Background

The commitment of hospital managers plays a key role in decisions regarding investments in quality improvement (QI) and the implementation of quality improvement systems (QIS). With regard to the concept of social capital, successful cooperation and coordination among hospital management board members is strongly influenced by commonly shared values and mutual trust. The purpose of this study is to investigate the reliability and validity of a survey scale designed to assess Social Capital within hospital management boards (SOCAPO-B) in European hospitals.

Methods

Data were collected as part of the EU funded mixed-method project "Deepening our understanding of quality improvement in Europe (DUQuE)" from 210 hospitals in 7 European countries (France, Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey). The Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) completed the SOCAPO-B scale (six-item survey, numeric scale, 1='strongly disagree' to 4='strongly agree') regarding their perceptions of social capital within the hospital management board. We investigated the factor structure of the social capital scale using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach's alpha, while construct validity was assessed through Pearson's correlation coefficients between the scale items.

Results

A total of 188 hospitals participated in the DUQuE-study. Of these, 177 CEOs completed the questionnaire(172 observations for social capital) Hospital CEOs perceive relatively high social capital among hospital management boards (average SOCAPO-B mean of 3.2, SD = 0.61). The exploratory factor analysis resulted in a 1-factor-model with Cronbach's alpha of 0.91. Pearson's correlation coefficients between the single scale items ranged from 0.48 to 0.68.

Conclusions

The SOCAPO-B_-scale can be used to obtain reliable and valid measurements of social capital in European hospital management boards, at least from the CEO's point of view. The brevity of the scale enables it to be a cost-effective and tool for measuring social capital in hospital management boards.

Trial registration

This validation study was not registered.

Abstract Background Hospitals in European countries apply a wide range of quality improvement strategies. Knowledge of the effectiveness of these strategies, implemented as part of an overall hospital quality improvement system, is limited. Methods/Design We propose to study the relationships among organisational quality improvement systems, patient empowerment, organisational culture, professionals' involvement with the quality of hospital care, including clinical effectiveness, patient safety and patient involvement. We will employ a cross-sectional, multi-level study design in which patient-level measurements are nested in hospital departments, which are in turn nested in hospitals in different EU countries. Mixed methods will be used for data collection, measurement and analysis. Hospital/care pathway level constructs that will be assessed include external pressure, hospital governance, quality improvement system, patient empowerment in quality improvement, organisational culture and professional involvement. These constructs will be assessed using questionnaires. Patient-level constructs include clinical effectiveness, patient safety and patient involvement, and will be assessed using audit of patient records, routine data and patient surveys. For the assessment of hospital and pathway level constructs we will collect data from randomly selected hospitals in eight countries. For a sample of hospitals in each country we will carry out additional data collection at patient-level related to four conditions (stroke, acute myocardial infarction, hip fracture and delivery). In addition, structural components of quality improvement systems will be assessed using visits by experienced external assessors. Data analysis will include descriptive statistics and graphical representations and methods for data reduction, classification techniques and psychometric analysis, before moving to bi-variate and multivariate analysis. The latter will be conducted at hospital and multilevel. In addition, we will apply sophisticated methodological elements such as the use of causal diagrams, outcome modelling, double robust estimation and detailed sensitivity analysis or multiple bias analyses to assess the impact of the various sources of bias. Discussion Products of the project will include a catalogue of instruments and tools that can be used to build departmental or hospital quality and safety programme and an appraisal scheme to assess the maturity of the quality improvement system for use by hospitals and by purchasers to contract hospitals.

Background

It is now widely accepted that the mixed effect and success rates of strategies to improve quality and safety in health care are in part due to the different contexts in which the interventions are planned and implemented. The objectives of this study were to (i) describe the reporting of contextual factors in the literature on the effectiveness of quality improvement strategies, (ii) assess the relationship between effectiveness and contextual factors, and (iii) analyse the importance of contextual factors.

Methods

We conducted an umbrella review of systematic reviews searching the following databases: PubMed, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Embase and CINAHL. The search focused on quality improvement strategies included in the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care Group taxonomy. We extracted data on quality improvement effectiveness and context factors. The latter were categorized according to the Model for Understanding Success in Quality tool.

