Strategic Planning Today for the Delivery of Quality Health Care - Research Paper Example

? Strategic Planning Today for the Delivery of Quality Health Care Strategic Planning Today for the Delivery of Quality Health Care Increased competition, wide range of choices for customers, need for companies to keep up with the times and changing customer preferences have made improvement a continual process in businesses. If a business takes time to strategize on its quality strategy and keep making adjustments for improvement, then it is sure to maintain a sense of quality in all its activities, including provision of goods and services to customers. The major significance of providing quality products is retention of old customers and attraction of new ones, since customers do not mind the price they have to pay if what they get offer value for their money. For instance, due to the global financial crisis, inflation has resulted in increased cost of living and customers are choosier about their spending habits by ensuring wise spending of their hard-earned money. In the case of the service industry, it is hard for customers to know the quality of service they will get, and, therefore, depend on history of a business before choosing it as a source of service. Consequently, it is crucial for an institution to have a history of offering outstanding services to increase its customer base. In addition, in the health services industry, quality goes together with safety and customers seek services from highly acclaimed institutions, especially those with high recovery rates and low mortality rates. An institution must create a culture of quality service by one of the two main approaches, quality assurance, and quality control; the former is more suitable since it signifies a commitment to improvement and not just adherence to laid-down standards. Statement of the Problem According to Ortiz and Clancy (2012), the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) spends over $50 million per year to fund the development of technologies that result in increased quality and safety of patients. In addition, other agencies spend a lot of resources to facilitate innovations that aim at improving the quality of health care. Though there is some evidence of improvement in health care quality, there is room for improvement, especially considering the difference between the present status of the industry, and projections by strategists. These strategies are mostly based on the ability of information technology and other aspects of computer technology to improve the quality of healthcare, including reducing the risks exposed to patients in medical procedures. Another basis for these strategies is the potential of healthcare achieving high degrees of quality service at relatively low costs, especially due to economies of scale brought about by technological evolution and affordability. Affordability would increase the number of patients severed by the system while technological advancement will ease the way patients are served, all this at the same or higher quality and safety standards (Beal and Dougherty, 2004). If the health care system is not visionary enough to anticipate later changes and modify their approach on patient care, then technological advancement will result in use of equipment that increases productivity without having improvements in the quality and safety of service. In this research paper, strategic planning will be linked to improvements in service delivery. The paper will achieve this by reviewing the literature on research done to improve service delivery, and the consequences of doing so. Finally, the report will summarize the strategy, and make recommendations for improvement if available. Research Sources There have been many research attempts; all aimed at identifying reasons, consequences, factors, and methodologies of implementing research findings to improve the quality of medical care to patients. The findings of these studies, if implemented, stand a high chance of improving the quality of healthcare. However, this implementation depends on various factors including the attitudes and abilities of implementing professionals, cost of healthcare, and the approach taken by institutions in quality assurance. The Studies According to Kohn et al. (2002), avoidable medical errors result in preventable deaths of 44,000 to 98,000 patients, in a study of many health institutions across many states in the United States of America. The study compared this number with deaths resulting from Alzheimer's disease and use of illicit drugs, both at 50,000 and 17,000 respectively; giving the medical fraternity reason to believe in the need for an overhaul. This report and others that followed caused pressure on the medical fraternity and the government to make reforms, with both making substantial progress in the recent past. In a study by Jeffs et al. (2006), St. Michael's hospital recorded significant improvements in the safety and quality of service at the hospital by use of strategic planning measures. At St. Michael's, they had reported that the hospital had a rate of 7.5 percent of patients showing adverse effects after undergoing treatment in 2004. According to Baker et al. (2004), hospital managements and health professionals could have prevented 36.9 percent of these unfortunate occurrences. However, the high risk of preventable patient adverse reaction to treatment in teaching hospitals as is the case with St. Michael’s is because of the severe referral cases that these hospitals get. Therefore, according to Jeffs et al. (2006), all professionals working in the hospital should be involved in the quality and safety improvement processes for maximum results. After two years of improvements in the hospital service, the rates of adverse reactions of patients to treatment more than halved. The three studies above all reflect the need for an improvement in the quality of service in the health sector; however, though it is agreeable that there is a wide gap between projections and real performance, these results were influenced by some factors. For instance, St. Michael’s is a teaching referral, institution, which means that it gets the some of the most severe of medical cases. Therefore, compared to other health institutions, patients are at a higher risk of adverse reactions, especially since the hospital also doubles as a teaching center, and students are more prone to errors as compared to experienced professionals (Baker et al., 2004). In addition, the nationwide study was done