly statistics are providing us with a reliable tool that enables us to monitor and continually improve our systems. We are looking forward to seeing these improvements reflected in our 2013 results, and to identifying new ways in which we can improve our services to clients.