HA 425 Operational Analysis and Quality Improvement

150 words as response to this post if in text cite use reference.

 
Michael Donkersloot

Hello Class,

To receive quality health care one must first understand what or how it is defined.   Health care quality is a term that is rather broad and may even be more of a personal perspective.  To define quality care it would need to cover safe, timely, effective, patient-centric, and equitable care (Healthcare.gov, 2020).  Over many years, the care I received has been on both ends of the spectrum, some care experiences were positive and others felt inadequate. 

Focusing on the positive outcome in previous care settings, one can look to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) who published its Quality Strategy in 2016 where they identified several factors that define quality. CMS noted the following were essential for a positive quality healthcare experience, reducing the harm caused in the delivery of care, effective communication and coordination, affordability, promotion of prevention and treatment and the strengthen of person and family engagement (CMS, 2016).

Looking back at the most positive experience in a healthcare setting, I realize that it was the communication with not only me as the patient but with the family members by my side that ultimately made it a more palatable experience.  Secondly, the near-seamless coordination with a multitude of departments went almost unrecognized to me as the patient due to their commitment to excellence.  Finally, the experience was positive due to the fact the outcome was what was expected and the skillset of the practitioners ensured corrective action was taken without secondary damage. 

In summary, quality of care is an assessment from the patient’s point of view and may look different to different people at different times. (Verbeek & Van Haitsma, 2019).  From an institutional point of view, the CMS Quality Strategy of 2016 may be the metric to follow but it is the opinion of the patient in the end that determines what quality looks like to them.  The experience noted above was positive, and unbeknownst the hospital met the metrics of published CMS quality standards.