Bring OPPE under the quality umbrella
This week, CRC Daily explores the OPPE process, whose success can hinge on the cohesion of a hospital’s quality and medical staff services departments (MSSD).
Covenant Health in East Tennessee is working to foster a more integrative and collaborative relationship between the quality and medical staff services teams at each of its nine member hospitals. To start, the health system created a new organizational structure in which medical staff coordinators report to the managers of the quality departments. The member hospitals are in various stages of implementation, and progress has been influenced by the history of each individual organization, as well as the skill level of the quality leader and the medical staff coordinator.
“Where there is a good understanding of how the two functions can complement one another it is much easier to move forward,” says Missy Sanford, director of quality analytics/regulatory compliance for Covenant Health.
Sanford’s vision for OPPE is to create a relationship between the MSSD and the quality department where each party has a strong understanding of what the other does and assigns tasks according to skill level.
“There are a significant number of physicians with good data and no triggers that do not even warrant any drill down or review. In which case, you do not need to utilize a nurse’s time to complete the paperwork and show the OPPE function was done. We want to use the nurses where clinically appropriate,” says Sanford.
Quality data usually lives in the quality department, so moving the medical staff under the quality umbrella can provide medical staff an opportunity to sift through the data, identify trends, and provide useful feedback to physicians, says Juli Maxworthy, DNP, MSN, MBA, RN, CNL, CPHQ, CPPS, CHSE, assistant professor at the University of San Francisco and CEO of WithMax Consulting Inc., a healthcare consulting and medical writing company located in the San Francisco Bay area.
“When the quality department provides oversight, there are great opportunities,” says Maxworthy. “Combining data from risk reports … can point you to areas of concern before they happen.”
Source: Medical Staff Briefing