In the world where advancement of technology is on the top, medical science is also witnessing inestimable developments. But, when it comes to addressing patient requirements, guaranteeing patient safety, proficiency of the system, and quality improvement, healthcare system performs far below satisfactory levels.
Health care is a very intricate sector and delivery of service care is disjointed. Quality can be a common standard to cater to the need of all groups in health care. Quality improvement is the procedure and approach to the organization’s operational tasks. The need to address the quality in health care has become a global occurrence. A quality revolution for delivery of service with patient at the centre and services around it is the call of the hour.
Quality management in health care is an extensive term. Initially it was supposed as guiding the healthcare personnel to what needs to be done. However, its current explanation is to accomplish the procedure of care. It refers to detecting the administrative functions as a communication of techniques and processes that can be perceived independently as well as collectively.
Quality management has materialised as a dire necessity more sternly than ever in light of the novel explanation of quality management with patient contentment as the product of service. The quality of services being delivered to patients is highly critical. The traditional outlook of quality control pointed at fault detection while the present notion targets defect prevention, continuous process enhancement, and result driven system guided by patients’ needs. Hence there is a desperate necessity to bring about an exemplar shift in quality of health care provision. The specialists need to step forward to become a part in quality improvement. Presently, the quality has been emphasized more in medical field than in the associated fields such as dentistry and nursing and also more in the developing country perspective.
Quality improvement in healthcare means a methodical approach by a healthcare organization that observes, evaluates and develops the standards of quality healthcare. The administrative chain of undertakings is recurrent and needs continuous improvement to pursue a greater level of performance. Constant upgradation in healthcare activities can pull out healthcare organizations from unproductive out-dated concepts and utilize technology/tools to execute proficiently and hence produce better quality outcomes.
Principles of Quality Improvement
Quality improvement is straight related to the service delivery method, level of patient satisfaction, efficiency and outcome. A successful program always integrates principles of quality improvement to accomplish a superior level of performance and a positive administrative healthcare system. There are four key principals that the healthcare systems can contemplate for quality improvement:
- Work as Systems and Processes –An organization needs to comprehend its own delivery system and significant processes, rather than seeing it as small and simple or big and intricate. The pre-requisite for the quality improvement approach in any magnitude of an organization should be, to modernize “Input – Process – Output” to meet the requirements of a particular organization’s health service delivery system.
- Emphasis on Patient –The chief idea behind the quality improvement in healthcare is to get the patient’s needs and anticipations on the same page. Services that are intended to bring needs and anticipations together comprise:
- Patient Safety
- Patient Engagement
- Systems that sustain patient access
- Evidence-based health care delivery
- Patient-centred communication
- Health literacy of patients
- Concentration on the use of data –Data is the foundation of quality improvement. It describes how present systems are working, tracks the variations, allows appraisal and monitoring for sustainable enhancements. Data-driven understandings deliver better conclusions, least variation, rarer re-admissions, lesser infection rates, and less medical errors. Both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection are employed to expand the quality of the healthcare system.
- Attention on Care-coordination –It is the synchronization of care activities. Care coordination software sustains the Master Patient Index and Longitudinal Health Record for each patient(It becomes very significant if it is a case of a chronic condition). It helps decrease care fragmentation of a patient, by delivering a protected network of trusted healthcare providers and warrant operative referrals and smooth transitions between two or more healthcare providers.
Advantages of Quality Improvement in Healthcare System
- Safe: Systematic and organized approach is envisioned towards optimizing care for the patients it serves and avoids maltreatment. It embraces a philosophy of well-being, quality, and transparency.
- Effective: By refining the ‘processes, an organization decreases the chances linked with failure and redundancy. The developed healthcare system is more on data-based evaluations rather than anecdote-driven.
- Patient-centred: Enhanced efficiency of managerial and clinical processes leaves adjustment space for doctors and staff to provide alert, dutiful and value-based care to a patient.
- Proactive: Improved processes identify and resolve the problems even before they transpire.
- Cost-effective: Quality improvement processes are economically neutral. It avoids the cost linked with process failure, poor results, and faults. Dependable and modernized processes are less expensive to uphold.
- Efficient: Improving process makes extravagant activities linked with equipment, supplies, ideas, and energy more evident and makes it easier to eradicate.
Health care is a vital and scientific enterprise and not primarily a profit-making one. The knowledgeable authorities should administer the accountability for guaranteeing high quality principles and quality of care in healthcare facilities. The authority should consider shaping the system to ensure preparation of future professionals to increase patient satisfaction. To gain the preferred impetus, HCOs need to introduce a new Quality Movement to attain total quality in health care service. It is the requirement, the task and the future route.
Healthcare Quality Management is an integral part of the overall hospital administration and is an important subject in the pursuance of the degree of Bachelor or Masters in Hospital Administration.
We at Athar Institute of Health and Management Studies (AIHMS) provide BHA as well as MHA degree at an affordable fee providing students with best opportunities to combine their studies with practical experience and also provide extensive training opportunities in the healthcare quality as part of the course curriculum.
