Medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States, which costs billions of dollars to the economy and increases our health care costs. How can health care managers decrease medical errors to improve costs of health care and costs to the economy? One approach is to have stricter health care polices, as it pertains to providing quality of care to patients no matter if the patient has private insurances, government insurance, self-pay, etc. the quality provided to patients should be the same across the board no matter the income class of patients, high quality of care should be our priority. The second approach would be to have stricter accountability for those that work in the health care field and make them responsible for their health care facilities and have penalties that are sanctioned for preventable medical errors. Creating health care policies pertaining to preventable medical errors does not have to wait until Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to enact these policies, they can be created by health care managers. Health care managers can create quality controls and enforce them within their facilities they are managing, rather it be a clinic, a hospital, a nursing home, an assisted living, it has to start …show more content…
Health care managers could create a project team to review these policies and create reports on what polices they have for medical errors and what polices would need to be created and approved to prevent medical errors. To determine the polices that would need to be created could come from research from within the facility on the types of medical errors that has occurred within their facility. Policies could be created based on research on the types of preventable medical errors that has happened at other facilities to prevent them from happening at their
The Hospitals medical staff including on call- physician and their designees should be made aware of Hospital bylaws or policies and procedures.
During the 1980’s and 90’s there were many studies done that showed that medical errors were occurring in inpatient and outpatient settings at a very high rate. Computer Provider Order Entry (CPOE) systems were designed to reduce or eliminate mistakes made by using hand written orders. The CPOE system allows users to directly enter their orders into the system on computers which are then sent directly to the healthcare providers that will be implementing the orders. Previously orders were placed by writing on order sheets on patient charts. This was sometimes done by the doctor or by a nurse acting on behalf of the doctor. Order sheets were then signed by the doctor and then the information was input into the patient’s record. This left room for error due to misreading bad handwriting, confusing medications with similar names, etc.
The government controls and regulates healthcare somewhat because healthcare organizations are in a position to take advantage of the elderly and sick so there are regulations that protects them. It seems as though healthcare facilities are being paid less for their services today. Some critical measures for the survival of a healthcare organization are to optimize performance and quality. Finding system-wide efficiencies and cost reduction healthcare will help. In order to get better and keep high quality and performance while still raising reimbursements, it is necessary and important to involve doctors with the ideas and plans for any management strategies.
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) reported in 1999 that between 44,000 and 98,000 people die each year in the United States due to a preventable medical error. A report written by the National Quality Forum (NQF) found that over a decade after the IOM report the prevalence of medical errors remains very high (2010). In fact a study done by the Hearst Corporation found that the number of deaths due to medical error and post surgical infections has increased since the IOM first highlighted the problem and recommended actions to reduce the number of events (Dyess, 2009).
Regardless of technological advancement, life-saving skills and abilities and first-world resources, the outlandish cost of healthcare in the United States far surpasses any other country in the world. From price gouging, to double billing, to overbilling, to inefficient and expensive operations, the United States wastes $750 billion every year through our healthcare system. According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), $200 billion of that astronomical number is due to nothing more than administrative waste. It is estimated that 15 cents of every dollar spent on healthcare is wasted due to inefficient administrative practices.
Firstly, every year there are many deaths associated with medical errors. Sarah Loughran writes, “An average of 195,000 people in the USA died due to potentially preventable, in-hospital medical errors in each of the years 2000, 2001 and 2002…” (medicalnewstoday.com) and this was just in 2000, 2001, and 2002 with the numbers bouncing higher or lower each year; nevertheless, there seems to be no end in sight for errors in the medical field. There is a way to lower these numbers drastically. The way to do this is by leveling the doctor to nurse ratio in hospitals thereby eliminating the stress factors on most nurses whom often have several patients to attend by themselves but no help in doing so. While demand for nurses may be high, there also comes a breaking point for any human being, “…factors including the high acuity of patients, inadequate nurse to patient ratios, increased work demand, and decreased resources.” (American
When a problem is identified there is bound to be the need for a solution to that existing problem. The problem can be related to public interest, healthcare challenges, and patients care. When providing a durable, effective, efficient, and litigation-free solution, it is guided by policy. (Berkowitz, 2012). Policy in the healthcare system is essentially important as this creates a unique plan of action used to guide interventions so that the desired outcomes can be achieved.
