Quality health care refers to the act of doing the right thing, using the right methods, to the right individual, at the right time to obtain the best outcome/results. Improvement in medical technologies provides hope that there will be an increase in durability, alleviating suffering and pain, and improvement of health care. For many years, health care has been changing from severe, sporadic care to chronic care circumstances. As medical technology and patient complexity continue to increase, the medical/health care systems are not in a position to offer high-quality health care to all people.
Elements of quality healthcare include; identifying patients who are at risk of illnesses, doing the right assessment, making the right diagnosis, starting the right treatment, planning or scheduling the suitable follow-up, and stimulating the right fulfillment or compliance to treatment. To recognize or identify a patient’s risk, one needs to detect the illness as early as possible through either screening or any other methods to take preventive measures. The right assessment is at the healthcare’s discretion by use of medical knowledge and judgment. The health care provider’s medical judgment is the most essential principle in the treatment and diagnostic conclusion. To come up with the right diagnosis, the health care provider has to understand the test properly with the history of the patient in mind. After identifying the appropriate diagnosis, the health care provider needs to start the right treatment, which is his or her own decision. The evidence-based practice could be related to the electronic health records hence, the medical results of the physician’s conclusions could be accessible for one’s knowledge by the HER (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality n. d Par 2-4).
It is of great importance to know whether there is a need to summon the patient back for further checkups. Compliance or fulfillment to the right therapy is important for advanced results. There is very little information that is given to the patient on the need to comply with the medical therapy. Therefore, the health care provider needs to take up the responsibility of an educator to train the patient on the importance of therapy. In addition, interaction sessions with the patient care also assist the patient to understand the need for therapy. Therefore, quality health care does not only involve assessing the patients at risk, this is the first stage in the entire process of quality health care. When the health care providers practice the above-mentioned process of quality health care, the probability of reducing the compliance to chronic illness or disease is very high (Mackert & Love 2009 pp 2-5)
The quality of health care provided to Mr. Smith was poor since the elderly man had to wait for about four hours before being attended to. In addition, the appropriate diagnosis and treatment were not established earlier hence, he had to be referred to geriatricians for further checkups when it was too late. Moreover, after the patient’s temperature was found to have increased, no measures were taken to prevent that. Therefore, it is clear that the health care providers within this health facility do not consider the safety of a patient to be very crucial. Sadly, failure to receive the right medication in time led to his health deteriorating to the extent that his limb is amputated.
References
Agency for healthcare Research and Quality, n. d. Guide to Health Care Quality. Web.
Mackert, M., & Love, B., 2009. Improving Healthcare Efficiencies and Outcomes through “Bedside” Technologies. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, TBA, San Francisco, CA. Web.