HSA 501 Week 8 Assignment 2: Managing Health Care Quality (worth 200 points)

Week 8 Assignment 2 Managing Health Care Quality HSA501 Management in Health Care Strayer University Patients’ tend to evaluate care in terms of its responsiveness to their individual needs. Medicine has made remarkable advances over the past century which leads patients to expect that modern medicine is able and willing to solve most health problems. (E A McGlynn) Patients have a different outlook of quality compared to purchasers and health care professionals and this will lead to different evaluations. Patients will have a negative outlook on quality of they are limited on access to care and their choices of providers even though this would be a positive for purchasers in cost control. Patients will also monitor the length of their visits, yes it may reduce the cost of providing ambulatory care for shorter visits but this will be a negative aspect to the patients. The challenge for quality assessment is to find a way to balance these competing expectations and demands on the health system. A starting point is to make explicit what purchasers, patients, and health care professionals value and regard as an essential mission of health care. (E A McGlynn) Measurements of Quality of Care The quality cares of measurements I feel that matter most to patients are safety, Patient Satisfaction, Efficient, Patient Centered, and Employee Satisfaction with the Organization. Patient Safety is the prevention of harm to patients. This is done by preventing errors, learn from errors that do occur and is built on a culture of safety that involves health care professionals, organizations, and patients. (Mitchell PH) There are patient safety practices that are used to reduce the risk of adverse events related to exposure to medical care across a range of diagnoses or conditions. Patient safety is the cornerstone of high-quality health care. Much of the work defining patient safety and practices that prevent harm have focused on negative outcomes of care such as mortality and morbidity. (Mitchell PH) Informed patients can lower the risk of errors and increase the safety of their care. In today’s century we use much different patient safety practices, things like bar coding, computerized physician order entry, and crew resource management. Safety is a quality care of measurement that matters to the patient because it prevents hospital inquired infection. With safety quality measurements they have MSRA screening which is on way to prevent the spread of diseases. Safety also prevents errors such as medication or wrong patient wrong time. Patients are also concerned with their patient rights and the spread of information that shouldn’t be shared and there are technical safety measures that ensure this as well. Patient Satisfaction not only leads to an enhanced patient experience but it also associated with improved treatment outcomes. (James Rickert) It is important to understand patient satisfaction results for the patient that is seeking different treatment options and for the payers making the decision for different types of coverage. It is important to understand the patient’s experience and the effectiveness of treatment, this information helps the patients with making informed decisions and it also helps physicians practice medicine more effectively. Patient satisfaction matters most to patients because patients want to be treated with dignity and respect and what to be heard and wants their providers to listen carefully to their health concerns. Efficiency measures have been subjected to few rigorous evaluations of reliability and validity, and methods of accounting for quality of care in efficiency measurement are not well developed. Use of these measures without greater understanding of these issues is likely to engender resistance from providers and could lead to unintended consequences. (Peter S Hussey) Efficiency has been proving to avoid waste of equipment, supplies, ideas and energy. Efficiency has been used to improve the value in the Medicare program. Efficiency matters to the patients because it keeps them from paying costly bills for treatment they may not need or treatment they may not need to be repeated. This not only saves the patient unnecessary money but also the health care organization. Patient Centered care replaces our current physician centered system with one that revolves around the patient. Effective care is generally defined by or in consultation with patients rather than by physician dependent tools or standards. (James Rickert) The basic of patient centered care is the idea that patients know if their needs are being met by their providers and the outlook of the patient is the most important when it comes to outcome or satisfaction. In understanding patient centered care you must und