Hospitals of the 21st century have been marked with a lot of improvement. Technological solutions offer lower cost and increased efficiency without compromising service users’ care and treatment using future technology (Mcnew, 2014). The use of monitoring equipment such as intrusion detection, video surveillance, and access control helps in maximizing security within hospitals (Mcnew, 2014). For instance, hospital can program the front door to show anything walking into the hospital and people leaving the hospital. The equipment installed for monitoring includes Sipass central stations, 385 card readers and cameras. Electronic medical records are a common aspect in hospital that enables nurses and doctors to review patient documents within the hospital with the help of a chip (Stein & Chiplin, 2014). Electronic wireless devices are use in the modern hospital that enables employees to locate everything within the hospital by just keying in into the device. The use of Alaris pump which is a modern drug measuring device with an alarm to indicate when a doctor exceeds the dosage shows the extent to which organizations are now investing in technology (Stein & Chiplin, 2014). Cameras are now used in surgery rooms to reduce errors and reduce infection of patients with new diseases. Another device includes the voice communication system that allows patients to bypass nurse and talk directly with their doctors.
Redefining Health Care
The health system is notorious for high costs and the serious quality problems. Alarming rate of medical care errors persist. In the past, health care has had preeminent concerns (Porter & Teisberg, 2006). The major concerns include diagnosis errors, preventable errors in treatment are common, best practices...
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..., what should it say?: How democracies can protect expression and promote equality. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.
Mcnew, R. (2014). Emergency department compliance manual, 2014 edition. S.l.: Kluwer Law International.
Nevid, J. S. (2013). Psychology: Concepts and applications. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Porter, M. E., & Teisberg, E. O. (2006). Redefining health care: Creating value-based competition on results.
Stein, J. A., & Chiplin, A. J. (2014). 2014 Medicare handbook. New York: Wolters Kluwer Publishers.
Truglio-Londrigan, M., & Lewenson, S. (2013). Public health nursing: Practicing population-based care. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Vancheri, C., Institute of Medicine (U.S.)., & National Academies Press (U.S.). (2011). Innovations in health literacy research: Workshop summary. Washington, D.C: National Academies Press.
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).
Strasser, Judith A., Shirley Damrosch, and Jacquelyn Gaines. Journal of Community Health Nursing. 2. 8. Taylor & Francis, Ltd., 1991. 65-73. Print.
This technology assist the nurse in confirming patients identify by confirming the patients’ dose, time and form of medication (Helmons, Wargel, & Daniels, 2009). Having an EHR also comes with a program that allows the medical staff to scan medications so medication errors can be prevented. According to Helmons, Wargel, and Daniels (2009) they conducted an observational study in two medical –surgical units one in the medical intensive care (ICU) and one in the surgical ICU. The researchers watched 386 nurses within the two hospitals use bar code scanning before they administrated patients’ medications. The results of the research found a 58 % decrease in medication errors between the two hospitals because of the EHR containing a bar code assisted medication administration
According to Allender, Rector, and Warner (2014), public health is a combination of both an art and a science (2014). The mission of public health nursing is to promote health, prevent disease and ultimately prolong life (Allender et al., 2014). In order for this to occur an assessment must take place. An aggregate or community assessment begins with a collection of data. This includes: the community’s health needs, risks, environmental conditions, financial resources through local census data, and a windshield survey (Allender et al., 2014). Through public health nursing, communities can collectively come together to help promote an overall better health standing.
Competitive advantage matters greatly to those responsible for the management of healthcare institutions. Together with rapidly escalating healthcare costs, increasingly complex medical technologies, and growing regulatory and legal pressures, healthcare organizations face a critical need to improve the quality of care at reduced costs (Cu...
Stanhope, M., & Lancaster, J. (2008). Public health nursing: Population centered health care in the community (6th ed.). St. Louis: Mosby.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). (2014). About health literacy. Retrieved from website: http://www.hrsa.gov/publichealth/healthliteracy/healthlitabout.html
Lundy, K. S., & Janes, S. (2009). Care of Communities and Populations. Community Health Nursing: Caring for the Public's Health (2nd ed.). Sudbury, Mass.: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
Harkness, G. A. & Demarco, R. (2012). Community and public health nursing. Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
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...
Nies, M. A., & McEwen, M. (2011). Community/public health nursing: Promoting the health of populations (5th ed.). St.Louis, MO: Saunders.
Medical errors can happen in the healthcare system such as hospitals, outpatient clinics, operating rooms, doctor’s offices, pharmacies, patients’ homes and anywhere in the healthcare system where patients are being treated. These errors consist of diagnostic, treatment, medicine, surgical, equipment calibration, and lab report error. Furthermore, communication problems between doctors and patients, miscommunication among healthcare staff and complex health care systems are playing important role in medical errors. We need to look for a solution which starts changes from physicians, nurses, pharmacists, patients, hospitals, and government agencies. In this paper I will discuss how does the problem of medical errors affect our healthcare delivery system? Also how can these medical errors be prevented and reduced?
Stanhope, M., & Lancaster, J. (2012). Population-Based Public Health Nursing Practice: The Intervention Wheel. In Public Health Nursing: Population-Center Health Care in the Community (8th ed.). Maryland Height, MO: Elsevier Mosby
The meaning of quality is “the right care for the right person at the right time”. Quality can be well-defined as the value, efficiency, consistency, and outcome of the care being provided. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Service’s (CMS) stated “an rise in health care spending from $2.34 trillion in 2008 to $ 2.47 trillion in 2009, the largest one year increase since 1960” (Pickert, 2010). “The action to improve the American health care delivery system as a whole, in all of its quality dimensions such as efficiency, effectiveness, equitability, timeliness, patient-centeredness, and safety for all Americans” (IOM, 2011). This paper aims to find out the relationship between cost and quality relating to health care.