Reference no: EM133776851

Question

Healthcare in the United States is an increasingly competitive industry. To thrive, healthcare providers need to maintain a culture of continuous improvement in their organizations. The first step toward this goal is developing an understanding of the basic tenets of quality assurance and performance improvement. As Dr. Choi highlighted in this unit's video set, physicians face various obstacles in their efforts to implement these improvement programs. This small group discussion forum provides you with an opportunity to practice identifying obstacles and methods to help overcome them. Read the short scenario and the questions that follow before posting your reflections in the forum. A healthcare organization wants to expand its cardiology department and has recruited a number of well-respected cardiologists to join its team of specialists. During the integration phase, the organization realizes that the new cardiologists all have much higher than average annual productivity records. Highly productive physicians tend to record 15,000 to 18,000 relative value units (RVUs) annually; the new physicians all record over 25,000 RVUs annually. Further reviews of their medical practice reveal high levels of annual patient testing, calling into question whether these tests are necessary, or are being used to pad the physicians' salaries.