Quality In Health Care

The Institute of Medicine released a report in 1999 titled To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health Care System concerning the number of medical error related deaths. The report states that between 44,000 and 98,000 medical error related deaths occur each year in hospitals across the country (Kohn, L. T., Corrigan, J., & Donaldson, M. S., 2000) In response to this report, the Institute of Medicine released Crossing the Quality Chasm: Health: A New Health Care System for the 21st Century that outlines six aims for the future of the healthcare system: safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, equitable (Institute of Medicine, 2001). These aims set to establish the quality of healthcare across the country. Quality is defined by the Institute of Medicine as ““the degree to which health services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge” (2001).

In today’s society, the accuracy of health information, the availability of health records, and the professional resources in which one live are vital in decision making for health conditions. Meaningful Use (MU) is a program developed by CMS Medicare and Medicaid that awards, incentives in the health care industry in which the certified electronic health records (EHRs) are used to improve patient care (Practice Fusion, 2016). These incentives are for professionals that care for about 30% of their adult patient volume or 20% of their children’s volume for Medicare and Medicaid patients (CMS, 2016). In addition, adjusting from paper charts to electronic charts of patient’s information is beneficial for MU. Furthermore, the American

Nothing in life remains the same things are constantly changing. In order for company to remain competitive they must make quality improvements to keep up with the changes. Health care is no different. In fact continuous quality improvement in health care are more important then any other field. Health care is a business that affects every consumer. Health care is not only a business but it is a viral part of everyone life. Because of the impact health care has on the entire world it is important that changes are made continuously to ensure that the consumer (patient) receives the highest level of service. Continuous Quality improvement (CQI) ensures that the best healthcare possible is provided. The use of Continuous Quality improvement

The Institute of Medicine of 2001, states numerous areas where healthcare is failing patients, stating delivery of care is often overly complex and uncoordinated, leading to a slowdown in care rather than improved efficiency in regards to patient safety (Institute of Medicine, 2001). To account for the incommodious system, the Institute of Medicine discusses in a health policy review released titled Crossing the Quality Chasm: A new Health System for the 21st Century. six aims for improvement of quality. The six aims for improvement are built around the core of healthcare to be built around safety, effectiveness, timeliness, efficiency, equitable and patient centeredness (Institute of Medicine, 2001). A healthcare system that achieves gains in these areas would be better off at meeting patient needs according to the Crossing the Quality Chasm review.

For an organization to improve and achieve better revenue and improve service provision the first step is to restructure and reorganize. Establishing the organization’s new goals is a major move that needs everyone in the organization to be aware and ready. The organization must change to achieve the new goals of becoming competitive and improving its revenue attraction through improved policies and service provision. This paper will create a focus on the recommendations for Arroyo Fresco on how it can improve its returns through improved organizational structures.

Quality of care has always been a concern in the U.S. health care system. Although great strides have been made to improve the quality of care delivered, many critics still believe that the United States has a long way to go before truly delivering uniform quality care.

The goal in healthcare today is to achieve better patient outcomes. Technology is changing daily that affects how patient care is provided. As the world around us continues to move into a more advanced technology based healthcare system incentives are offered to qualifying healthcare entities, provided they are utilizing approved health information technology (IT) to comply with standards set by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) (Jones, Rudin, Perry, & Shekelle, 2014). Standards such as meaningful use help ensure with the use of electronic health records (EHR) that patients are receiving quality care (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], n.d.). This paper will define and discuss the importance and implications of meaningful use relating to healthcare. Several key points will be discussed including an overview of meaningful use, analysis, further recommendations and a conclusion.

In the United States alone there are 98,000 deaths per year caused by low quality health care (Ignatavicius & Workman, 2013, pg. 2). This statistic is disturbing because the errors that resulted in death were errors that were preventable. The intent of this chapter is to bring awareness to health care providers that are able to make a change in the quality of health care. In current practice patients are subjected to medication errors, preventable hospitalizations, premature death, and poor care provided due to racial, ethical, or low-income factors.

