Quality Improvement In Operations Management & HIPAA Violation Case

Vidant Health’s Case Study for Quality Improvement

1).

a) Operations managers are in charge of overseeing the proper provision of services and ensuring that all the activities in the organization are running well and smoothly. In the year 2006 Vidant Health experiences a series of errors in their operations (Wynn et al., 2014). This lead to the death of a patient. After that incident, there was a need for a system improvement and implementation. The facility’s service delivery system was improved to a point where it won the John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award in 2013. The system also saw a reduction in severe events within the facility and improvement in the core Medicare and Medicaid services. Development of the system and its implementation is credited to the operations managers within the facility.

b) Vidant Health’s actions have illustrated the ethical principles of justice by ensuring equality, fairness and entitlement to good quality healthcare; beneficence by ensuring that the facility’s operations promote good healthcare which is evident in the statistics provided; nonmaleficence by ensuring that an incident like that of 2006 where a patient died does not  happen and again; and autonomy by ensuring that all staff are well-trained to act intentionally and with understanding when discharging their services. The facility rolled out specific changes that also involve transparency, leader and physician engagement, and patient-family partnership that are aimed at ensuring that these principles are upheld.

c) The Vidant Healthcare facility’s mission states that the facility aims at “improving the health and well-being of Eastern North Carolina,” while the vision statement indicates that the facility aims at “becoming the national model for rural health and wellness by creating a premier, trusted health care delivery and education system” (Vidanthealth.com, 2018). It values are founded on integrity, compassion, education, accountability, safety, and teamwork. All these values are evident in the activities the facility has been undertaking in the past couple of years. These activities include; leader and physician engagement, board leadership, patient–family partnerships, transparency and safety training.

2).

In December 2011, an unencrypted laptop was stolen from one the therapy centres belonging to Concentra. It was found indicated that the laptop contained the names and Social Security numbers for close to 870 patients. The laptop also contained the pre-employment work fitness test results for these patients. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) classified the event as a security breach. In a statement released by the HHS, it was determined that “Concentra identified in multiple risk analyses that a lack of encryption on its laptops, desktop computers, medical equipment, tablets and other devices containing electronic protected health information was a critical risk,” (Coie, 2014).

As a result, the institution came forth and reported the matter to the HHS’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR). In the end, the organization paid a $1.7 million settlement in a data breach (Conn, 2014). To avoid such incidences in the future, the organization and others like it need to come up with a corrective action strategy that ensures that all its desktop computers, laptops, tablets, medical equipment, and other devices are well encrypted to ensure that electronic information for both patients and staff members is protected. The organization should also come up with laws to ensure that the plan is implemented in all its departments. Employees found to be violating this law should be dealt with in accordance with the organization’s rules and policies which should be guided by the constitution.

3).

Last year I experienced an episode of uncomfortable conflict at my workplace because of my leadership skills. After being promoted to organization manager, there were several complaints after I called out several staff members for making mistakes. Another problem was criticizing these employees given the fact that I had anger-related issues. The reports indicated that I was harsh in my criticism and as time went by my reputation slowly dropped. However, after having several sessions with the organization’s chief therapists and psychologist, I have learnt how to resolve conflict and positively criticize fellow employees. I have also learnt how to manage my anger when talking to employees which has helped me get along with them.

References:

Coie, P. (2014). Theft of unencrypted laptops leads to two HHS settlements totaling nearly $2 million | Lexology. Retrieved from https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1ecd5813-ccc6-4294-96eb-aaf93775d951

Conn, J. (2014). Humana’s Concentra pays $1.7 million in data breach. Retrieved from https://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20140426/MAGAZINE/304269948#

High Quality Health Care at Vidant | Vidant Health. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.vidanthealth.com/About-Vidant-Health/Our-Mission-Vision-Values#

Wynn, J. D., Draffin, E., Jones, A., & Reida, L. (2014). The vidant health quality transformation. Joint Commission journal on quality and patient safety, 40(5), AP1-AP5.