The US Health Care: President Bushs Executive Order - Article Example

Essays on Healthcare The US Health Care: President Bush’s Executive Order In the United s, healthcare is provided by many separate legal entities. The quality of healthcare is often compromising as the majority of health care services are offered by private sector. As a response to increasing health care issues, in 2004, President Bush ordered the majority of Americans have interoperable electronic health records within 10 years. The President’s policy aimed at lowering health care costs, reducing medical errors, improving patient safety, and providing better information to patients and physicians. In order to implement this program successfully, Bush directed the Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to set up the National Health Information Technology Coordinator (Thomson, 2014). In 2005, the HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt took initiative to establish American Health Information Community, a federally chartered commission, with intent to accomplish President Bush’s aim of having majority Americans using interoperable electronic health records within 10 years. Although this initiative started off strongly during the term of Bush, it has gradually fallen off for the recent years. As per Duane Morris report (2009), privacy and security concerns were the most potential barriers to the implementation of this initiative. Issues related to unauthorized access to records and privacy concerns prevented the implementation of technology. Some other security concerns include trespassing by an outsider, theft or loss of devices like laptop or mobile phone, or theft while transmitting information through a wireless network. In order to address the General Accounting Office’s concerns regarding information privacy, HHS initiated several projects including the commission that strategically determines the certification criteria for electronic medical records. According to GAO, it is essential “to establish the high degree of public confidence and trust needed to help ensure the success of a nationwide health information network” (Psychiatric news). In addition, unresolved debates over whether to employ an individual’s Social Security number hampered HIPAA implementation standards. Issues associated with general security practices also have weaken the scope of this policy. The higher costs related to this policy also became a barrier to the implementation of the proposed change. The concerned officials indicate that hardware and software maintenance throughout the organization involves higher costs. According to the Harvard researchers’ findings (cited in Powell, 2006), fewer than one in 10 doctors employ the system of electronic health records and roughly 5 percent hospitals make use of one form of them. In order to effectively implement the electronic health records policy within the allotted time, the US government has to find out more financial sources. Recently, the President Obama has taken a series of health care reform initiatives including a $20 billion investment in health care IT over the next decade. In addition, proper organization of the policy implementation program is also vital to achieve Bush’s aim by 2014. Moreover, it is necessary to ensure the active participation of doctors and other health care representatives as they are the individuals who play a significant role in determining the quality of health care services offered. References Electronic health records: The time for implementation is now. (January 2009). Duane Morris. Retrieved from http://www.duanemorris.com/alerts/alert3119.html Powell, A. (Oct 2006). U.S. lagging in adoption of electronic health records. Harvard University Gazette. Harvard University. Retrieved from http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/10.12/13-healthrecords.html Thompson, T. G. (July 2004). Decade of health information technology: Delivering consumer-centric and information-rich health care. Framework for Strategic Action. Department of Health & Human Services. Retrieved from http://www.providersedge.com/ehdocs/ehr_articles/The_Decade_of_HIT-Delivering_Customer-centric_and_Info-rich_HC.pdf 2. Patient Safety: Medication Safety Improvements The development of healthcare from management of vitamin insufficiency and virus disease concerns to technologically advanced chronic disease management system has been escorted by the rise of complexity. However, the transformation of medical care into a complex system has resulted in the unwanted outcome of risk and harm to patients. New technologies are used to sustain quality improvement and reliability by understanding the preventable injuries to patients. Terms like safety culture and event recovery, and human factor analysis are now merged into the health care management. As Small & Barach (2002) points out, patient safety has been dormant for decades until the interest and growth began in the mid-1990s. Though the primary guiding principle of patient safety is “first do no harm”, there are also other factors like cultural and logistics affecting the preventable patient injuries. Patient safety from the preventable harm due to medical management has been a regular topic in the medical periodicals throughout the twentieth century. The norms of all these reports involved improvement of quality and safety. Institute of medicine (IOM), in November 1999 published a report “To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System”, which reports that between 44,000 to 98,000 patients die of preventable injury annually (Small & Barach, 2002). According to the report, to ensure the patient safety, the medical errors must be reduced by 50% by the next 5 years; and it is achievable only by ascertaining it as the minimum target for national action. Although the risk management has always been a major concern, today, the risk management in preventable injury is given much emphasis rather than blaming the complexity of modern healthcare systems. There are many things going wrong in a hospital during the treatment either from the part of patient himself or that of those who care for him. The risk management must focus on strategies to eliminate the risk factors, such as receiving the wrong medication, complications of surgery, failure to diagnose correctly, to detect the deteriorating condition of the patient, etc. Usually, the preventable errors occur when physicians do not update themselves with the modern interventions of technology in the medical care management. Risk management focuses on reviewing and changing the current methods and practices when there is availability of better and effective methods. The quality management must focus on the principles of patient safety. The maxim for the quality management for health care is to ‘provide the right patient with right thing using the right method and at the right time’. The other important elements of quality management includes maintaining patient records, planning actions clearly and promptly, making sure that instructions are understood and carried out throughout the management, and reporting to the senior if any error occurs. The most important element of quality management is that the correct diagnosis method is carried out in line with the patient’s symptoms, and besides, the correct medication is provided to the patient. The strategies for quality management must concentrate on various means to improve safety and quality of care through unambiguous and specific prescription of drugs, correct and safe administering of drugs, and correct dosage of medication. A review on the article Patient safety and health policy: A history and review (Small & Barach, 2002) points that it is the chief responsibility of the state to license and monitor the health care providers in order to improve the patient safety and to reduce the medical errors. The article includes suggestions for creating mandatory reporting of the serious errors that may result in severe harm or death. In total, tactical initiative on various fronts have been congregating together to improve the patient safety. This process is trying to characterize its attempts by learning and controlling the complex systems of technical, social, and organizational components related to patient safety. These policy initiatives will be playing a vital role in renovating the industry into a highly reliable and safe level. References Small, S. D & Barach, P. (Dec 2002). “Patient safety and health policy: A history and review”. Hematol Oncol Clin North Am. University of Chicago, 16(6), 1463-1482. Read More