Chief Quality Officer Job Description

The Role of Chief Quality Officers in Health Care

Quality care is a priority in health care delivery. The drive toward a value-based health care system, which pays providers based on whether they improved a patient's health, forces health care facilities to evaluate their methods in ensuring patients receive the highest-quality care. Many health care leaders believe that a chief quality officer is a key role in ensuring that providers deliver the highest-quality care while lowering costs.

Chief quality officers can help their facilities reduce per capita expenses and lead the charge in delivering the best care by reducing ineffective care, waste and harm. The position of a chief quality officer is unique in a health care setting. The skills needed to succeed as a chief quality officer in hospitals and other health care facilities can be learned from advanced nursing degree programs.

Those who want to improve health care quality should consider earning an online Master of Science in Nursing. Chief quality officers use various analytical strategies to ensure that they deliver quality health care. They analyze new methodologies that may impact nursing performance, patient safety, and employee satisfaction.

They make suggestions for improvement. When organizing quality improvement initiatives, chief quality officers consider how to integrate new refined processes, collect feedback, and create reporting systems that facilitate clear communication between clinicians. Strong leadership skills are required for effective chief quality officers.

They must know how to build teams and solve problems together in emotionally-charged environments. They must lead organizational change, coordinate policies and resources while working with other executives and clinicians to improve the quality of health care delivery. Their leadership skills help them to implement quality initiatives and foster a culture for improvement.

A Second-Opinion Rule for Cardiovascular Surgery

Quality is the main focus of the value-based healthcare landscape. The federal government is giving financial incentives to hospitals and systems that are demonstrating quality in terms of patient care. To be an effective CQO, you have to be a good one.

To reduce high-risk cardiac surgery mortality rates, Ballard worked closely with health system leaders, hospital leaders, cardiac surgeons, and operating room staff to institute a second-opinion rule. They sorted out benefits and likely risks for certain patients, so clinicians could make sure they were ready for surgery. In order to achieve high quality goals, clinical informatics and quality teams need to be tightly aligned, according to J. Michael Kramer, MD, MBA, senior vice president and CQO at Spectrum Health.

The Geisinger Health System Chief Quality Officer

Quality-related functions are spread out among other qualified clinicians or executives in many healthcare organizations. The chief quality officer role is growing in the industry. Valley Health System, a New Jersey based organization comprised of one hospital, one thousand physicians, a medical group and home care services, recently named a new assistant vice president for quality and patient safety, a position created specifically to that.

One of Ms. Paquet's responsibilities is to make sure that task forces assigned to work on quality improvements for specific indicators are held accountable and communicate with the rest of the organization. John Bulger, DO, who has been the lead of the division of quality and safety for the Geisinger Health System since 2011, works in a different setting. The integrated physician-led system of the Geisinger includes eight hospital campuses, a 1,100-member group practice, two research centers and a health plan.

The core responsibilities of a position dedicated to improving quality are usually included in the job description of hospitals that are in the process of creating it. Ms. Paquet says that quality officers need to be able to work with technology and have a passion for providing a safe environment. Dr. Bulger emphasizes the importance of being a team-builder and coach who can solve emotional problems.

A Qualifications Framework for a Quality Control Officer

A quality control officer needs a certain set of skills and abilities to help him carry out the tasks assigned to him as part of his position in the organization. A quality control officer needs to have certain qualifications in order to perform the tasks that are assigned to him in his job role. A quality control officer is a professional who is responsible for ensuring that all the products that are manufactured in the industry are in line with the legal regulations and customer requirements.

The Quality Control Officer is a highly focused job that conducts special operations and programs to ensure the quality standards by maintaining the reliability of products. Quality Control Officers are referred to as QC testers. They are involved in measuring the existing goods and services against the previous ones in order to produce better services for the customers.