Results

We included 56 systematic reviews in this study of which only 35 described contextual factors related with the effectiveness of quality improvement interventions. The most frequently reported contextual factors were: quality improvement team (n = 12), quality improvement support and capacity (n = 11), organization (n = 9), micro-system (n = 8), and external environment (n = 4). Overall, context factors were poorly reported. Where they were reported, they seem to explain differences in quality improvement effectiveness; however, publication bias may contribute to the observed differences.

Conclusions

Contextual factors may influence the effectiveness of quality improvement interventions, in particular at the level of the clinical micro-system. Future research on the implementation and effectiveness of quality improvement interventions should emphasize formative evaluation to elicit information on context factors and report on them in a more systematic way in order to better appreciate their relative importance.

Background

Given the amount of time and resources invested in implementing quality programs in hospitals, few studies have investigated their clinical impact and what strategies could be recommended to enhance its effectiveness.

Objective

To assess variations in clinical practice and explore associations with hospital- and department-level quality management systems.

Design

Multicenter, multilevel cross-sectional study.

Setting and participants

Seventy-three acute care hospitals with 276 departments managing acute myocardial infarction, deliveries, hip fracture, and stroke in seven countries.

Intervention

None.

Measures

Predictor variables included 3 hospital- and 4 department-level quality measures. Six measures were collected through direct observation by an external surveyor and one was assessed through a questionnaire completed by hospital quality managers. Dependent variables included 24 clinical practice indicators based on case note reviews covering the 4 conditions (acute myocardial infarction, deliveries, hip fracture and stroke). A directed acyclic graph was used to encode relationships between predictors, outcomes, and covariates and to guide the choice of covariates to control for confounding.

Results and limitations

Data were provided on 9021 clinical records by 276 departments in 73 hospitals. There were substantial variations in compliance with the 24 clinical practice indicators. Weak associations were observed between hospital quality systems and 4 of the 24 indicators, but on analyzing department-level quality systems, strong associations were observed for 8 of the 11 indicators for acute myocardial infarction and stroke. Clinical indicators supported by higher levels of evidence were more frequently associated with quality systems and activities.

Conclusions

There are significant gaps between recommended standards of care and clinical practice in a large sample of hospitals. Implementation of department-level quality strategies was significantly associated with good clinical practice. Further research should aim to develop clinically relevant quality standards for hospital departments, which appear to be more effective than generic hospital-wide quality systems.

Objective

This study aimed to investigate the associations of quality management systems with teamwork and safety climate, and to describe and compare differences in perceptions of teamwork climate and safety climate among clinical leaders and frontline clinicians.

Method

We used a multi-method, cross-sectional approach to collect survey data of quality management systems and perceived teamwork and safety climate. Our data analyses included descriptive and multilevel regression methods.

Setting and participants

Data on implementation of quality management system from seven European countries were evaluated including patient safety culture surveys from 3622 clinical leaders and 4903 frontline clinicians.

Main outcome measures

Perceived teamwork and safety climate.

Results

Teamwork climate was reported as positive by 67% of clinical leaders and 43% of frontline clinicians. Safety climate was perceived as positive by 54% of clinical leaders and 32% of frontline clinicians. We found positive associations between implementation of quality management systems and teamwork and safety climate.

Conclusions

Our findings, which should be placed in a broader clinical quality improvement context, point to the importance of quality management systems as a supportive structural feature for promoting teamwork and safety climate. To gain a deeper understanding of this association, further qualitative and quantitative studies using longitudinally collected data are recommended. The study also confirms that more clinical leaders than frontline clinicians have a positive perception of teamwork and safety climate. Such differences should be accounted for in daily clinical practice and when tailoring initiatives to improve teamwork and safety climate.

Background

Strategic leadership is an important organizational capability and is essential for quality improvement in hospital settings. Furthermore, the quality of leadership depends crucially on a common set of shared values and mutual trust between hospital management board members. According to the concept of social capital, these are essential requirements for successful cooperation and coordination within groups.