The quality of care In the United States Health Care System, unlike a lot of people’s perceptions, is not the best in the world. In fact, Rose Ann DeMoro, the Executive Director of National Nurses United, Which happens to be the nation’s largest professional association and union for registered nurses, wrote in “How US Private Insurance Healthcare is Failing,” “A study published [in June 2011] from the university of Washington in collaboration with researchers at Imperial College London found life expectancy rates in eighty percent of US counties were fare behind the standard set in the top ten nations” (DeMoro 2).Also, in a study shown in “Forbes” America’s quality of care ranked fifth out of eleven industrial nations: Australia, Canada,

Instead of using paper based records, technology allows physicians to use the electronic medical record (EMR) that improves the quality of programs. By using the EMR, this is not easy nor is it low cost. Physicians’ have to use this method as their daily task. There are some barriers that has been identified with the use of the EMR by the physicians we will discuss. There will be some suggestions made that might can help the policy interventions to overcome the barriers. This will include the support system of work/practice including electronic clinical data exchange, and financial rewards for quality improvement. (Sim, 2004)

Quality is one of the most essential elements of healthcare. As stated by the Agency of Health Research and Quality, “Everyday, millions of Americans receive high-quality health care that helps to maintain or restore their health and ability to function” (Agency of Health Research and Quality, 2014). Improvements have become vital to the success of health care organizations and in the Healthcare Quality Book, it is explained that quality in the U.S. healthcare system is not at the standard that it should be (Ransom, Joshi, Nash & Ransom, 2008). Although this has been a reoccurring issue, attempts to fix the insufficiency have been less successful than expected.

The organization should look at what was preform in the visit and should enter the missing information as soon as possible. The data quality and consistency are essential to ensure the safety of communication delivering patient health services and organization of care and reporting. Assessing the quality and consistency of the data requires data standards. The short-term practice provides professional health information with a clear understanding of data standards as a tool to enable interoperability and promote the quality of the data. Some of the problem with having poor-quality can be that by not informing or writing the right information on the patient chart on the same date of the visit it can make you responsible for what had happened

Health care quality has made vast improvements in the last several decades and continues to improve as a stronger emphasis has been placed in this sector with our current health care reform. Consumers now have access to quality report cards on providers and the health care systems that can easily be obtained over the internet. Shultz & Young (2014) argue that providers of yesteryear purposely created mysteriousness in health care resulting in patients blindly following their treatments despite the lack of clinical evidence that supported the treatment. Current consumers are more educated on disease processes and the performance of providers and hospitals which has resulted in a greater demand for higher quality.

Health care is rapidly changing, especially in the uncertain economic times. With that being said, companies should continually look to their processes and procedures and update as needed to ensure they are of the best practice, and to keep the competitive advantage (Yarmohammadian, Ebrahimipour, & Doosty, 2014). Due to an emphasis placed on value-based care, there has been a greater focus on quality improvement measures (Margolis, Mackey, Sarwar, & Fintelmann, 2015). Organizations are looking for ways to improve the overall patient outcome while avoiding adding unnecessary costs. However, because there are many different criteria for quality, and it is constantly changing, the quality improvement measures should be continuous (Goetsch

As a graduate student offering health care administration, one of the key issues relevant to this field is managed care and quality care. Most of the concerns for the last several decades focused on the cost of increase in health care delivery. Focus during this age was on physician patient relationship dependence; where services provided were based on ‘fee for services’ or what is called an unmanaged or traditional form of health care delivery. With this system, patients were charged based on the nature of sickness including hours spent. Because the system was a source of income to physicians, they inclined to spend quality time giving quality care to achieve a positive result if not negative using effective evidence based system (where patients were allowed to bring to counter their own personal preference and unique concerns as well as expectations which includes values). But the question still remains that, how many people were able to afford this kind of health cost? Obviously the average and the unemployed couldn’t afford and this became a burden for the public, because the structure was favoring only the rich in terms of cost and quality of care. The continuity of this issue (unmanaged care) made America one of the highest health care costs in the world with about 60% to 100% higher than most other countries because only few people could purchase it (health cost). And as those costs approached, it then exceeded to 14% overall economic output, thus increasing pressure