Service operation management includes responsibility to produce a quality service in an organization. In order to satisfy the customers providing quality service is necessary for the care home sectors. Providing direct service ensures the service quality in an organization. For a quality service operation, it is important to deal with the operation manager of an organization for the simultaneous production. Quality management includes people, information, process, and the system, which involve in the service delivery process (Zurich 2017). In this current study, Care Quality Commission has given a report regarding the quality service of Admiral Court Care Home. However, the service quality is not good in this care home as the service users are not completely protected from the medicinal side effects. Therefore, major improvement is required in this care home (Hallmark Care Homes 2017). This study deals with the major challenges regarding the service of Admiral Court care home and a brief account of KPI and benchmarking process to improve the service quality.
Admiral Court Care Home is associated with delivering service to the young adults, elderly people, dementia patients, people with sensory impairment and mental health condition. In the year 2016 60 people are living in this care home for their treatment (Cqc.org.uk 2016). However, CQC or Care Quality Commission had taken an inspection in the year 2016. However, according to the inspection report, it has been found that the entire service, which is provided by Admiral Court Care Home needs to improve. This CQC inspection identified some concerned areas that need improvement to establish a better quality service.
The service users of the Admiral Court Care home had been facing risk associated with the medicine. Medicinal risk is a big challenge for the care homes as it may harm the health of the service users and the organization may face legal issues for this poor management of the medicine (Johnston et al. 2012). According to the CQC report, the registered manager of Admiral Court Care Home was unable to arrange the place in order to manage the safety of medicines that were provided to the service users in this care home. However, the service users did not felt safe while taking medicine for their treatment. In a care organization, it is important to ensure the safety while providing medicine to the service users (Fitzsimmons et al. 2012). Medication is a crucial part of the care service hence, poor management of the medicines may lead the service users to face dangerous health issues like infection. In the case of Admiral, care home there is lack of effective system to manage the medicines as a result, people felt unsafe during their care. Due to lack of effective system, the staffs of such organization failed to resist the spread of infection due to poor management of the medicine. The registered manager of such organization did not take any step to reduce the risk related to medicine. Hence, such appropriate management of medicine in this care home highlights its poor quality management process, which needs to be improved.
Based on the CQC report the service of Admiral Court care home is not effective as many loopholes are present in this service process. However, the staff training is not good in this care home as there is lack of effective training process. Lack of training resists the staff in the care organization to provide quality service to the service users (Dewing and Dijk 2016). On the other hand, there was lack of good practice in this care home, which also another big reason for poor quality service in Admiral Court Care Home. This care home is associated with the care home dementia patient, for this treatment staff training is mandatory. On the other hand, this organization provides service to the younger adults, for this reason, the staff’s need special training to tackle such service users. Lack of training affects the safeguarding process of the dementia patients, as a result, the residents become unlawful (Woo et al. 2016). However, lack of staff training affects the maintenance of the rights of the vulnerable people in this care home. For Admiral Court Care Home, they need to provide effective service to the service users by taking special care of the dementia patients, people with mental disability and younger adults as those are categorized in the vulnerable group. Hence, the staffs did not get proper training to develop their skills to improve the service standards, as a result, the quality had disrupted of this care home. Lack of training led the service user of this care home towards the danger and they might face risk regarding their health.
Providing service based on the needs and demand of the service users in the care home is essential to meet the need of the people (Benwell et al. 2017). As per the CQC report, the service was not customer oriented in Admiral Court care home. This was a big reason, of the failure of their service. The staffs did not focus on the need for the service users, which affected the satisfaction level as well as the quality of the service. In this care home, the service users did not get meaningful activities for their engagement. This organization includes dementia patients who need meaningful activities to improve their condition. However, the staffs of Admiral care home failed to provide customer-centric service due to the poor infrastructure of this organization. On the other hand, the care records of the people did not organize in a proper structure, which highlights on the poor quality service of this organization. However, for a care organization, it is important to keep the record of the service users in a proper way to provide an effective service (Vithanwattana et al. 2016). According to the CQC report, it has been found that record of all service users in Admiral care home was not kept a proper manner as a result, the quality standard of the service is affected.