Objectives

We assume that social capital within hospital management boards is an important factor in the development of effective organizational systems for overseeing health care quality. We hypothesized that the degree of social capital within the hospital management board is associated with the effectiveness and maturity of the quality management system in European hospitals.

Methods

We used a mixed-method approach to data collection and measurement in 188 hospitals in 7 European countries. For this analysis, we used responses from hospital managers. To test our hypothesis, we conducted a multilevel linear regression analysis of the association between social capital and the quality management system score at the hospital level, controlling for hospital ownership, teaching status, number of beds, number of board members, organizational culture, and country clustering.

Results

The average social capital score within a hospital management board was 3.3 (standard deviation: 0.5; range: 1-4) and the average hospital score for the quality management index was 19.2 (standard deviation: 4.5; range: 0-27). Higher social capital was associated with higher quality management system scores (regression coefficient: 1.41; standard error: 0.64, p=0.029).

Conclusion

The results suggest that a higher degree of social capital exists in hospitals that exhibit higher maturity in their quality management systems. Although uncontrolled confounding and reverse causation cannot be completely ruled out, our new findings, along with the results of previous research, could have important implications for the work of hospital managers and the design and evaluation of hospital quality management systems.

Objectives

Patient-reported experience measures are increasingly being used to routinely monitor the quality of care. With the increasing attention on such measures, hospital managers seek ways to systematically improve patient experience across hospital departments, in particular where outcomes are used for public reporting or reimbursement. However, it is currently unclear whether hospitals with more mature quality management systems or stronger focus on patient involvement and patient-centered care strategies perform better on patient-reported experience. We assessed the effect of such strategies on a range of patient-reported experience measures.

Materials and methods

We employed a cross-sectional, multi-level study design randomly recruiting hospitals from the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey between May 2011 and January 2012. Each hospital contributed patient level data for four conditions/pathways: acute myocardial infarction, stroke, hip fracture and deliveries. The outcome variables in this study were a set of patient-reported experience measures including a generic 6-item measure of patient experience (NORPEQ), a 3-item measure of patient-perceived discharge preparation (Health Care Transition Measure) and two single item measures of perceived involvement in care and hospital recommendation. Predictor variables included three hospital management strategies: maturity of the hospital quality management system, patient involvement in quality management functions and patient-centered care strategies. We used directed acyclic graphs to detail and guide the modeling of the complex relationships between predictor variables and outcome variables, and fitted multivariable linear mixed models with random intercept by hospital, and adjusted for fixed effects at the country level, hospital level and patient level.

Results

Overall, 74 hospitals and 276 hospital departments contributed data on 6,536 patients to this study (acute myocardial infarction n = 1,379, hip fracture n = 1,503, deliveries n = 2,088, stroke n = 1,566). Patients admitted for hip fracture and stroke had the lowest scores across the four patient-reported experience measures throughout. Patients admitted after acute myocardial infarction reported highest scores on patient experience and hospital recommendation; women after delivery reported highest scores for patient involvement and health care transition. We found no substantial associations between hospital-wide quality management strategies, patient involvement in quality management, or patient-centered care strategies with any of the patient-reported experience measures.

Conclusion

This is the largest study so far to assess the complex relationship between quality management strategies and patient experience with care. Our findings suggest absence of and wide variations in the institutionalization of strategies to engage patients in quality management, or implement strategies to improve patient-centeredness of care. Seemingly counterintuitive inverse associations could be capturing a scenario where hospitals with poorer quality management were beginning to improve their patient experience. The former suggests that patient-centered care is not yet sufficiently integrated in quality management, while the latter warrants a nuanced assessment of the motivation and impact of involving patients in the design and assessment of services.

Introduction and objective

This paper provides an overview of the DUQuE (Deepening our Understanding of Quality Improvement in Europe) project, the first study across multiple countries of the European Union (EU) to assess relationships between quality management and patient outcomes at EU level. The paper describes the conceptual framework and methods applied, highlighting the novel features of this study.

