Quality In Healthcare

Memorial Hospital is a large hospital that is privately owned. Memorial hospital provides services that are basic for most large hospital facilities similar in the area, like lab, x-rays, emergency room, intensive and cardiac care units and psychiatric ward. One goal the hospital has is paying close attention to each patient, by offering quality care at an affordable price. In this essay we will discuss ways that the hospital might measure quality, the potential cost and failure of quality for Memorial Hospital and discuss each measure, discuss ideals or techniques from TQM that Janice could use to help Memorial ideals on providing quality healthcare as well as analyze the methods memorial could use to assess the quality of health care it is providing. Memorial Hospital is not trying to compete with the other hospital in the area by having all the up to date equipment, they just want to offer affordable quality healthcare. The quality of the hospital and patient care will set them aside from all of the other hospitals.

“The Best Practices: How the New Quality Movement is Transforming Health Care” is written by Charles Kenny, who is an author, consultant, and former journalists at the Boston Globe. The author serves as a consultant to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, where his primary responsibilities are to improve quality and safety. As a consultant, he is familiar with health care news and the situations of the US Healthcare historically. Around 1990, several horrible cases of medical errors in Boston and other cities became a daily news. Medical errors and complications were the fifth leading cause of death, and almost 98,000 deaths were occurring which could be prevented with a quality care. A group of visionary leaders led by physicians Paul

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a controversial yet inspirational novel which addresses the harsh realities of racism and its impact on people’s lives. Arguably one of the most famous characters in the book is Atticus Finch, a lawyer who resides in the fictional small town of Maycomb, Alabama. Throughout the novel, Atticus is shown to have a rather rare view within the town with his non-racist ideology. This more progressive, world view of his is demonstrated during his trial defending Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman. During his closing argument in the aforementioned trial, Atticus Finch uses his position as a lawyer and well-respected citizen to call out the need to conform to self-imposed societal norms –and

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).

Millions of Americans surrender to conditions that are both preventable and manageable annually. Besides chronic diseases, researchers have identified that the third leading cause of death in America is the errors conducted by professional medical practitioners. While medicine is a highly considered field, some of the practices that contribute to the errors observed include the absence of patient safety, poorly coordinated care, and inefficient healthcare quality improvement. Significant steps that can be taken to reduce deaths caused by medical errors include good communication, cooperation, use of advanced technology and implementation of quality healthcare among

Quality is an important factor that affects an organization’s service delivery approach or underlying system of care. To achieve a different level of performance and improve quality, an organization’s system needs to change its own delivery system and key processes. The resources (inputs) and activities carried out are addressed together to ensure or improve quality of care. A health service delivery system can be small and simple, such as an immunization clinic or large and complex or a managed care organization. A health care delivery system consists of resources, activities, and results. Activities or processes within a healthcare organization contain focuses on what care is provided and how is done based on the location, time, and patients of the care delivery. Providing services that meet the needs and expectations of patients and their community, including system that affect patient access, care provision that is evidence-based, patient safety, support for patient engagement, coordination of care with other parts of the larger health care system, and cultural competence, including assessing health literacy of patients, patient-centered communication, and linguistically appropriate

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.

Many health care leaders, authors, and professionals have given their time and effort to write and discuss quality. Quality is now recognized as one of the key aims in healthcare today. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has had a profound impact on health care in America and the view of quality within health care facilities. The National Roundtable on Health Care Quality met six different times between 1996 and 1998 to look at changes regarding quality in health care. Within their conclusion they said, “Serious and widespread quality problems exist throughout American Medicine” (IOM, 1998). The terms underuse, overuse, and misuse evolved here to describe the errors occurring in health care. These errors were hurting more patients than the population realized and once published the trust towards healthcare was low and many had questions. Their review at the roundtable combed through what was currently the norm in health care. Based on the experience of the members of the roundtable, it was not up to par and a shift was necessary to improve healthcare outcomes.

Quality Improvement can be defined as the combined effort of health care professionals including, doctors, nurses, healthcare managers who ensure better patients outcome such as quality care, safety, better system performance and better professional development. Healthcare system always goes through changes, whether its implementation of new systems or diagnosis of new disease. Therefore, health organizations are always in need of some improvement and advancement. In order to achieve improvement, systems have to go through a series of change; however, not all changes can be called an improvement. To ensure the improvement in these systems, some powerful strategies are planned, designed and implemented. These formal strategies analyze the systemic efforts and measure performance in order to improve the entire system and is called quality improvement or QI program.

Quality improvement in health care has been and will continue to be a beneficial process in helping with many problems faced in healthcare. According to U.S Department of Health and Human Services (2011) “quality improvement consists of systematic and continuous actions that lead to measurable improvement in health care services and the health status of targeted patient groups” (p.1). These systematic and continuous actions have indeed led to many health care improvements throughout the years including reductions in infection rates, medication errors, and health care costs. One major current concern in the health care field is the presence of catheter associated bloodstream infections (CABSI’s). Provonost, Marsteller, and Goeschel (2011)

The change regarding a major shift towards quality and value will take philosophical changes in both the public/consumer, and more importantly, the health care community. Currently, there is little admission by providers that they personally make errors, and it is highly likely that a great deal of errors are never reported. While some in the healthcare field admit that errors are a major concern, many deny that they personally contribute to the problem. We also seem to have a culture in healthcare that contributes to a false sense of perfection, and people sometimes seem more concerned about their reputation

They also have extensive staff training programmes and teambuilding workshops in place to guarantee the quality of care is to the adequate standard across the board. Management that exhibit the values and principles of the company and lead in a way that promotes positivity and gains results. Teamwork; this is vital to a functioning organisation, communication is key to successful teamwork. Safeguarding and protection; the organisation has policies and procedures in place to protect

Quality is something that every health care agency strives to achieve. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) suggests that health care organizations develop a culture of safety such that an organization's care processes and workforce are focused on improving the reliability and safety of care for patients (Groves, Meisenbach, & Scott-Cawiezell, 2011). In order to address an issue related to health care quality, it is important to look at the frameworks that will analyze an organization and identify opportunities to improve performance. The purpose of this paper is to provide a description of an organization and an analysis of the following: mission, vision and values, strategic plan, goals,

It is shocking to know that every year 98000 patients die from medical errors that can be prevented(Kohn, L. T., Corrigan, J. M., & Donaldson, M. S. (Eds.), 2000). Medical errors are not a new issue in our healthcare system; these have been around for a long time. Hospitals have been trying to improve quality care and patients safety by implementing different strategies to prevent and reduce medical errors for past thirty years. Medical errors are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer in America (Allen, 2013). In addition medical errors are costing our healthcare system an estimated $735 billion to $980 billion (Andel, Davidow, Hollander, & Moreno, 2012).

In today's modern world with plenty of technology, it is hard to believe that we cannot figure out how to reduce Medical errors. The issue of medical error is not new in health care organizations. It has been in spot light since 1990's, when government did research on sudden increase in number of death in the hospitals. According to Lester, H., & Tritter, J. (2001), "Medical error is an actual or potential serious lapse in the standard of care provided to a patient, or harm caused to a patient through the performance of a health service or health care professional." Medical errors