Based on the CQC report in the context of Admiral Court Care Home it has been received that there was lack of managerial oversight in the entire service process. However, for a care organization, it is important for the managers to check and monitor the service process in a spontaneous manner (Gopee and Galloway 2017). In this care home, the managers did not show the effort to understand the issues regarding the service. This hampers the quality of the service in this care sector. CQC report highlights that the quality assurance process in Admiral Care home was not appropriate, as there was no account about the area of concern. On the other hand, there was no method to address the issues in the quality assurance system. For a care home, it is mandatory to establish a quality assurance system to monitor and identify the major issues in the service provision (Eriksson 2016). However, the management system of Admiral care home was not effective to address the service related issues and the quality assurance system was not maintained properly to identify the concerned areas and to develop solution regarding these problems.
Proper checking of the medicine could be helpful for Admiral care home to reduce infection rate and to ensure the quality of the medicine. On the other hand, providing training to the staffs could be effective to manage the service users having dementia and mental illness. This could enable the staffs to improve their skills and knowledge to tackle the different service users with different needs. Therefore, the establishment of the customer-centric service could be effective for Admiral care home to meet the specific needs of the service users.
Keeping the record of the service users by using advanced technology like ICT (Information communication technology) could be helpful for this care organization to improve the service efficiency. Apart from these, this organization needs to improve their quality assurance system to determine the areas of concern and to generate the solution to mitigate such issues. Implementation of the supportive system could be effective for this care sectors to enhance the quality assurance system (Foley et al. 2016). Different support departments could be helpful to ensure the high quality of the service. On the other hand, it is important for Admiral Court to care home to assure the accountability of the manager as it might lead the managers to provide concern towards the present issues within the service.
KPI or key performance indicator refers to a measurable value that highlights the process through which an organization can achieve their key business goals (Ilic and Svensson 2017). However, the KPI is a real-time reporting tool by which the performance of the staffs in a business can be measured. One of the major tools that are used to track the KPI is the dashboard software. This will give the entire insight of an organization. However, the KPI software leads the business authority to carry out the data management and analysis process. In this system, specific software is used in which the organization puts data and is able to connect the external environment as well as external services.
KPI is useful to collect data in an accurate manner (Wetzstein 2016). The software that is used in the KPI system allows the organization to comprehend and visualize the data from different numbers of KPIs. Hence, through this process, the different areas of the business can be represented by a single place. Sales team performance can be measured via KPI as it helps the organization to track the new revenue. Performance of the marketing group is measured by KPI by calculating the total revenue. One of the most important is the performance of customer support team that can be measured by using KPI. In this section, the measurement can be done based on the customer call, survey, and identification of the customer satisfaction (Calabrò et al. 2015). In the context of Admiral Court Care Home, KPI will be helpful to measure the performance of the staffs by taking a survey of the customers. However, it is crucial for the business organization to use the KPI in order to identify the loopholes in a workplace. Moreover, customer satisfaction is the crucial part of any business, which needs an effective performance of the staffs. Hence, to bring improvement in the staff performance use of KPI is a good initiative.
According to the case scenario, Admiral Court Care home has been facing issues regarding their staff performance. However, the service users are not protected from the risk of the medicine. On the other hand, the performance of the managers in the medicine section is not good and there is lack of effective system (Cqc.org.uk 2016). Managers are not too much responsible for the care of the service users and the service is not customer oriented. During this condition, improvement is essential by implementing an effective system in this organization. Hence, key performance indicator or LPI will be helpful in this situation to identify the staff issues and their performance level. Use of the business dashboard software is an effective approach of KPI (Muriana et al. 2016). This software is a business management tool that allows the organization to measure the overall performance of the organization. However, Admiral Court Care Home will be able to understand the insight of their organization by using this software. A clear message about the performance of the enterprise can be recorded by business dashboard software.
Improving the care quality of the service users is the highest priority of the healthcare sectors (Lloyd et al. 2017). For this purpose, Admiral Court Care home can use patient satisfaction dashboard in order understand the key activities which are associated with the patient satisfaction. This dashboard involves in monitoring the lab test turnaround and the length of the stay. In this process, the organization will be able to determine their service user satisfaction by asking them a direct question and conducting a survey by using questionnaire (Kariya 2015). The authority of the Admiral Court Care Home will be able to identify the issues from the survey by using patient satisfaction dashboard. This will help them to make a cross-check by matching the patient feedbacks with the CQC report regarding the quality issues of the service.
