Patient Safety Indicators - Research Paper Example

? Patient Safety Indicators Patient Safety Indicators Introduction Health facilities in the world need to be maintained and equipped with ultimate safety measures to improve the living standards of people. A number of researches have been conducted to establish indicators applicable in providing good care and health standards to human beings. Lack of prioritizing medical care and safety ideology to patients has reduced the services offered and the level of treatment. Nations all over the world have implemented patient safety standards as a first priority. Patients are given the best care and service to increase the life expectancy of living beings. However, the standards of these services and patient safety vary from country to country. First world countries that have developed economies have better working strategies to increase patient safety, while third world countries and developing economies struggle with their budgets to come to terms with the safety standards. Patient safety indicators Agency for healthcare research and quality came up with patient safety indicators to identify the potentiality of hospitals to offer best patient safety standards. The administration develops indicators that protect the well being of patients in the institution. Institutions itself has an obligation to provide necessary systems for patient safety in areas of infection control (Fitzpatrick, 2006). Errors that are to be avoided include problems in practice, substandard products, mistaken procedures and faulty systems. The development of patient safety indicators will advance the safety plans in any institution as the patient safety indicator identifies instances in which a complication of care happened in a specified period of time in the medical facility. Patient safety indicators are generally developed to increase professionalism and avoid problems that may occur during procedures in treating patients. For instance, machines and equipment are given a check up each and every time before being used in treating a patient. They are also given unaesthetic treatment to avoid the transfer of communicable diseases from patient to patient. Similarly, the products and medicine used are certified by the bureau of standards making sure they are fit to be used by patients. Counterfeit products increase the chances of patients losing their lives and having adverse complications. Training and courses offered to medical practitioners are done from time to time to avoid mistaken procedures on patients or problems in practice. For example, there was a case where two theatre patients were mistakenly taken to wrong theatre rooms. One was to be operated a hind limb and the other a front limb but since they could not talk the doctors ended up working on the wrong parts. The additional education prepares the medical workers acquire enough skills in offering the services. Hospitals have acquired a four-step process in evaluating a medical staff’s patient safety indicator. This determines if the worker is fit to work or given more time to train to certify the requirements. The candidate is first given a literature review examination to establish language understanding and communication. Workers who have good communication skills have a potency of understanding what the patients need and are comfortable with. The second part is evaluating the candidate by clinical panels. The clinical panels have a reasonable amount of time with the candidate to establish his or her medical understanding and how to help patents when need arises. The candidate is then given a review by experts and professionals in the medical sector. The candidate is tested on the professional tips of the sector and the steps to follow in case a patient has certain complications. Finally, the candidate is given an empirical analysis for completion of the test. The candidate is expected to have a reputable score so as to pass the patient safety indicator. The extensive empirical evaluation and administrative data based algorithms have increased the patient safety standards in the medical sector by far. They identify the sub standard care accorded to patients and make the possible changes in service provision. PSI has seen a drop in mortality rate, change in length of hospital stay and charges incurred. The death of born children has been reduced by the offering of better mortality and child birth services, as the care given to pregnant women has been improved in all the hospitals. Similarly, the charges have been strategized to cater for a large percentage of the population. This strategy has increased the number of patients that attend the hospital fraternity. While there is reduced time to wait for services, the number of people served is relatively higher. The development of patient safety indicators has greatly opened opportunities for implementing patient safety events and introducing safety initiatives thereby increasing hospital performance. In order to develop a solid patient safety indicator, full diagnostic, demographic and utilization information of all patients who require treatment services must be recorded. These will give the medical practitioners easy time when they need information about the patients. Some patients might have allergy problems that they do not know, but it is included in their files. The patients will be saved the agony of explaining their information each and every time they are admitted to a medical facility. The information also helps to evaluate the patients’ health status and the diseases that are constantly experienced in the system. The demographic information includes sex, age, date of birth and place of birth. The diagnostics are codes while summary information describes the facilities attended, dates admitted, discharging and status. In implementing the patient safety indicators, patients are accorded to specific doctors with specialty services. The doctors have the professionalism of attending to such cases and attend to patients’ full time. The doctors diagnose the patient and decide on the period of stay in the hospital for treatment to be accorded. The PSIs determine the number of times the patient can be given, the number of times to record checkups and the facility to attend. The patients’ diagnosis is connected with procedure codes relying on the information available in the hospitals’ data. This information helps in