Locking in Quality

The idea of quality seems vague at first. Begin to question it, and it sounds downright philosophical —what characteristics denote quality, and what ones show a lack thereof? How does quality affect others? How can one improve the quality of their work?

Luckily, Monument Health has Quality, Safety and Risk Management to answer these questions. The answers aren’t necessarily philosophical. Instead, they’re data driven, and the answer is Locking in Quality.

Locking in Quality is a demonstration of commitment to quality, and a method for facilitating communication about the four pillars of quality: Patient-Centered, Physician & Caregiver Driven, Measurement & Transparency and Improvement Tools.

Together, these four pillars allow Monument Health to focus on delivering the best possible healing experience to patients, while providing a safe — and great — place to work for physicians and caregivers.

Locking in Quality is more than just a cool logo — although it is a very cool logo — it’s also a visual representation of the four pillars of quality that will hopefully stick with physicians and caregivers. “We want caregivers to understand it, and we want them to really commit to quality,” said Merissa Cook, Director of Quality, Safety and Risk Management. “This is really about how we’re always working to identify process improvements to improve the care for our patients.”

Locking in Quality doesn’t work like a rigid, top-down communication structure. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, involving bi-directional communication. Performance improvement teams — composed of frontline caregivers — report to Triad, the coordinating committee. “There’s a provider, a quality lead and then an operational lead,” explained Jossie Ebsen, Manager of Quality, Safety and Risk Management. “So the information flows up to the board level meetings.” Because of how the coordinating committee functions, information flows both ways, meaning that key decision makers get insight from physicians and caregivers, and vice versa.

Jossie continued, “we want the logo to be a reminder to the frontline caregivers like, ‘oh yes, this is why I’m doing this, I know that someone hears me. I know that we have teams working on this, and I know that it’s going to loop back around to me.’”

All Monument Health caregivers and physicians do their part to practice Locking in Quality, starting by familiarizing themselves with the four pillars, and committing to the processes and procedures that allow all of us to do the right thing. Every time. In the end, Locking in Quality comes back to the patients. “We become part of these teams so we can see the data,” Merissa concluded. “So that we can use the improvement tools to really effect changes and to know that we have the patient’s voice in these decisions as well.”