The Patient-Centered Medical Home - Assignment Example

HEALTH POLICY ISSUES By Health Policy Issues Over the last few years, there has been a growing concern about the high and persistently rising costs of healthcare. Equally, there has been rising claims backed up with increasing evidence showing that the quality of healthcare in America differs significantly. Due to this factor therefore, American legislators have put healthcare reforms to be one of the most important domestic policy issue that should be discussed. Today, there is mounting pressure facing the legislators and policy makers to reform the payment systems to the service providers in order to change the way healthcare is delivered (Papanicolas & Smith 2013, p. 108). It is therefore important to discuss the various health policy issues that are related to the quality care of medical home model, meaningful use/electronic medical records/outcomes, medical errors issues and medical liability. Medical Home Model The Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) is a model that has been formulated with the aim of ensuring that children, youth and adults access comprehensive primary healthcare. In several American states, medical practitioners, hospitals and other health services providers are poorly integrated when it comes to the concept of organization, culture, and financing. The payment systems currently available merely offer reinforcement to the delivery systems that offer basic healthcare to the American citizens, but do not offer “quality” healthcare (Stanley, 2010, p. 81). The payment systems available currently also delivers limited incentives for the service providers to invest in improved care for patients with chronic illnesses which are responsible for a greater percentage of healthcare expense as compared to the acute illnesses. Significantly, it is worth noting that among the numerous proposals for payment and delivery systems that have been subjected to debate, the medical home model is one of the concepts that has gained much attention by practitioners in both the private and public sectors. The medical home model has been proposed by many parties such as insurance companies, healthcare facilities, and the Congress, which has consistently demonstrated its support for the change in the payment structure for the Medicare system. Though the definitions for medical home vary broadly, the general idea behind the medical home model is to ensure appropriate organization and coordination of healthcare. Several advocates of the medical home model identify that this model has numerous benefits, some of which may include improved healthcare quality, reduced medical service expenses, and saving generation. Importantly, the American government has theoretically, enormously invested in the medical home model for a long period of time. However, it is time that this theoretical concept is transformed into practical application in order for the citizens to realize the real benefits of this model. Among the bodies that should address the operational issues related to the medical home model are the Mathematica Policy Research (MPR) and The Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC). In addition, besides conducting independent and collaborative research that aims at giving the relevant information relative to care and coordination, payment policy, and medical home model in general, MPR and HSC have consistently researched on other models which can help to improve the general state of healthcare. Meaningful Use/Electronic Medical Records/Outcomes Electronic health record (EHR) systems are systems which have assisted healthcare providers to be able to accumulate, store and retrieve important information of patients that can be used over a long periods of time (IGI Global,; IRMA, 2015, p. 1046). Many countries have strived to implement the HER system and other strategies which help the medical practitioners to provide more efficient and effective healthcare services as compared to when they had relied on memory or paper based systems. Besides, EHRs are important to the healthcare sector since they enable the medical practitioners to be able to monitor, manage, improve and report data concerning the safety and quality of health in the country. Over time, the American government has been striving to implement a comprehensive Electronic Health Record (EHR) system in hospitals in order to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare services. The EHR system enable the hospitals and other health care facilities to implement strategic plans which have the ability to assimilate inpatient and outpatient patients thus increasing efficiency in the overall health sector. Implementing the EHR system depends upon various factors such as the overall leadership of the health sector, high level of involvement of medical staff, training and development, and strict devotion to the set timeline and budget. The EHR systems has numerous advantages that can improve the state of health in the nation. For instance, this system is capable of facilitating the quality improvement and safety of patients through the use of electronic alerts, use of checklists, electronic prescribing, use of discrete data to improve the use of compliance reports and performance dashboards, and test-ordering which reduces redundant errors among others. In addition, the system ensures that there is a streamlined communication process that has enabled constant improvement in the health of patients. To illustrate, the system has enabled emergency patients to receive medical care within a short