LO3. Engage in Quality Improvement

Information Sheet 3.1: Quality Improvement Processes

Quality improvement (QI) is a systematic, formal approach to the analysis of practice performance and efforts to improve performance.

A variety of approaches—or QI models—exist to help you collect and analyze data and test change. While it’s important to choose a reputable QI model to guide your efforts, it’s more important that you fully commit to using the QI process and good QI practices.

Benefits of QI

Understanding and properly implementing QI is essential to a well-functioning practice, and is necessary for any practice interested in improving efficiency, patient safety, or clinical outcomes.

In addition, good QI practices and improved patient outcomes position your practice for success by:

• Helping you prepare for the transition to value-based payment models.
• Allowing you to participate in the public reporting of physician quality data.
• Giving you the opportunity to participate in the federal Quality Payment Program (QPP) following one of two tracks: the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) or the Alternative Payment Model (APM).
• Equipping you with the skills necessary to apply for and complete national recognition programs, such as National Committee for Quality Assurance’s (NCQA) Diabetes, Heart/Stroke, and patient-centered medical home (PCMH)-recognition programs.
• Helping you earn Family Medicine Certification-Performance Improvement activity credit (formerly Maintenance of Certification) requirements.

Quality Improvement Basics

The QI process is grounded in the following basic concepts:

• Establish a culture of quality in your practice. Your practice’s organization processes, and procedures should support and be integrated with your QI efforts. The culture of a practice—attitudes, behaviors, and actions—reflect how passionately the practice team embraces quality. The QI culture looks different for every practice, but may include establishing dedicated QI teams, holding regular QI meetings, or creating policies around your QI goals.

• Determine and prioritize potential areas for improvement. You will need to identify and understand the ways in which your practice could improve. Examine your patient population (e.g., to identify barriers to care, frequently diagnosed chronic conditions, or groups of high-risk patients) and your practice operations (e.g., to identify management issues such as low morale, long patient wait times, or poor communication). Use established quality measures, such as those from the National Quality Forum, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Quality Payment Program to guide your efforts.

• Collect and analyze data. Data collection and analysis lie at the heart of quality improvement. Your data will help you understand how well your systems work, identify potential areas for improvement, set measurable goals, and monitor the effectiveness of change. It’s important to collect baseline data before you begin a QI project, commit to regular data collection, carefully analyze your results throughout the project, and make decisions based on your analysis.

• Communicate your results. Quality improvement efforts should be transparent to your staff, physicians, and patients. Include the entire practice team and patients when planning and implementing QI projects, and communicate your project needs, priorities, actions, and results to everyone (patients included). When a project is successful, celebrate and acknowledge that success.

• Commit to ongoing evaluation. Quality improvement is an ongoing process. A high-functioning practice will strive to continually improve performance, revisit the effectiveness of interventions, and regularly solicit patient and staff feedback.

• Spread your successes. Share lessons learned with others to support wide-scale, rapid improvement that benefits all patients and the health care industry as a whole.

Quality Improvement Models and Tools

Quality improvement models present a systematic, formal framework for establishing QI processes in your practice. Examples of common QI models include the following:

• Model for Improvement (Plan-Do-Study-Act [PDSA] cycles): The Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Model for Improvement combines two popular QI models: Total Quality Management (TQM) and Rapid-Cycle Improvement (RCI). The result is a framework that uses PDSA cycles to test interventions on a small scale.
• Six Sigma: Six Sigma is a method of improvement that strives to decrease variation and defects.
• Lean is an approach that drives out waste and improves efficiency in work processes so that all work adds value.

Quality improvement tools are standalone strategies or processes that can help you better understand, analyze, or communicate your QI efforts. Examples of QI tools include run charts, process maps, and fishbone diagrams.

Information Sheet 3.2: Company Customers Defined

What is a customer?

A customer is a person or a business that purchases other businesses’ offerings. Every business designs its products or services based on the needs and wants of the customers. When customers purchase the products, the sales numbers increase for the business. The business thus spends a lot of advertising dollars in order to attract customers towards their products/services. You need to make your customers happy and satisfied throughout the journey to increase the customer life cycle value.

