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Benchmark: Outcome and Process Measures
Stephanie Green
Grand Canyon University
Performance Improvement and Quality in Health Care - NUR 630
Topic 5
Dr. Linnette Nolte
April 21, 2021
, 2
Benchmark: Outcome and Process Measures
For healthcare, Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) is as an organized process to help
healthcare teams apply continuous practice change processes for the improvement in quality care
delivery. Healthcare organizations view outcome measures as high-level clinical or financial
outcomes Steps in a process that lead in either a positive or negative manner to outcome metrics
are the process measures necessary in CQI (Burton, 2016). This paper will address two process
measures and one outcome measure used in CQI. Included in the discussion will be why each
measure was chosen, how data is collected and measured, how success will be measured, and
data-driven cost-effective solutions to the challenges of the defined process and outcome
measures.
Two Process Measures Utilized for CQI
Two process measures or metrics that may be used in CQI are related to the patient
discharge process. Length of stay (LOS) refers to the amount of time a patient is admitted to the
hospital to the time of discharge from the hospital. A LOS process metric to be improved might
be the amount of time that passes from a physician written discharge order to the time a patient is
discharged from the hospital. A second metric for process improvement could be the time
between a home medication order being placed to the delivery of the medication to the patient on
the nursing unit as the length of time it takes the pharmacy to send the discharge medications to
the floor is potentially delaying the discharge. This is a definitive opportunity for healthcare
process improvement (Burton, 2016). The two measures are defined from the association
between the process and the outcomes and provides data on healthcare efficiency. Process
measures are applied to establish whether the healthcare team followed the correct process in the
provision of quality care (Brennan et al., 2017). Process measures lead to outcome measures to
Benchmark: Outcome and Process Measures
Stephanie Green
Grand Canyon University
Performance Improvement and Quality in Health Care - NUR 630
Topic 5
Dr. Linnette Nolte
April 21, 2021
, 2
Benchmark: Outcome and Process Measures
For healthcare, Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) is as an organized process to help
healthcare teams apply continuous practice change processes for the improvement in quality care
delivery. Healthcare organizations view outcome measures as high-level clinical or financial
outcomes Steps in a process that lead in either a positive or negative manner to outcome metrics
are the process measures necessary in CQI (Burton, 2016). This paper will address two process
measures and one outcome measure used in CQI. Included in the discussion will be why each
measure was chosen, how data is collected and measured, how success will be measured, and
data-driven cost-effective solutions to the challenges of the defined process and outcome
measures.
Two Process Measures Utilized for CQI
Two process measures or metrics that may be used in CQI are related to the patient
discharge process. Length of stay (LOS) refers to the amount of time a patient is admitted to the
hospital to the time of discharge from the hospital. A LOS process metric to be improved might
be the amount of time that passes from a physician written discharge order to the time a patient is
discharged from the hospital. A second metric for process improvement could be the time
between a home medication order being placed to the delivery of the medication to the patient on
the nursing unit as the length of time it takes the pharmacy to send the discharge medications to
the floor is potentially delaying the discharge. This is a definitive opportunity for healthcare
process improvement (Burton, 2016). The two measures are defined from the association
between the process and the outcomes and provides data on healthcare efficiency. Process
measures are applied to establish whether the healthcare team followed the correct process in the
provision of quality care (Brennan et al., 2017). Process measures lead to outcome measures to