according each patient the required treatment for the data recorded. Additional data is collected from patients to avoid problems brought by incomplete data provision. However, the information written in the patients’ books do not include principle procedures such as surgery or organ transplant. The only procedures that may be included are oxygen administration and cardiac catheterization. This principle is done to reduce plausible effects to patients. Patients may get heart attacks or effects of fainting when they discover that they have to undergo principle procedures like surgical operations and organ transplant. Care organizations These are affiliations of primary care physicians, specialists and hospitals that foster and enhance provision of better health and medical care. They generally boost the professional quality, performance and payment of services in the sector (Zelman, 2009). Their proponents and concepts are structured to offer alternatives that are of best standards in the market. Most care organizations are destined to change and improve the basic services governments offer to citizens. Attention is always driven to people who are less privileged or people who do not have legal, effective and affordable access to such. The policy makers and strategists in the organization look forward to increasing the quality of services offered and availability while checking out on the cost control. The budgets are put in place to last for the whole fiscal year in the whole organization; therefore if they are not well taken care of the organization may run at a loss. Care organizations are established to control godsend activities that are not predictable but affect a large population of beings in a society. Their budgets are evaluated to cater for emergent happenings like floods and earth quakes which replace a large mass of human beings and destroy economic capabilities. They also come to assist people who are affected due to political instability and militia groups. Most of services offered by care organizations are billed for free. They do not require the people getting the services to pay for them. They help the people who are affected with medical services, food stuffs and basic needs required by human beings for survival to improve the lives of desperate people. The finances are shared in the organization from government kitty, philanthropic persons and other organizations that have the same priority. The care organizations are on a bill that will accept them to work in the whole world in improving their services. Some organizations only work in a particular part of the world, which limits their service offer. It may be due to financial capability, regional borders or type of services and emergency. Care organization should be established to have a big financial status so that costs incurred are connected to high quality of services offered. The services are to be equipped in a way that they do not fluctuate from year to year. Possible results of the working organization should record an improvement from year to year to be remarkable. Organizations that record an improvement in their service provision each year are widely recognized by bodies that conduct surveys. The surveys uplift the success story of the organization, by not only having a solid name but also getting a wide variety of resources. Care organizations that have been in long operations are given better deals in improving the lifestyles of less privileged people. For instance, the United States supports such organizations by providing financial support in its yearly budget. The set aside kitty depends generally on the statistics that the organization produces to have made an impact. These transforms that the organizations that serve a large number of people will receive a better amount than the others. This has made some organizations to work in collaboration with sister organizations so as to save on costs while attaining required number of service. Care organizations have available rich array of data that is used in research and academics to determine the effect of several issues in the world. For instance, if a country wants to know firsthand information about the number of people that were affected by the tsunami disaster, the best archive is a care organization since it was present in administering first aid and treatment. Moreover, these organizations conduct their own research about particular diseases in the whole world and come up with remedies and preventive measures. It helps many governments the agony, time and resources to be used in conducting the same. Collaboration between care organizations and hospitals has increased the quality of surgery and treatment involving transfer of organs in the last couple of decades. The professionals in the hospitals hook up with professionals in care organizations, exchange ideas and decide on the best option to undertake in the treatment of various diseases or operations. They are also exposed to quality machinery that helps in according better services to the patient who is given the treatment. Care organizations are better in giving services and treatment than some doctors employed in institutions. Since they are work places with high dignity, they employ people according to meritocracy. People with the best qualifications are given jobs after a rite of passage through interviews to determine professionalism. People who are employed mostly in government institutions and some medical hospitals in the world are given jobs since they are the only last option. The regions lack people who are best qualified, the opposite of care organizations that have a variety to choose from. Health care organizations help the whole world in getting information about contagious diseases that affect a large number of people. They provide information on websites, blogs, academic writings and research publications. The information available is enough and of high quality in teaching the world about the diseases. Some governments do not have vital information about these diseases which makes the organizations handy. It also provides information on diagnosis, treatment and prevention of such diseases understood by upcoming doctors and students. Care organizations play a vital role in the campaign against killer diseases all across the world. They take initiative of shooting, recording and providing documentaries that explain or warn about what people