Question

Quality in medical care may be defined as achieving the greatest benefit at the lowest risk. How have the priorities of our health care system and the allocation of resources addressed this goal?

Answer 1

In the healthcare system the problem of quality is not only a problem of quality measurement. This is a problem of providing better support for the hard work and reforms in care delivery needed to improve quality and lowering costs as a result. Even though several challenges, several health care organizations are effective making progress and reflecting their fundamental professional commitment to better healthcare to their patients. Instead of that further steps to support better care at the patient level, progress of both quality improvement and quality measurement will be slow down this direction of aligning performance based payment toward patient level performance measures. In the 21st Century challenges all health care organizations to follow several significant aspects of health care improvement such as safety, timeliness, effectiveness, efficiency, equity and patient centeredness. There is a significant gap between the quality of care the US health care system is capable of achieving and the quality of care it currently delivers.

There are some effective strategies to equitable healthcare system

• To increase the awareness among service providers and decision makers of the importance of equity in achieving best healthcare
• To ensure equitable access to effective preventive and curative health care services
• To reduce uncertainty in clinical decisions by considering real-time patient medical record and clinical laboratory information, evidence based guidelines and recommended standards of best care
• To improve efficiency and coordination of all aspects of primary care, ambulatory care, specialty care, and hospital care
• To reduce up to maximum extent variations in healthcare that may be due to known and unknown cost considerations, reimbursements and patient insurance coverage
• To improve the knowledge level for the better understanding the nature and causes of healthcare differences and appropriate interventions to eliminate them
• To develop a culturally competent healthcare system which should be capable of delivering high quality and safest healthcare available to every patient regardless of race, ethnicity, social class, culture, ability to pay or language proficiency
• To ensure the healthcare system accountability in impartial care quality by tracking, monitoring and reporting equity quality measures

For the better quality in healthcare, electronic record systems are also mandatory for the combinations of the data needed for meaningful quality measures and to take decisions. Presently electronic health record vendors are working to adapt their systems to the increasing importance of coordinated care for patients across different providers and to achieve interoperability in practice and not just in theory across different Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems that may contribute to the better healthcare of a patient.

The above ideas can build upon some promising recent developments which can reflect the tremendous potential for further improvements in healthcare outcomes from recent advances within the biomedical sciences and outside of traditional health care. Most importantly, they reflect the opportunities to do more to support patients and health care providers in improving care and thereby avoiding unnecessary health care costs.