period of time and thus many lives have been saved. Medical Errors The Healthcare sector in America is not as safe as the American Citizens expect it to be due to the presence of excessive medical errors. These errors are responsible for the large number of citizens who die every year. In fact, quite surprisingly, many researches and academic studies, have pointed out that numerous preventable medical errors in hospitals exceed attributable deaths to such feared threats as motor vehicle wrecks, breast cancer, and AIDS. Medical errors are simply the failure of a planned action or the use of a wrong plan to achieve solutions of problems that commonly occur during the course of providing health care are adverse drug events and improper transfusions, surgical injuries , suicides, death, falls, burns, pressure ulcers, and mistaken patient identities (Kalra, 2011, p. 2). Therefore, medical negligence which results in multiple medical errors is responsible for a high percentage of deaths among children, youth and adults in America. Factors that have contributed to the nation’s epidemic of medical errors are decentralized and fragmented nature of the health care delivery system or no systems, wrong documentation of the patients health records, wrong prescription or wrong interpretation of the prescription by pharmasists due to prevalent doctor’s bad or “scribbled” handwriting, among others. Therefore the processes by which health professionals are licensed and accredited have focused only limited attention on the prevention of medical errors, and even these minimal efforts have confronted resistance from some health care organizations and providers Eliminating medical errors is not a simple to do but neither is it impossible, therefore for the government to reduce or eliminate these medical errors they should ensure establishing a national focus to create leadership, research, tools, and protocols to enhance the knowledge base about safety. In addition, the government can put measures in place that can lead to the identification of medical areas and developing strategies that can help in the minimization of these errors. Equally, all the medical practitioners should be equipped with the relevant knowledge and skills needed to carry out medical practices carefully and observantly. This can also be done by raising performance standards and expectations for improvements through the actions of professional groups, and implementing safety systems in health care organizations to ensure safe practices at the delivery level. Medical liability The subject of medical liability has continued to increase debate and discussions among various healthcare providers both in the public and private sectors (Urman & Ehrenfeld, 2012, p. 231). Whereas medical liability payments have significantly reduced over the past few years, medical practitioners are still concerned about fears concerning litigation and probable lawsuits, which makes them to have the psychological fear of administering the various medical services. However, many patients have experienced various damages by medical through medical negligence of some medical practitioners. Besides, it is also worth noting that under the current medical liability system, the patient’s or victim’s claims have taken long periods of time to be decided upon. Even though the customary medical liability reforms can hardly pass the federal level, many nations have implemented various actions intended at approving the laws that not only create Acts regarding non-economic harms, but may currently have little chance of passing at the federal level, states have taken action to approve laws that not only establish caps on noneconomic damages, but also explore matters concerning the resolution of disputes, injury funds as well as establishing the time frame within which the injury claims can be filled in the court of law. In addition, the government has established other promising strategies in a bid to reduce medical errors. For instance, the formulation of policies and models such as the liability protection models, establishment of health courts, and the enactment of the disclosure laws have created a system which has significantly reduced medical errors thereby improving the general health state of the patients. Therefore, both the advocates and opponents of the medical liability reforms should recognize that the current health care system has permitted for vary many injuries and damages which can be preventable. Due to this fact, there should be serious reforms to change the overall health structural laws in order to improve the general safety of the patients whilst still preventing “obvious” medical errors caused by the medical practitioners. In addition, measures such as emphasizing the safety of the patients, training the medical practitioners in best practices, efficiently coordinating healthcare systems and the general quality improvement of the healthcare systems will significantly reduce the medical errors caused as a result of negligence. References IGI Global, & In Information Resources Management Association. (2015). Healthcare administration: Concepts, methodologies, tools, and applications. Kalra, J. (2011). Medical errors and patient safety. Berlin: De Gruyter. Papanicolas, I., & In Smith, P. (2013). Health system performance comparison: An agenda for policy, information and research. Stanley, J. M. (2011). Advanced practice nursing: Emphasizing common roles. Urman, R. D., & Ehrenfeld, J. M. (2012). Physicians pathways to non-traditional careers and leadership opportunities. New York: Springer. Read More