Design

DUQuE was designed as a multi-level cross-sectional study with data collection at hospital, pathway, professional and patient level in eight countries.

Setting and participants

We aimed to collect data for the assessment of hospital-wide constructs from up to 30 randomly selected hospitals in each country, and additional data at pathway and patient level in 12 of these 30.

Main outcome measures

A comprehensive conceptual framework was developed to account for the multiple levels that influence hospital performance and patient outcomes. We assessed hospital-specific constructs (organizational culture and professional involvement), clinical pathway constructs (the organization of care processes for acute myocardial infarction, stroke, hip fracture and deliveries), patient-specific processes and outcomes (clinical effectiveness, patient safety and patient experience) and external constructs that could modify hospital quality (external assessment and perceived external pressure).

Results

Data was gathered from 188 hospitals in 7 participating countries. The overall participation and response rate were between 75% and 100% for the assessed measures.

Conclusions

This is the first study assessing relation between quality management and patient outcomes at EU level. The study involved a large number of respondents and achieved high response rates. This work will serve to develop guidance in how to assess quality management and makes recommendations on the best ways to improve quality in healthcare for hospital stakeholders, payers, researchers, and policy makers throughout the EU.

Objective

The assessment of integral quality management (QM) in a hospital requires measurement and monitoring from different perspectives and at various levels of care delivery. Within the DUQuE project (Deepening our Understanding of Quality improvement in Europe), seven measures for QM were developed. This study investigates the relationships between the various quality measures.

Design

It is a multi-level, cross-sectional, mixed-method study.

Setting and participants

As part of the DUQuE project, we invited a random sample of 74 hospitals in 7 countries. The quality managers of these hospitals were the main respondents. Furthermore, data of site visits of external surveyors assessing the participating hospitals were used.

Main outcome measures

Three measures of QM at hospitals level focusing on integral systems (QMSI), compliance with the Plan-Do-Study-Act quality improvement cycle (QMCI) and implementation of clinical quality (CQII). Four measures of QM activities at care pathway level focusing on Specialized expertise and responsibility (SER), Evidence-based organization of pathways (EBOP), Patient safety strategies (PSS) and Clinical review (CR).

Results

Positive significant associations were found between the three hospitals level QM measures. Results of the relationships between levels were mixed and showed most associations between QMCI and department-level QM measures for all four types of departments. QMSI was associated with PSS in all types of departments.

Conclusion

By using the seven measures of QM, it is possible to get a more comprehensive picture of the maturity of QM in hospitals, with regard to the different levels and across various types of hospital departments.

Objective

To explore how European hospitals have implemented patient safety strategies (PSS) and evidence-based organization of care pathway (EBOP) recommendations and examine the extent to which implementation varies between countries and hospitals.

Design

Mixed-method multilevel cross-sectional design in seven countries as part of the European Union-funded project 'Deepening our Understanding of Quality improvement in Europe' (DUQuE).

Setting and participants

Seventy-four acute care hospitals with 292 departments managing acute myocardial infarction (AMI), hip fracture, stroke, and obstetric deliveries. Main outcome measure Five multi-item composite measures-one generic measure for PSS and four pathway-specific measures for EBOP.

Results

Potassium chloride had only been removed from general medication stocks in 9.4-30.5% of different pathways wards and patients were adequately identified with wristband in 43.0-59.7%. Although 86.3% of areas treating AMI patients had immediate access to a specialist physician, only 56.0% had arrangements for patients to receive thrombolysis within 30 min of arrival at the hospital. A substantial amount of the total variance observed was due to between-hospital differences in the same country for PSS (65.9%). In EBOP, between-country differences play also an important role (10.1% in AMI to 57.1% in hip fracture).

Conclusions

There were substantial gaps between evidence and practice of PSS and EBOP in a sample of European hospitals and variations due to country differences are more important in EBOP than in PSS, but less important than within-country variations. Agencies supporting the implementation of PSS and EBOP should closely re-examine the effectiveness of their current strategies.