Figure 1: Business dashboard software
(Source: Lloyd et al. 2017)
Figure 2: Patient satisfaction dashboard
(Source: Kariya 2015)
KPI is effective to set the goal in a healthcare sector to meet the organizational demand (Toussaint et al. 2015). KPI is an integral part of the business strategy to develop policy and monitor the existing or new systems in an organization. KPI will allow Admiral Court Care home to establish a baseline information, which highlights the current performance level in this organization. As a result, the present issues like medicinal risk, lack of good practice and lack of managerial approach are understood by this organization. On the other hand, application of the key performance indicator allows a care organization to set the performance standards and targets (Gemmel 2017). Hence, Admiral Court Care home will be able to bring continuous improvement in their care process by reducing the medicinal risk. They will understand the needs of the customers and can set a customer-oriented service. On the other hand, the stakeholders of this organization will judge the performance of the staffs by using KPI. Analysis of the patient satisfaction survey is a crucial part of KPI. This will allow Admiral Court Care Home to collect feedback from the service users regarding the diagnostic, medication and support process. As a result, they will understand the major drawbacks of the medication process and will able to bring improvement in this area by conducting a proper checking of the medicine.
As per the given scenario, patient satisfaction is the major thing for Admiral Court Care Home as the service quality is very poor in this organization. KPI will allow this organization to measure the degree of the service user satisfaction (Kariya 2015). In this context, the patient satisfaction is very low due to lack of effective service in this organization. Hence, by analyzing the report that is exhibited by the KPI will be helpful for the managers to understand their roles and responsibility. The result of KP will increase the awareness among the staffs as it highlights the low patient satisfaction. Hence, the staff will be able to understand the importance of serious change needs in the existing system of this organization.
Benchmarking is a process to compare the performance of one company with another company in the same industry (Feibert et al. 2017). Benchmarking enables the organization to become more competitive. On the other hand, the organization is able to improve their operational procedure without recreating the wheel of the business. The care sectors are able to facilitate the necessary changes in their organization by using benchmarking. Internal benchmarking, competitive benchmarking, generic benchmarking and functional benchmarking are the major types of benchmarking. In the context of Admiral Court Care Home, it is important to choose competitive benchmarking as it will enable them to review the other care organizations in order to identify the areas of their service, which needs to be improved.
As per the given case scenario, Admiral Court Care Home has been suffering from the several quality issues in their service. As per the CQC report, they need to bring change in the medication section and implement new practices in their organization. Application of the Plan-do-Study-Act cycle or PDSA is an important part of the benchmarking process. It allows the organization to measure the performance of the organization (Intalere.com 2017). By following the tool, PDCA Admiral Court Care home will be able to make a plan to bring the improvement in their service. Then they do according to their plan. The next step is to study the plan and take necessary actions to implement the plan. This organization needs to plan for the recruitment of the knowledgeable staffs to check the medicine. Then in the next step, such staffs should take training and monitor the medication process in order to reduce the medicinal risk.
Competitive benchmarking will enable this care organization to carry out an analysis of their competitors in order to understand their service procedures. On the other hand, benchmarking is useful to uncover the potential risks in an organization (Mitra 2016). Based on which Admiral Court care home will be able to take necessary steps to implement the solution. On the other hand, Competitive benchmarking is useful for the healthcare sectors to bring continuous improvement in the existing service (Foley and Vale 2017). The continuous monitoring process is an integral part of the benchmarking. However, by undertaking the benchmarking process Admiral Court Care Home will be able to carry out a comparative analysis based on the service of the other organizations. They will be able to check the medication management, employee-training process and other good practices of the competitors. This will help the organization to implement new practices such as reduction of hazardous medicine by pre-checking that will be effective for their medicine management.
Conclusion
Based on the CQC report, the above problems have been identified in the context of Admiral Court Care Home. However, such problems like poor medication, poor quality of management and poor managerial oversight affect the service quality as well as the brand image of this care home. In order to ensure the protection of the service users regarding the inappropriate management of medicine appropriate management of medicine is required. However, it has been found that KPI and benchmarking are the effective processes to ensure the continuity of the service in the care organization. On the other hand, a business dashboard is an important approach of the KPI that is used in the healthcare to enhance the service quality. Therefore, Use of PDCA is a vital tool of benchmarking that enables the care organization to take necessary action by analyzing the service standards of other similar organizations.
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