Patient safety is a major issue in health care, especially in the public sector. Studies show that as many as 10 patients get harmed daily as they receive care in stroke rehabilitation wards in hospitals in the United States alone. Patient safety refers to mechanisms for preventing patients from getting harmed as they receive health care services in hospitals. The issue of patient safety is usually associated with factors such as medication errors, wrong-site surgery, health care-acquired infections, falls, diagnostic errors, and readmissions. Patient safety can be improved through strategies such as improving communication within hospitals, increasing patient involvement, reporting adverse events, developing protocols and guidelines, proper management of human resources, educating health-care providers on the need for patient protection, and commitment of the leadership to the task. This paper talks about patient safety and how it can be improved in stroke rehabilitation wards of both public and private hospitals.
Reforming the health care delivery system to progress the quality and value of care is indispensable to addressing the ever-increasing costs, poor quality, and increasing numbers of Americans without health insurance coverage. What is more, reforms should improve access to the right care at the right time in the right setting. They should keep people healthy and prevent common, preventable impediments of illnesses to the greatest extent possible. Thoughtfully assembled reforms would support greater access to health-improving care, in contrast to the current system, which encourages more tests, procedures, and treatments that are either
Kohn, L., Corrigan, J., & Donaldson, M. (1999). To err is human: building a safer health system. Committee on Quality of Health Care in America Institute of Medicine National Academy Press Washington, D.C.
Keeping patients safe is essential in today’s health care system, but patient safety events that violate that safety are increasing each year. It was only recently, that the focus on patient safety was reinforced by a report prepared by Institute of medicine (IOM) entitled ” To err is human, building a safer health system”(Wakefield & Iliffe,2002).This report found that approx-imately 44,000 to 98,000 deaths occur each year due to medical errors and that the majority was preventable. Deaths due to medical errors exceed deaths due to many other causes such as like HIV infections, breast cancer and even traffic accidents (Wakefield & Iliffe, 2002). After this IOM reports, President Clinton established quality interagency coordination task force with the help of government agencies. These government agencies are responsible for making health pol-icies regarding patient safety to which every HCO must follow (Schulman & Kim, 2000).
The health care is extremely important to society because without health care it would not be possible for individuals to remain healthy. The health care administers care, treats, and diagnoses millions of individual’s everyday from newborn to fatal illness patients. The health care consists of hospitals, outpatient care, doctors, employees, and nurses. Within the health care there are always changes occurring because of advance technology and without advance technology the health care would not be as successful as it is today. Technology has played a big role in the health care and will continue in the coming years with new methods and procedures of diagnosis and treatment to help safe lives of the American people. However, with plenty of advance technology the health care still manages to make an excessive amount of medical errors. Health care organizations face many issues and these issues have a negative impact on the health care system. There are different ways medical errors can occur within the health care. Medical errors are mistakes that are made by health care providers with no intention of harming patients. These errors rang from communication error, surgical error, manufacture error, diagnostic error, and wrong medication error. There are hundreds of thousands of patients that die every year due to medical error. With medical errors on the rise it has caused the United States to be the third leading cause of death. (Allen.M, 2013) Throughout the United States there are many issues the he...
It is shocking to know that every year 98000 patients die from medical errors that can be prevented(Kohn, L. T., Corrigan, J. M., & Donaldson, M. S. (Eds.), 2000). Medical errors are not a new issue in our healthcare system; these have been around for a long time. Hospitals have been trying to improve quality care and patients safety by implementing different strategies to prevent and reduce medical errors for past thirty years. Medical errors are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer in America (Allen, 2013). In addition medical errors are costing our healthcare system an estimated $735 billion to $980 billion (Andel, Davidow, Hollander, & Moreno, 2012).
Health care policy targets the organization, financing, and delivery of health care services. The reason for targeting these areas is for the licensing of health care professionals and facilities, to make sure there is protection of patients’ private health information, and there are measures of quality care, mistakes, malpractice, and efforts to control of health care cost (Acuff, 2010). There are several stages that one must take when creating a policy (see figure 1). The figure below shows the critical steps in the policy process. First, the problem must be identified, once the problem is identified potential policy solutions must be formulated, then the policy is adopted, and then implemented. After the policy is in place, an evaluation of the policy has to take place (This Nation, 2013).
As health care administrators oversee the delivery of the best healthcare services to the patients, they are obligated to be good stewards of the recourses. However, over time it has been observed that the health care administrators do not pay much attention to the impact of some of their activities on