What Is Mayo's Strategic Advantage Of Being The Best Of Best

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 successful evolution of this organizational structure in a competitive marketplace has required a close partnership between managers and physicians supported by a culture of physician group accountability for quality and efficiency. An overarching agenda for achieving excellence focuses on high-impact health conditions, provides goal-oriented tools to analyze population data, proactively identifies patients in need of intervention, supports systematic process improvements, and promotes collaboration between patients and professionals to improve health.

By 2001 it was brutally apparent that the U.S. Health Care system was in dire need of a reform in regards to quality and patient safety. Following two separate reports issued by The Institute of Medicine (IOM), To Err is Human (1999) and Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health Care System for the 21st Century(2001) the U.S. Congress requested the IOM review quality processes across multiple government funded health care programs. And understandably, “these reports described America’s healthcare system as a tangled, highly fragmented web that often wastes resources by duplicating efforts, leaving unaccountable gaps in coverage, and failing to build on the strengths of all health professionals” (Brown J., p. I – 15, 2013). Thus, the Committee on the Quality of Health Care in America released 6 aims to address key dimensions that require improvement in our health care system. These aims propose that our system needs to strive to be more Safe, Effective, Patient-Centered, Timely, Efficient, and Equitable (STEEEP). All of which were created to help overhaul our current health care system and, more importantly, narrow the quality chasm.

Ransom, E. R., Joshi, M. S., Nash, D. B., & Ransom, S. B. (Eds.). (2008). The healthcare quality

The purpose of quality management in healthcare is a continuous process that improves health care performance and increase customer satisfaction. Within health organizations there are many entities such as pharmacies and clinics all of which need to provide quality services to their patients. Quality improvements are organizational strategies incorporating evidence-based practice to improve healthcare (Huber, 2010). Reviewing why and how the need for quality management in a health care organization will be discussed.

My experience in both my previous career in nursing and human resources has dealt with approaches in quality improvement in patient safety and different metrics in the turning up organizational behavior as well as up swinging the operations of the organizations respectively. We live in a rapidly changing world, and healthcare industry is not exempted from it. Because I will be playing an indispensable role in the future, I am very interested on the concept of quality improvement and what not and identify possible future challenges and draw lessons from healthcare organizations that has spearhead innovative changes to providing healthcare by pursuing the triple dimensions of the improvement of healthcare in general that is Improving the patient experience of care (including quality and satisfaction); Enriching the health of populations; and Reducing the per capita cost of 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).

More methods are being created and taken place to ensure, inspect, repair and correct performance where it is needed to do so. MCOs have developed a new status quo of improving and performing better every year with tools such as the “Quality Drivers of Care” (Miller, 2004). One of these tools, perhaps the most important one, is the voluntary accreditation of MCOs by organizations such as the National Committee on Quality Assurance, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, and the Utilization Review Accreditation Commission, among others. While MCOs are not required to do so they choose to, to show the industry that they are being assessed in the quality and service they provide and that improvements are in fact being made. They are also drivers in effectiveness and quality assurance as MCOs now find themselves competing amongst each other not only on costs but also on their effectiveness.

Healthcare is the single largest business around the world and plays a vital role in society today. The desire to enhance quality of care in healthcare delivery has increased tremendously.

The Quality Chasm report underscores the lack of quality healthcare, cost concerns, poor use of information technology, absence of progress in restructuring the health care system, and the underutilization of resources (Stevens, et al., 2006). The quality issue that this writer has chosen to address is the poor use of information technology. According to the Quality Chasm Report, health science and technology have advanced at a very rapid pace, but due to poor use of information technology, the healthcare delivery system has not maintained delivery of high-quality healthcare services. Research results are not translated into practice, and practice lags behind knowledge (Stevens, et al.,

The Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) publication of the landmark reports To Err is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century led many healthcare agencies to begin investigating ways to transform the healthcare industry. To Err is Human, published in 1999 outlined that despite rising healthcare costs, quality and patient outcomes were not improving. To Err is Human hypothesized that faulty processes and not people were to blame and set a goal that in the five years following the report, a reduction of 50% of healthcare errors would occur. In 2001, IOM published their report, Crossing the Chasm. In the years since their first published report, there was no noticeable improvement in the quality of healthcare. In the Crossing the Chasm report, the IOM introduced a six-aim framework to transform healthcare and improve quality. Fast-forward to 2010 and the Affordable Care Act. In the face of rising healthcare costs, 17% of the gross domestic product and rising, the government sought to control costs and improve quality by shifting from a fee for service healthcare system to a health care system where providers and hospitals receive reimbursement related to the quality of care and outcomes.

Department of Health & Human Services. (2011). National Strategy for Quality Improvement in Healthcare. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

The Mayo Clinic is well known for quality embark. They are very determined in setting a new standard in healthcare by eliminating waste and improving efficacy. The healthcare has changed over the years and so has Mayo. They have put their effort in to quality because their patient was the focus which has made them money in the long run. They were about improvement and transformation. They overtime than had a test done to see if they could reduce the errors made by 50%. They went about in measuring patient safety and health care and found out they can prevent the areas so they need to have improvement in quality to be able to do that.

The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program is a current model using certain criteria for purposes of improving quality and risk management. Health care organizations and risk managers around the country utilize this model to boost safety processes and outcomes. At the other end, a final goal is sought to reduce cost and get positive results for the organization. Criteria within the Baldrige model focuses on the successful operation of health care organizations that corroborate between units and departments, including leadership and performance, while also considering Joint Commission accreditation, Magnet status, and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement initiatives (The National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2014). The goal of the Baldrige model is to lead all components of the organization to be unified and productive as a whole, manage change, and examine and analyze data in order to be competitive and successful in the healthcare market.

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.