For quality, health care focuses on the outcome of services provided rather than individual behaviors. Therefore, the health care community should start to pay more attention to developing standards of quality. The U.S. has become obsessed with developing state of the art technology. However, this can be beneficial and also harmful. At least to a small degree, we need to try to overcome our obsession with technology and focus on achieving the standards of care that are currently being overlooked. Essentially, we need to build a strong quality base for our new procedures to stand upon. In return, millions of dollars should be saved by not pouring as much money into new technology.
Currently, hospitals monitor quality using HEDIS (hospital report cards), but many things still go wrong. According to the Joint Commission for Safety in 2005, 88 cases were reported of wrong side procedures.1 This statistic is obviously staggering and completely avoidable with better assurance of quality. HEDIS are a good start, but we need to also get the opinion of people who do not have access to healthcare.2 Unfortunately, Americans without access to health care consists of almost 46 million people.3 For this reason, some may argue that access is possibly a more pressing matter. However, quality and access truly go hand in hand. Once all Americans gain access, quality will be most important because it measures the services provided.
Maybe the best way to insure quality would be to turn it over to the government to be monitored. The government could establish protocols for all hospitals and clinics for specific procedures. These protocols could be published for each individual profession and created by operational management or a cabinet concerned with quality. Failure to comply with such protocols could result in legal action, which would thereby insure quality.
Quality is also a duty that should be monitored by the professionals who provide care. Professionals need to lobby to the government to ensure quality of services. For instance, a study found that radiologic professionals committed seven times more medical errors than any other area of healthcare.4 Because of this; radiologic professionals are now lobbying and trying to pass “The Care Bill” to congress to require licensure for radiologic professionals. This would improve quality because licensure would require all to achieve the same educational standards and competency testing. The Care Bill is a current example of enforcing better standards of quality through the passing of a law.
1. The Joint Commission. "Performance of Correct Procedure at Correct Body Site." Patient Safety Solutions May 2007 1-4. 10 Mar 2009
2. Bureau of Labor Education. World Health Report 2000:World Health Organization Assesses World's Health Systems. 21 June 2000. World Health Organization. 10 Mar 2009
3. Shi, Leiyu, and Douglas A. Singh. Developing Health Care in America. 4th ed. Boston, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2008.
4. Giddings, Sharon. "First, Do No Harm." Advance: for Imaging and Radiation Therapy Professionals 21(2008): 16.
I agree that there is too much money being spent on new technology..not that I don't believe we should have technology but I think we are focusing too much on that instead of focusing on the quality of prevention. Quality care in the U.S. will go up if we put more emphasis on primary prevention. All the money and research being done on technology kind of puts a hult on what could be done to prevent an illness before it happens. I think some people forget that quality isn't only what we can create through technology, but also the very simple things health care providers should be educating their patients in.
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