Improve
Improve policies and procedures through continuous quality improvement.
Data is Essential
Data-driven quality improvement is essential to ensure improved patient outcomes and better care for those at risk of suicide.
Specifying all aspects of suicide care in the clinical workflow and monitored in an electronic health record will provide necessary data to identify successes and failures in care.
However, continuous quality improvement can only be effectively implemented in a safety-oriented, "just" culture free of blame for individual clinicians when a patient attempts or dies by suicide.
In a Zero Suicide approach:
A data-driven quality improvement approach involves assessing two main categories:
- Fidelity to the essential systems, policy, and individual care components of the Zero Suicide model.
- Individual care outcomes produced when an organization implements the essential components of the Zero Suicide model.
Questions
What is our plan for applying a data-driven quality improvement approach, including both fidelity to the Zero Suicide model and individual outcomes? How do we measure and track suicide deaths for those in our care?
To Implement Zero Suicide
Assess Fidelity to the Zero Suicide Model
- Create a plan to assess the organization’s fidelity to the Zero Suicide model. Completing a fidelity assessment will allow you to:
- Determine how closely the elements of the Zero Suicide model are being followed
- Check on quality
- Help identify opportunities for improvement
You will find more information about assessing fidelity to the Zero Suicide model at the tab Fidelity Assessment above.
Measure Patient-Care Outcomes
Create a plan to set patient-care goals and to evaluate the outcomes that systems, policy, and patient-care changes are designed to produce, using the Zero Suicide Data Elements Worksheet.
- Create a plan to collect and review patient-care data every six to twelve months.
- Provide feedback regularly to senior leadership and staff on progress toward patient-care goals in conjunction with the systems, policy, and patient care practice changes being made in the organization’s Zero Suicide approach.
You will find more information about measuring outcomes at the Outcome Measures tab above.
The Zero Suicide Institute of Australasia has created an evaluation framework for Zero Suicide that tracks outcomes, actions, and measures.
Assessing Fidelity
Return to the Organizational Self-Study
If you began your review of this toolkit with the Lead section, you will remember that the first step an organization should take is to complete the Zero Suicide Organizational Self-Study. The self-study is a tool that is designed to allow you to assess what core elements of suicide safer care your organization currently has in place.
Used alone, the results of the self-study will show where an organization’s suicide care practices are already effective and where they can be strengthened, which will inform the overall work plan.
A year or so after your organization has launched a comprehensive suicide care approach, you should also use the self-study to measure your organization's progress, as an assessment of fidelity to the Zero Suicide approach. Completing the self-study every year will tell you and your organization how well you are adhering to the Zero Suicide model and point out the next areas that need strengthening.
Measuring Patient Care Outcomes
Work Plan
In creating an evaluation plan for a Zero Suicide initiative, the implementation team should:
- Identify patient-care outcomes that indicate that systems and policy changes may be having the desired effect on actual practice.
- Assess care outcomes for all patients who have a suicide care management plan.
- Develop, review, and improve efforts for collecting data on suicide attempts and deaths for those in care.
- Assess the experience and satisfaction of patients who are or have been engaged in a suicide care management plan.
Data Elements Worksheet
To assist in this process, the Zero Suicide Data Elements Worksheet provides suggestions for what data elements to measure in an evaluation plan. These include:
- Screening
- Assessment
- Safety plan development
- Lethal means counseling
- Missed appointment follow-up
- Acute care transition
The Data Elements Worksheet suggests additional rates that are useful for health and behavioral health care organizations to examine, if possible:
- ED usage
- Inpatient admissions
- Number of suicide attempts among all patients
- Number of suicide attempts among patients with identified risk
- Suicide among all patients
- Suicide among patients with identified suicide risk
The Data Elements Worksheet includes a description of each measure, including guidance as to how to measure.
Apply Data-driven Quality Improvement
The basic next step to measure improvements in the quality of suicide care is to:
- Enlist the implementation team in developing an evaluation plan, including a plan to evaluate progress, using the Organizational Self-Study, and measure results, using the Zero Suicide Data Elements Worksheet.
There are several additional items to help you plan these next actions:
Quick Guide to Getting Started with Zero Suicide
This one-page tool lists ten actions you can take to start implementation of Zero Suicide.
Getting Further with Zero Suicide
This tool lists several actions you can take if you have been implementing Zero Suicide for a while and are not sure what to do next or need help taking your Zero Suicide work a little further.
Zero Suicide Organizational Self-Study
Every organization should complete the self-study as one of the first steps in adopting a Zero Suicide approach. While the self-study is available in the Lead section of the Zero Suicide online toolkit, it’s provided again here for your convenience.
Zero Suicide Work Plan Template
This form contains an expanded list of action steps to guide your implementation team in creating a full work plan to improve care and service delivery in each of the seven core Zero Suicide components.
Recommendations for Improving Data Collection and Data Definitions
This resource highlights some common questions related to data collection and offers recommendations for improving data collection systems and data definitions. Use this tool to inform discussions about data priorities, data infrastructure needs, and defining quality improvement metrics.