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Session Title: Quality Counts: Becoming Bilingual in Quality Improvement and Evaluation in Human Services and Health Care Settings

Panel Session 368 to be held in International Room on Thursday, November 8, 11:15 AM to 12:45 PM

Sponsored by the Human Services Evaluation TIG

Chair(s):

James payday loan  Sass payday loan ,  LA's BEST After School Enrichment Program,  jim.sass@lausd.net

Abstract: The emphasis on accreditation in human services and health care settings has emphasized the institutionalization of Quality Improvement departments. Some evaluators might view these as internal evaluation departments. In this session, presenters offer illustrations of the parallel developments of evaluation and quality improvement traditions, their integration, what they can learn from one another, and models of implementation that have shown signs of learning and improvement at both the individual and organizational levels.

Integrating Quality Improvement and Internal Program Evaluation to Enhance Program Learning and to Facilitate Conditions for Program Success Lois payday loan  Thiessen Love payday loan ,  Uhlich Children's Advantage Network,  lois@thiessenlove.com People really dread a site visit by you is a frequent comment I hear when I mention I work in Quality Improvement. Unfortunately, a common experience of quality improvement is a volume of paperwork and a focus on how one's program and efforts are not measuring up. Although measuring compliance with standards is one of the tools of quality improvement, the goals of a quality improvement function within an organization is to facilitate ongoing improvement of the processes and level of achievement of the desired outcomes in human services. The activities and tools of quality improvement can be sources of good data for program evaluation as well. This presentation will examine the models of quality improvement programs in human services, illustrate how these models can be used to build evaluation capacity in human services and create learning opportunities for program improvement / evaluation utilization.

Introducing Evaluation Tools to a National Child Abuse Prevention Organization--Program Quality, Participant Outcomes, Model Fidelity Margaret payday loan  Polinsky payday loan ,  Parents Anonymous Inc,  ppolinsky@parentsanonymous.org Parents AnonymousR Inc. is an international network of accredited organizations that implement Parents AnonymousR Mutual Support Groups for adults and children with the goal of addressing risk and protective factors related to the prevention of child abuse and neglect. About one-third of Parents AnonymousR Inc. accredited organizations conduct some type of satisfaction surveys with their group participants, fewer collect outcomes evaluation data, and as yet, none collection model fidelity data. In an effort to improve the quality of Parents AnonymousR programs, Parents AnonymousR Inc. is working toward providing the accredited organizations with valid, standardized tools to measure participant outcomes and model fidelity. This panel presentation will discuss the journey toward instrument development and validation and adoption of the tools by the Parents AnonymousR Inc. Network.

Learning from Patients: Identifying and Transforming the Culture(s) of a Community Hospital in New Orleans Paul payday loan  Longo payday loan ,  Touro Infirmary,  longop@touro.com When patients are randomly sampled and surveyed after their hospital stay, the resulting "patient satisfaction" data - quantitative and qualitative - is available along side "clinical" and "outcome" data. This presentation describes the recent roll out of a patient surveying tool coupled with a hospital-wide cultural transformation initiative. It examines the relative status of these two types of service-excellence and clinical data and the advent of a few new mechanisms and practices that are helping the organization become accustomed to learning from both kinds of findings. Finally, it explores the efficacy of promoting functional organizational values as the single set of criteria for evaluating the emergence of the intended culture of quality and service excellence.