Effect of a Quality Improvement Cycle on Access to a Speech Therapy Service
Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences; Health Services Accessibility; Appointments and Schedules; Quality Improvement; Absenteeism. Waiting lists.
Introduction: The interest in quality theme is evident in all areas and its emergence, especially in the health sector that has been highlighted and affected all those involved in the process such as patients, managers and Health professionals.
Several studies define quality in health services by means of dimensions, components, factors or attributes, thus removing it from the plane of subjectivity. The access, although it does not appear in all schemes, it is an important dimension of quality, since it is through this that the social dimension of health care is largely measured.
Objective: To evaluate the impact of a quality improvement cycle on the organization of access to a Speech Therapy Service in Natal – Rio Grande do Norte (RN).
Methodology: This is a quantitative study of the quasi-experimental type before and after the result of a cycle of quality improvement. The quality level will be evaluated through criteria built based on normative documents of the institution in which the project will be developed and resolution coming from “Conselho Federal de Fonoaudiologia”. Five criteria will be evaluated, being two of process and related to the dimensioning of the appointments and filling of electronic medical records; and three of results were related to the measurement of patients' absenteeism rate, the waiting time for screening and for the initiation of speech therapy. The evaluations will take place in the biennium 2017-2018 and data collection will be carried out through reports issued by the computerized medical record programs (Arnaut Clinical Suit), by the appointments system for institutional use and the waiting list. It will be done punctual estimation and the confidence intervals (95%) of the percentage of non-compliance of the criteria. To verify the effectiveness of the intervention will be calculated the absolute and relative improvement in addition to the statistical significance of the absolute improvement through the unilateral test of the value of z. This project was submitted for evaluation by the Research Ethics Committee in October 2017 and is awaiting the opinion of the same.