Respond substantively to at least two of your peers. Comment on the strategies identified by your peers. If you can offer help or provide insight into additional tracer methods, use this opportunity to do so.
Tracer methodology is a process of evaluation of care in an organization to improve the patient care process. (The Joint Commission [TJC], n.d.). Tracers are used to monitor the patient experience in a healthcare setting. It allows surveyors to assess the standards of care delivery and patient safety in an organization (TJC, n.d.). The tracer methodology uses three different types of tracers: individual tracers, program-specific, and system tracers (TJC, n.d.). In individual tracers, the surveyor traces the patient’s path through the healthcare organization to explore the care processes and assesses how the National Patient Safety Goals are being addressed in the organization (Siewert, 2018). Whereas with the system tracer, a surveyor evaluates one specific system within the organization, such as data management, medication management & infection control (Siewert, 2018). Program specific tracers focuses on identifying risk point at different level of care, it focuses on clinical services offered in high-risk, high-volume patient populations (Siewert, 2018). The main purpose of all three is to identify risk factors and safety issues during care delivery.
Incorporating a tracer in a healthcare facility would promote effective and safe quality care. A tracer I would like to focus on is the prevention of central line associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs), which is a system tracer. The strategy to incorporate this is using a checklist to make sure all necessary steps and care were completed. Once an order for a central line is placed by a physician, the tracer begins. The physician collaborates with the healthcare team of the necessity of inserting a central line. A physician then inserts the central line and documents the insertion into the patient’s electronic medical record, acknowledging that they were the one who inserted the central line. This central line is then managed and tracked by nurses and physicians. There are continuous assessments and protocols followed to prevent a CLABSI from developing. If a CLABSI does develop, administration can gather data from patient records and compare which patients did and did not develop CLABSIs so this data can be further analyzed.