should avoid doing in their daily life. They also advertise on products that are recommended for use to encounter diseases that are arising in certain parts. For instance, many organizations are in the fight against the spread of HIV/AIDS pandemic and are coming up with strategies aimed at reducing the infection rate. They are stepping further in providing free condoms to be used by the world population in the quest to reduce the spread, and even providing the supply of anti retrieval drugs to affected patients to increase their life expectancy. Relation between patient safety indicator and care organization Care organizations and patient safety indicator have a wide variety of prospecting equality. First, their main aim is to improve service offered and dignity to human life. When a calamity occurs, they come in handy to improve the safety of patients by implementing their right for treatment and services. Care organization will bring forward their additional help when the demand for services has exceeded the supply. For example, when flooding occurs, the number of people who require medical attention increase rapidly yet the medical doctors and practitioners are the same. The two are in the same avenue since they comprise of physical professionals, that deal with patients well being and health. Patient safety standards are also implemented in care organizations to provide quality standard services, even though they are for free. The rights of people are not to be neglected while they are offering services in this context. The patient safety standards are improved with the side of indicators while the care organization provides the services. Care organizations move from place to place in order to conduct duties of improving human life. They make sure that people who are met with calamities are given treatment to save them from possible effects that may drastically affect their livelihood. The people implementing the organization decide in the appropriate decisions to take on the people affected. The services accorded help the people in returning to normalcy. The same occurs with patient safety indicators as they are implemented in making sure the patient is accorded safety measures that will help in quick recovery. Care organizations and patient safety indicators are both strategies aimed at reducing the effects of a calamity to persons. They decide on steps that can be taken in the shortest time but provide the best results. They aim at giving quality and sustainable treatment to patients who have problems, but still reduce complications that may occur while being treated. Both the care organizations and patient safety indicator aim at reducing the costs incurred in giving a patient treatment. The services offered are given the least cost but the outlook should be the best services. For instance, the organization and patient safety indicator have specialized doctors and health specialists that deal with various functionalities and complications in the least time possible. These ideas reduce the time spent on each patient but still given the best treatment. The costs are also reduced from the patient by reducing the amount of stay in the hospital environment. Transition to the process and accomplishment For a process to record success in tits establishment, it has to have a plan of events for a specified period of time. The period should be say a whole year, so that it will avoid inconveniences. The time period will be accorded different works in deferent parts to increase the service provision and legibility. The procedure for deciding the time periods will make sure the organizations run at a plan and not by anything. A budget is a vital need for these processes. A budget is prepared for a specified period of time, citing the available sources of income, revenues and cash brought forward. The budget will also show the amount and resources to be used in specific projects and projects that will be sponsored by external sources in the fiscal year. Finally, since this is an organization aimed at providing health care, enough resources should be set aside for emergencies. Floods, earthquakes and accidents occur without warnings in the whole world, in which, the care organizations are requested to assist in curbing all the effects. For this processes to be successful, mergers and partnership should come in handy. The mergers will provide assistance in case scheduled organization is not in time to conduct the work. For instance, when there is an emergency operation that is to happen in china, a doctor in China could perform the operation than waiting for the specified doctor who may be in a far continent. This process should be strategized in places that have the capabilities of foreseeing possible future that could affect a population. The prevention of such issues saves the organization a lot of finance and time used in returning normalcy. For instance, if the organization sees a breakout of a communicable disease it should provide vaccines and preventive measure than waiting to administer treatment. References Association for Real Change (ARC), Commission for Social Care Inspection, Royal Pharmaceutical Society (2006). Handling medication in social care settings. Michigan. The Stationery Office, Denise Oleske.(2009). Epidemiology and the Delivery of Health Care Services: Methods and Applications.New York. Springer. Fitzpatrick Joyce J., Patricia W. Stone, Patricia Hinton-Walker (2006) Annual Review of Nursing Research: Focus on Patient Safety. New York. Springer Publishing Company Hurwitz Brian , Aziz Sheikh. (2009) Health Care Errors and Patient Safety. New York. Wiley and Sons, Iezzoni, LI. ( 2003). Risk adjustment for measuring health care outcomes. Chicago. Health Administration Press. OECD Health Policy Studies (2011). Improving Value in Health Care: Measuring Quality Chicago. OECD Publishing, Skills for Care (Organization)( 2009)  "We're helping care organizations to focus on outcomes": towards an outcome focused care service : a training tool kit Skills for Care North West, Vincent Charles. (2010). Patient Safety. New York. John Wiley and Sons. Wachter Robert. (2007). Understanding patient safety. New York. McGraw-Hill Medical, Zelman William N., Michael J. McCue, McCue, Noah D. Glick. (2009) Financial Management of Health Care Organizations: An Introduction to Fundamental Tools, Concepts and Applications. New York. John Wiley and Sons Read More