Increased awareness of ever-rising healthcare costs, medical malpractice, and a record-high number of Americans suffering preventable harm in healthcare settings that can result in permanent disability or death highlight the importance of enhancing the the quality of healthcare delivered in our nation. And Keith Hovan explains that many providers of medical services are already paving the way for an improved healthcare future.
Entities can use a wealth of strategies to enhance the quality of their services, improving patient outcomes, lowering costs and reducing the likelihood of malpractice. Experts consider the following five tips the most effective for bettering the quality of healthcare.
Measuring and Analyzing Outcomes
Anyone familiar with the principles of business management will know the Peter Drucker quote, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” — and the same applies to the healthcare industry.
Practitioners can’t make improvements if they don’t understand the opportunities available for improvement. Upon establishing baseline outcomes, providers can look at data to find trends and patterns allowing them to discover critical areas requiring enhancements.
Tracking patient outcomes should be rigorous, ensuring practices have a wealth of data to examine and build from.
Implementing Evidence-Based Practices
Evidence-based medicine (EBP) is dubbed one of the most important medical advancements of the 20th century, influencing spheres even beyond heath. And due to the characteristics of quality improvement and evidence-based practices, they’re complementary.
Essentially, one cannot exist without the other. EBP was once the gold standard for promoting standardization and reducing the variation of quality within the industry, but research has shown that it’s best when combined with other improvement efforts.
Eliminating Human Factors In Errors
Human factors relBasic ate to the limits of human abilities and characteristics. It’s useful to consider them when designing tools, tasks, systems, machines, environments, and jobs for safe, effective, and comfortable human use. Thus, it should be utilized in the improvement of healthcare.
According to the experts at Harvard, a few key human factors and principles should be included in the enhancement of the healthcare industry, including:
- Eradicating reliance on memory
- Utilizing checklists and clear protocols
- Using standard procedures across all facilities
The National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare goes a step further, detailing human factors that should be utilized in the design of systems and processes, such as:
- Increased efficiency
- Enhancing communication between providers
- Understanding medical conditions better
- Reducing the risk of IT-related and medical device errors
Committing to Ongoing Evaluation with Goal Setting
Goal setting can be challenging for healthcare providers. When setting goals they can look to the National Quality Forum, Quality Payment Program, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality for evidence-based guidelines on goal development and prioritization.
Once prioritized, practices must commit to ongoing evaluation to accelerate improvements in quality and ensure performance never stagnates. After all, healthcare isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it ordeal.
Practitioners who utilize the basic PDSA (plan-do-study-act) cycle benefit from increased improvements over those who do not.
Improving Healthcare Access for All
Improvements across the spectrum of healthcare providers from individual practitioners to large multi-site healthsystems must also focus on the creation of effective and equitable access for all. Healthcare should be considered a basic human right. Therefore ensuring appropriate access to care is the most impactful factor for improving patient outcomes. Patients must reach the proper care at the right time in order to achieve the desired results. Despite efforts undertaken over the past two decades there remains a segment of our nation’s population that are uninsured or underinsured. Leveling the field and providing timely and equitable access for all is one of the most important thing that the healthcare industry can accomplish.
