Finances and Quality in Health Care - Essay Example

It contains a conceptual overview of quality and how it will help improve the finances of the hospital and implications of not having the quality improvement department to the hospital. OVERVIEW OF THE CONCEPT OF QUALITY IN HEALTH CARE Poor quality health care has a severe effect on the health of individuals. About 100,000 lives are lost every year. This is more than the lives lost to breast cancer, motor vehicular accidents and AIDS combined. Another 770,000 people suffer injuries in hospitals.

Above the personal losses, the community ends up paying an immense amount which is approximated at about $37-50 billion a year in damages and lost productivity . Vices such as malpractice, limited access and the increasing financial cost of health care have raised concern in the medical industry forcing specialists to struggle to come up with solutions to curb these including vicious sanctions. Quality in organizations comes as an integrated approach. Factors such as risk monitoring, quality and cost need to be well managed.

The first thing that needs to be done is to increase the availability of knowledge and improve management and leadership in the hospital . Here, it is important to set standards for patient safety and carry out regular monitoring and evaluation to make sure all standards are being met. Secondly, there is need to find the errors and rectify ourselves from that. Here, there is need to develop reporting procedures for any recommendations by both staff and patients. By giving a simple customer satisfaction form, we will be able to collect opinions on how patients feel and what they would like rectified.

There is also need to establish standards of collection of information regarding events that result to death and serious harm to patients and find ways to remedy them. The next thing is to set standards for safety. These need to be clearly stated and everyone involved in one way or another should exercise due care to make sure standards are upheld. The last thing would be to implement systems of safety by providing proved patient care and treatment procedures. HOW THE QUALITY DEPARTMENT WILL IMPROVE FINANCES As more people pay close attention to the quality of clinical services they procure from hospitals, it is imperative that the organization come up with organizational and managerial infrastructure that enhances the improvement of quality health care.

This will help create avenues for increasing revenue generated particularly in our organization which is experiencing economic growth and development. Ensuring the provision of quality healthcare will instill the trust and confidence of the patients in the services, thus creating loyalty. This will in turn have a favorable effect on the hospital finances. By having one extra satisfied customer per day, we can improve revenues for Boston Massachusetts hospital by over $100,000 annually. It is paramount that a quality improvement department is established.

This will not only boost the performance of the hospital but also have a positive impact on innovation of new products that are patient-tailored. There has always been a conflict between the central management and the service providers such as the doctors, nurses and pharmacists. This is because most quality control policies are made and implemented at the managerial level denying the service line its independence. It is noteworthy that the department includes representatives