Quality of Health Care - Essay Example

QUALITY HEALTH CARE Abstract This paper outlines the definition of health care and the chances of delivering quality health care services. Quality care comes at a price, and thus, the paper focuses too on the access and cost of quality health care. Inaccessibility to health care is an obstacle to the delivery of quality services. Certain factors such as insurance could prevent patients from getting quality care from public health care providers. Bodies responsible for quality care do not put proper mechanisms to ensure maximum care. Meaning that Quality assurance puts emphasis on the training of health care providers and rather assume the importance of improve ways of accessing proper care. The paper outlines the obstacles to quality health care and ways of overcoming the obstacles. Discussion Quality health care refers to the services that ensure that healthy people continue to remain healthy, curing entirely acute diseases, and those suffering from chronic diseases live a long fruitful life. Quality care has to ensure that the three kinds of people receive adequate and prompt care. This process faces challenges that prevent it from achieving its maximum potential. One of the challenges is poor access to these services (McLaughlin, 2006). Access to quality care refers to the ability of individuals to access medical services when they need it. It entails two different but related components, that is, availability of facilities that provide health care around where people live and the aptitude of people paying up for the services. Inability to pay is a financial barrier to healthcare. Medical care is expensive to many individuals in the country. It is for this reason that the government came up with medical insurance to subsidizes this fee. It works in a manner that ensures that most of those under employment are insured. This insurance extends to their family members, as well. However, fractions of people in the country are under employment (Elizabeth & Maulik, 2008). The unemployed and self-employed do not have access to insurance. They pay the entire bill themselves, which is rather expensive. In addition to this, these people do not qualify to be under public programs including Medicaid and Medicare since they are unemployed. Medicaid and Medicare help in subsidizing the cost of health care services to be incurred by its members. An alternative is to purchase the individual private coverage, which goes for a rather high premium. The number of people without health insurance continues to rise steadily due to many factors. A major factor is the rise of insurance cost (William & Julie, 2011). Rise in health insurance cost has made the coverage of medical care very expensive for employers. The high-rising premiums leave businesspersons no choice but to push the cost down to their employees. In the end, it becomes too expensive for employees to manage the payments. A majority of them opt to withdraw from the cover and join the growing number of the uninsured persons. Other factors that lead to losing insurance include, losing a job that used to guarantee ones insurance. In case, a partner used to rely on the other spouse for insurance cover gets a divorce it may also result to her losing insurance. However, health insurance does not guarantee proper health care as it is limited to the individual’s income. The people with higher income have a greater insurance (Goudreau, 2010). None financial inability to access health care services too poses a challenge to proper health care. A percentage of people have difficulty in accessing a medical facility or personnel. In some areas, the site of the facility may be far away from residential areas. In others, they may be crowded with few medical personnel. In this case, patients experience delays in finding an appointment with a doctor. These delays result to further complications in the health patient’s status (Lloyd, 2004). The Quality assurance has not put enough measures to maximize quality health care. It relies so much on education institutions to determine the competence of medical personnel. The requirements in place to check medical personnel involve successfully completing their education and passing the licensing examination. Usually the skill lapses after quite some time after exposure to other factors (McLaughlin, 2006). The licensing institutions do not provide a periodic examination of the personnel after they start practicing their skills. This results in a lot of malpractice after a long period. The licensing board comes when a patient complains of a malpractice from the personnel. Despite this, many organizations have come up with an amicable solution for this issue. They require the personnel to pass their examination on a periodic basis ensuring their continuous efficiency. Other organizations conduct document quality review on them to allow them to continue with medical practice (William & Julie, 2011). The quality assurance uses peer review strategies, which have proved to be an ineffective tool of maintaining quality services. The tool focuses on denying medical experts licenses to practice medicine, instead of concentrating on improving their quality in service delivery. Removing of personnel who commit offences does not improve quality, but instead it hinders services as it reduces the number of specialists available to provide enough quality service. Another fact is that the peer reviewers do not agree on some of the issues. The process thereof does not prove to be efficient in terms of quality service improvement (William & Julie, 2011). The malpractice liability system has caused a lot of harm on the conveyance of medical services in the country. This system is responsible for two major things. The first one is to give financial compensation to all those who suffer medical injuries in the course of receiving medical care. Secondly, the system has the task of preventing medical personnel from carelessly causing injuries to their patients. The pressure of not committing these crimes prevents medical personnel from maximize their efforts. The fear of paying large sums of money and undergoing a law suit it too much pressure to allow them to concentrate and continue being productive. This has also led to losing of skilled personnel who lose their employment due to malpractices that occurred because of accidents (Bisgaard, 2009). The system has failed to address the real issues facing medical care. Instead, it has deepened the situation resulting to further failure. The medical sector should advocate for alternative methods of resolving disputes amicably and improving the quality of care given to patients. One of the methods is placing limits on the awards given to patients over malpractice. Medical centers lose a lot of money on the high awards that should instead help in improving medical services. This will reduce a lot of money wasted in these kinds of compensation (Goudreau, 2010). Another way of resolving malpractices is issuing the medical personnel with proper practice guidelines, which spells out the definition of negligence, will provide an opportunity for them put up measures that avoid such practices. By doing this, the personnel’s service improves, in quality and general medication quality improves (William & Julie, 2011). The government has put in place new methods that have been a success and a boost in quality delivery. The computerized information system allows improved care and constant monitor of patients. The electronic medical records provide an opportunity to reduce a number of malpractices that could have occurred as an error in diagnosis or prescription. It gives a history on the patient’s medical records giving a better judgment and exposing symptoms that could have gone unnoticed (Bisgaard, 2009). Conclusion Quality health care is determined by both financial and none financial factors. Most of the factors involve the administration of the medical system. The improvement of these services should be the first priority in devising measures of ensuring proper medical care. Medical services face financial challenges, whose control demands a reduced wastage of financial resources in costly methods that do not give good results. Use of technology properly reduces errors in the medical field. Electronic methods have provided a closer monitoring unit for patients leading to faster and safer recovery. In order to improve accessibility, the government should provide methods to subsidize the cost of health care for all people. This should be regardless of employment or not. It is the right of every person to access quality health care amicably. The medical personnel should undergo constant skill review to ensure that they continue to better their skills. When the personnel are able to deliver quality care, malpractices will be outdated. With the implementation of all these mentioned, there will be proper access and quality health care for all people. References Bisgaard, S. (2009). Solutions to the Healthcare Quality Crisis: Cases and Examples of Lean Six Sigma in Healthcare. Los Angels: ASQ Quality Press. Elizabeth R. R, Maulik. S. J. (2008). The Healthcare Quality Book: Vision, Strategy, and Tools. Chicago: Health Administration Press. Goudreau, K. A. (2010). Foundations of Clinical Nurse Specialist Practice. New York: Springer Publishing Company. Lloyd, R. C. (2004). Quality Health Care: A Guide to Developing and Using Indicators. New york: Jones & Bartlett Learning. McLaughlin, C. P. (2006). Continous Quality Improvement in Health Care: Theory, Implementations, And Applications. Miami: Jones & Bartlett Learning. William, S., Julie, K. (2011). McLaughlin and Kaluzny's Continuous Quality Improvement In Health Care. Chicago: Jones & Bartlett Publishers. Read More