What are the types of customers?

Customers play an important role in the success of any business. In order to understand the customer preferences, their behavior and attitude it is important to identify and segment different types of customers. By analyzing the different customers, you can better devise your strategies that would yield much better results.

1. Loyal customers

Loyal customers are the top priority customer groups and an important segment to appease. Usually these customers represent 20% of the customer base and also contribute to the major portion of revenue for the company. Loyal customers purchase products or services over a longer period of time and are likely to be brand advocates for the company. The businesses should also obtain feedback from the customers in order to grow the business to a next level.

2. Impulse customers

These are the second most attractive segment of customers identified by the businesses. You can effectively upsell or cross sell to these customers. Impulse customers buy products and services spontaneously triggered by an impulse. They don’t have a shopping list at hand while purchasing. Impulse customers respond to the recommendations and offers. You need to devise strategies to capture these customers in order to make impulse purchases.

3. Discount customers

Discount customers play a key role in upbringing the company’s inventory. The discount customers contribute to the cash flow of the company. These customers look for discounts, seasonal offers and festive offers. Upselling or cross selling to these customers would be a bit difficult and they are considered to be less loyal towards the company.

4. Need based customers

Need based customers buy products or services driven by a particular need. They come with a shopping list based on their needs and quickly purchase those products from the store. It is quite difficult to upsell to these customers and they are also less loyal to the business. If their need is satisfied better by the competitor’s products they will switch to substitute products easily. In order to retain such customers, you need to develop interaction and a positive bond with these customer segments. There is a possibility of converting need based customers to loyal customers by building strong positive relationships.

5. Wandering customers

Wandering customers are those customers that make up the crowd in the mall or a shopping complex. They have no specific need/ preference in their mind and just wander the stores for some enjoyment or relaxation. They in particular do not contribute to the profitability of the company. The customers might love the ambience of the store and might stay there just randomly looking for products. These customer segments do not contribute much to the profit of the business. The business can still provide insightful information to these customers to stimulate interest, which might potentially end up in a purchase.

What are the characteristics of a customer?

Not all customers are alike. Each customer has their own likes and dislikes. We can define a set of customers based on the characteristics that they share. Mostly customers share seven characteristics in common which are listed below:

1. Customers are well informed

Today consumers share and receive information at a much faster pace because of the advancements in technology and communication. They are very well informed about the company, their products, the industry types, the rivals and events. A company should know that the customers study A-Z about a company before making a purchase. Hence you should meet up with their expectations and create a great customer experience through your offerings.

2. Customers look for solutions

Today when a customer encounters a small problem, they might end up calling the customer service to get their problem solved. The best customer service should find ways to fix the issues that the customer faces. If you are missing out on quality customer service, you will probably end up losing the customers.

3. Customers are social beings

Customers are social creatures and technology has enabled them to connect more, share more and experience better. Many digital communities are up there to share your views about a particular topic or a product or even an issue. Many customers share their opinions, discuss the possible outcomes and come up with solutions. It is true that almost half the percentage of customers trust an online recommendation more than a brand’s messaging. Hence it is very important for companies to invest in an omni channel environment where they can build engagement with their customers and share their content on a daily basis.

4. Customers stay connected

Customers usually stay connected across multiple channels using multiple devices. You can differentiate the usage and connectivity based on millennials, gen X, gen Y and gen Z. The trends in the social media channels keep changing at a faster pace. Companies need to adapt to these changes and trends, which will help them to be connected with their customers. If you want to reach your customers, you need to curate your content across different channels and platforms.

5. Customers are opinionated

Customers share and receive feedback from others who have already interacted with a brand. These feedbacks might be positive or negative based on the customer experiences. There are many reviews shared each and every time related to a particular product or service. Businesses are conducting surveys and questionnaires in order to hear the opinions from customers to curate their experiences in a better way.

Conclusion

Customers are the prime foundation of any business. The business should maintain three important phases, that includes customer experience, customer satisfaction and customer support. You need to enhance the experience of the customers throughout their journey and provide them with superior customer service and support which will in turn increase their satisfaction and build loyalty. Customers are the direct source to boost the profitability of your business.