in a short period, and this indicates only an incident and not a trend in the medical sector. In addition, the accuracy of analysis depends on the approach of the analysts since quality means different things to different people (Jensen et al., 2012). Key Elements According to Ortiz and Clancy (2012), health institutions should be ethical not to adopt information technology just to increase profits, but to care about patient welfare and improve on the quality of healthcare, including efficiency and safety of treatment procedures. In addition, Jensen et al. (2012) advise that all quality assurance strategies and their implementation should have a basis on statistical evidence. Moreover, the report explains that only after an institution has done background research can it know which approaches are effective and those that are not. Consequently, an institution can have a clear picture of the outcomes of a strategy implementation even before the plan is in motion. On the social front, Chung et al. (2010) recommend the involvement of communities surrounding an institution mainly by consultations on a pending strategy or collection of new ideas. As these reports indicate, advancement in the operations of an institution should be accompanied by ethical, legal, and social elements. This would ensure that an institution’s goals are aligned with the welfare of its clients and employees; ensuring that the system is centered on its source of revenue, and its main resources, respectively. If nothing is done, all health institutions will advance technologically and achieve high efficiency, but they will lose the human touch and put their clients’ lives at risk more than ever, as Patrick (2008) put it. Analysis of Research Articles One of the research articles used in this report involved the analysis of the impact of involving the community around when doing improvements in an institution’s quality assurance, with a focus on people suffering from depression. Chung and others studied minority populations, especially African Americans who are at a higher risk of deep depression than their Caucasian counterparts are. The study concluded that involving the community reduces the adverse effects experienced by patients after treatment since improvements at the institutions are in line with patient expectations. The implication of this study is that as institutions strategize on improving their service, they should consult the communities around and make the latter part of the improvement implementation team (Chung et al., 2010). The other research article used in this paper concerned the estimation of the number of people who died at the hands of health professionals due to negligence, incompetence, or human error. Kohn and others targeted the general population in various states, in the United States, and concluded that all people make mistakes and health practitioners do the same since they are human. However, the researchers were concerned that patients that died in the hands of health professionals were excessively many, as compared to those who died of Alzheimer's or drug abuse. The implication of this study is that it points to the need of quality assurance by training workers on standard operating procedures, to ensure that the risk of patient death after treatment is low (Kohn et al., 2002). The other article used in this paper was a case study of St. Michael's hospital, which had high rates of adverse reactions of patients after treatment. The hospital’s management looked at its current situation and then focused on the potential it had. This was with the aim of filling the gap that existed between these two phenomena. The management at St. Michael's knew that without the help and cooperation from the hospital human resource, the strategy would fail. Therefore, they decided to involve all hospital employees and in no time, the strategy started showing results. Jeffs and others concluded that employees have a vital role to play in strategy implementation. The implication of the findings of this article is that managements should involve employees in the implementation of strategies at all stages (Jeffs et al., 2006). Conclusion After treatment, many patients are faced with adverse reactions to treatment procedures that may lead to death. Therefore, the main aim of this research was to identify areas of concern in the field of quality assurance since healthcare should be safe for patients. The main issue was that instead of patients going to hospitals and going on with their lives, a number of them were succumbing and dying due to avoidable human factors. In this respect, this study reviewed three previous research instances, one focusing on the general population, another on minority groups and the third one a case study on St. Michael's health teaching hospital. The findings were that as institutions improve the quality of service, they should consult with the community to know what people think about various changes towards quality assurance. In addition, it is concluded that if the management wants a strategy to succeed, then employees must be involved in all the step of the process. Finally, all departments and functions in a department should be involved in the improvement project, resulting in improvement of the institution as a whole. References Beal, A. C., and Dougherty, D. (2004). Quality measures for children’s health care. Pediatrics, 113 (1), 199-209. Chung, B., Jones, L.,Dixon. E. L, Miranda, J., and Wells, K. (2010). Using a community partnered participatory research approach to implement a randomized controlled trial: Planning the design of community partners in care. Journal of Healthcare for the Poor and Underserved, 21 (3), 780-795. Jeffs, L.,Merkley, J., Jeffrey, J., Ferris, E., Dusek, J., and Hunter, C. (2006). Case study: Reconciling the quality and safety gap through strategic planning. Nursing Leadership, 19 (2), 32-40 Jensen, W., Anderson-Cook, C., Doganaksoy, N., Hoerl, R. W., O'Neill, J., Rodebaugh., and Snee, R. D. (2012). Statistics to facilitate innovation: A panel discussion, Quality Engineering, 24, 2–19. Kohn, T., Corrigan, J. M., and Donaldson, M. S. (2002). To err is human: Building a safer health system. Washington, DC: National Academies. Ortiz, E., and Clancy, M. C. (2003). Use of information technology to improve the quality of health care in the united states. HSR: Health Services Research, 38 (2), xi-xxii. Patrick, A. P. (2008). The anatomy and physiology of error in averse healthcare events. Advances in Health Care Management, 7, 33–68. Read More