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Session Title: Quality Still Counts: Evaluation Policy and Practice in Human Services and Health Care
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Panel Session 221 to be held in Mineral Hall Section B on Thursday, Nov 6, 9:15 AM to 10:45 AM
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Sponsored by the Human Services Evaluation TIG
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| Chair(s): |
| Tom Lengyel,
American Humane Association,
toml@americanhumane.org
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| Discussant(s):
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| Tom Lengyel,
American Humane Association,
toml@americanhumane.org
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| Abstract:
Accreditation standards, contract expectations and foundation grantors have created a context for human services and health care requiring the institutionalization of program evaluation initiatives and ongoing quality maintenance and improvement processes. Although the external environment creates a demand for these activities, policies for the practice of evaluation may not be specified. Evaluators from 3 organizational perspectives: community hospital, child and family social services, and a national organization with an evidenced-based program model, will illustrate the ways in which participatory program evaluation practice influences evaluation policy changes and leads to quality improvement.
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Evaluating Model Fidelity in a National Child Abuse Prevention Organization: Development, Dissemination and Use of a Valid Tool
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| Margaret Polinsky,
Parents Anonymous Inc,
ppolinsky@parentsanonymous.org
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Parents AnonymousŤ Inc. is an international Network of accredited organizations that implement evidence-based Parents AnonymousŤ Mutual Support Groups for adults (with co-occurring programs for children and youth) with the goal of addressing risk and protective factors related to the prevention of child maltreatment. The journey toward developing a valid Group Fidelity Tool to evaluate the fidelity of the group to the Parents AnonymousŤ principles and standards for groups has taken more than two years. The Shared Leadership approach included input from Parents AnonymousŤ Staff and Parent Leaders. The Network has been eager to adopt the tool and use it to generate awareness of their model fidelity to guide individual groups and to inform their overall accredited organization. This panel presentation will discuss the journey toward instrument development, validation, and adoption of the Group Fidelity Tool by the Network, including efforts to educate the Network about the importance of fidelity measurement.
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Shaping Practice and Policy through an Innovative and Automated Use of Patients' Handwritten Comments in a Hospital Setting
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| Paul Longo,
Independent Consultant,
plongo2@cox.net
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Though hospital visits and stays can result in the profitable attainment of desired health-care outcomes, hospitals are potentially dangerous and costly settings. Consequently, they're assessed in highly regulated ways to reduce risks, increase profitability, determine reimbursement rates, compensate management, prevent undesired outcomes, promote best practices, identify improvement opportunities, etc.. Increasingly, survey data related to patients' clinical and non-clinical hospital experiences are being factored into routine hospital assessments, helping stakeholders make better decisions. This presentation explores the manner in which a patient-surveying initiative was introduced to a not-for-profit, faith-based, community hospital in post-Katrina New Orleans. Highlighting the influence of utilization-focused, participatory evaluation practices, the presentation is focused on the ways in which patients' narrative comments are systematically processed and strategically used throughout the hospital. Examples are provided to illustrate how associated expectations and practices have been institutionalized and encoded into hospital policy as part of an integrated, values-driven, patient-centered, cultural-transformation initiative.
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Quality Improvement and Evaluation as Catalyst for Organizational Change
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| Lois Thiessen Love,
Uhlich Children's Advantage Network,
lovel@ucanchicago.org
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The complimentary missions of quality improvement initiatives and internal program evaluation are: 1) to maximize the quality of program implementation processes in the client's interest; and 2) to maximize the fit of the intervention to client need and for maximum client benefit. However, within human service organizations these functions often occur within the context of an organizational goal of impressing the external monitoring and funding environment. To successfully balance serving the client's interests and the larger organizational survival needs, quality improvement's and evaluation's roles are to become catalysts for change within the organization. Changes may occur in the multiple areas including the ways in which services are delivered as well as the voices and nature of information used to influence program decisions. Examples of the change agent role and implications for evaluation policy for human service organizations will be provided.
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