Introduction
Doing things differently is important for reviving workers’ efficiency and effectiveness in health service centers. In the health sector, care can be improved using diverse strategies. It is important to note that health care is always changing and services offered have to be aligned with the occurring changes. Improving the quality and safety of patients is fundamental for every health care center. Making changes from time to time, therefore, guarantees the general improvement of the quality of health care. This paper seeks to argue that changes are vital in improving the quality of care and safety in an organization.
Dimensions of quality care
The primary dimensions of quality care include accessibility and effectiveness. Access is generally the ease of getting the desired health care services. Quality care is must be action-oriented. Patients should be able to access the desired services without unnecessary difficulties. This is the greatest way of ensuring the quality of health care. On the other hand, when administering care, one must ask him/herself whether the services offered are effectively helping the patients (Shojania et al. 39). The quality of health care can only be measured by its effectiveness in helping the patients to get better. If health care is based on rhetoric and advertisements while the services are not accessible to the people, it cannot be considered quality care.
Definition of quality health care
The quality of health care is defined as the degree to which health services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge (Shojania et al. 43). The quality of medical care should have the following characteristics; it should be safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable (Shojania et al. 43). Medical care should not harm the patients but it should avoid underuse or overuse of resources. When providing health care, patients’ preferences take precedence. This means that care must be respectful and sensitive to individual predilections since the aim is to make the patients feel better.
Improving health care
It is imperative for a health care system to be sensitive and responsive to time. This can be addressed by reducing delays that hamper the well-being of patients. Delays affect both the patients and the caregivers hence making it a very serious aspect in improving care (Shojania et al. 67).
Quality care also requires good management of medical types of equipment and resources. Wastage of types of equipment, supplies, ideas, and energy can cause great loss hence undermining the quality of health care. With broken types of equipment, health care services can be greatly halted. Lastly, equality is paramount in health care. Quality care must be offered equitably to all the patients without any form of discrimination. Prejudice against gender, social economic status, ethnicity among other things should be avoided at all costs.
Quality remains a serious concern even in countries where health systems are the best. Improving health care is a continuous process that cannot be stopped. This is because of the unpredictability of health care outcomes. Therefore, health care service providers need to be ardent in their decision-making processes in order to ensure that the decisions made enhance the quality of health care given in their respective health centers. Keen attention must be given to the technological advancement and development of health facilities. The program of change in the health sector is vital because it allows the health system to introduce new and advanced care for the benefit of the patients hence improving the quality of health care.
Impacts of changes in health care improvement
Making changes in health care can improve the quality of care in varied ways. Although not all changes are good changes, it is important to do things in a different way in health care. This is mostly when the current care is not producing the desired outcomes. The management must devise a way of monitoring the level of patients’ satisfaction in order to acknowledge areas where change is required. Selecting, testing, and implementing changes is essential in improving health care (Campbell, Roland, and Buetow 1614).
Quality health care is expressed as the capacity to restore and maintain individuals’ health and ability to function. Nonetheless, most health care systems do not guarantee the above-mentioned qualities. Health care improvement involves maintaining the good and working aspects of the system while focusing on the areas that require changes to foster better results (Campbell, Roland, and Buetow 1616). It is a continuous process aimed at reducing medical errors (Campbell, Roland, and Buetow 1616). Therefore, in the areas where improvement is required, changes must be made as soon as possible because a slight delay may cause a loss of life.
Quality problems associated with health care
Variation in service delivery is one of the greatest proofs of the existence of quality problems. The variation of health care is evident from one region to another indicating that the health care practice has been overwhelmed by the evolving science of health care (Campbell, Roland, and Buetow 1621). Underuse of services is another proof of health care quality problems. In America alone, it is estimated that 18, 000 people die due to a lack of effective interventions (Campbell, Roland, and Buetow 1623). Overuse and misuse of services have also played a great role in undermining the quality of health care services.
Having such problems in a health care system, health practitioners must create mitigation strategies to counteract the effects and implications. This can only be done through effective and immediate changes to the existing procedures to include better and operational measures for the benefit of the patients. Changes may involve changing management of resources, changing medical procedures, changing staffing, introducing new equipment in response to new health care technology among other changes.
Conclusion
This paper has presented a persuasive argument on several aspects of the quality of health care. It begins with describing the dimensions that can be used to scrutinize quality health care. The paper argues that the accessibility and effectiveness of a health care system define its quality. Other than defining the quality of health care, the paper discusses the various ways of improving it. Making changes is a way of improving health care as mentioned in the paper. Different impacts of change in the process of improvement have therefore been discussed lengthily.
At the end of the paper, several quality problems associated with health care systems have been listed and explained expansively. This paper, therefore, is a critical analysis of the health care system and the problems involved in offering effective and efficient services. This research has clearly shown how inefficiency in health care services has reduced its quality. However, other than simply criticizing the system, the paper also offers some guidelines and solutions to the decreasing quality of health services.
Works Cited
Campbell, Stephen, Martin Roland and Stephen Buetow. “Defining quality of care”. Social Science and Medicine, 51.1 (2000): 1611-1625. Print.
Shojania, Kaveh, Kathryn McDonald, Robert Wachter, Amy Markowitz, Robert Wachter, and Kathryn McDonald. “Making Health Care Safer: A Critical Analysis of Patient Safety Practices”. Evidence Report/Technology Assessment, 43.1 (2001): 37-101. Print.