Healthcare

Healthcare organizations are required to collect and submit to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services a number of measures related to patient outcomes as well as surveying patient satisfaction. What gets measured in organizations is what gets managed. Are we measuring the right things to ensure that patients receive quality health care?

IOM (Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences) defines quality health care as "safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient and equitable (IOM)." AHRQ (The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality) defines health care "as doing the right thing for the right patient, at the right time, in the right way to achieve the best possible results (AHRQ)." Both definitions do provide an understandable picture of a good quality health care. Some quality actions that I have seen been done to improve health care quality is alerting patients and educating them on diseases and conditions such as hypertension, heart attacks, pneumonia and cancers. Hospitals/clinics/and community centers often hold seminars that educate personnel's about actions that need to be taken to one's health. As many as 91,000 Americans die each year because they don't receive the right evidence-based care for such chronic conditions. Tens of thousands of Americans die each year as a result of preventable hospital errors and nearly 90,000 people die every year due to an infection they obtain while in the hospital (NCQA). Several factors are important for good quality health, but I'm going to concentrate on three:

Providing continuous, regular care for people living with chronic conditions like diabetes. If the right care is provided at the right time - the patient's overall health care cost can be lower versus if they don't - their health care needs can become difficult to maintain and more serious and more expensive.

Coordinating results and care among multiple doctors practicing in different fields. In order for all the specialist...