Essay Sample on National Quality Strategy

Introduction

The history of the National Quality Strategy (NQS) dates back to March 2011 when its first publication under the title, National Strategy for Quality Improvement in Health Care happened. On behalf of the U.S Department of Health and Human Services, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality leads the strategy initiative (Concannon et al., 2017). A transparent and collaborative process between different stakeholders led to the development of the National Quality Strategy. The stakeholders, ranging from organizations, individuals, more than 300 groups, and the public consolidated their views to come up with the strategy. The NQS aims at providing improved healthcare outcomes, promoting affordable healthcare, enhancing person-centered care, and implementing effective treatment and prevention mechanisms.

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From the discussions of the various stakeholders in the health sector and the public, there was the creation of three overarching aims. The three overarching aims were centered upon the Triple Aims of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and were supported by six major priorities representing the most common health care concerns of the American people. Stakeholders could align their business and organizational functions to the National Quality Strategy by using nine levers, which spark improvement on the aims and priorities.

Better care is one of the three broad aims under the National Quality Strategy (Concannon et al., 2017). For this aim, stakeholders within the health sector desire to improve the overall quality by making health care access to be reliable, patient-centered, safe, and accessible. There have been huge disparities in the access and provision of quality health care services to the American people. The huge disparities mainly existed among the African American and the Hispanic American populations. This contributed to huge inequality and unfairness in the provision of care. Infant mortality rates and the deaths associated with injuries, and chronic conditions were higher among the Hispanics, and African Americans since some of them were not able to afford quality care. Prioritizing better care for all patients regardless of race was the first step towards reducing the healthcare disparities. Patient-centered care implies that the patients get the best possible attention so that the overall health outcomes would improve.

Healthy people/Communities is the second broad aim under the National Quality Strategy (Concannon et al., 2017). The NQS aims to enhance the health of individuals by providing support for measures that address environmental, social, and behavioral elements of health, and enhance healthcare of a higher quality. The third aim of the National Quality Strategy is to increase access to quality healthcare by cutting costs (Concannon et al., 2017). This will improve access for individuals, communities, government, employers, and families. These goals are linked together in that they are crucial for the implementation and development of current projects of the quality strategy.

The NQS focuses on six priorities of quality strategy. One priority is to enhance patient safety (Kamal et al., 2016). This means that the NQS makes an effort to make care safer by through the reduction of issues that occur during the provision of care. The providers of healthcare continue working on a delivery system that focuses on harmful complications, high-quality healthcare. Preventing errors during medical care lowers costs and saves lives. These are goals that all stakeholders believe in hence they are a key to reaching the NQS aims. Therefore, patient safety is the foremost aim of the NQS.

The NQS aims at providing family and person-centered care (Kamal et al., 2016). Person-centered care involves engaging individuals as partners in healthcare provision. It involves using patient outcomes to define success rather than using clinical syndromes. Care provision should change by cultures, family circumstances, disabilities, social backgrounds, and languages. Also, the provision of person-centered care should be in places other than medical homes under the terms that the patient provides the fees once the service-provision is complete. This measure aligns with the NQS goal of achieving the desired outcomes for patients. Disparities still exist in person-centered care, especially among the Hispanics. This shows that disparities due to income and race are still rampant. The NQS has prioritized person-centered care to reduce these disparities.

The National Quality Strategy also promotes effective care coordination (Kamal et al., 2016). There are numerous complications when navigating the healthcare system. Patients come into contact with medical assistants, nurses, and physicians, and other medical professionals. This situation occurs mostly among the most vulnerable patients. Some patients have two or more chronic conditions. This means that these patients will have a higher number of doctor visits in a given year. When there are coordination and communication efforts among the caregivers, there is an improvement in patient outcomes. Coordination leads to a reduction in medical errors and repetitive testing, and hospital admissions, emergency doctor visits. This coordination results in lower cost per capita and desired patient outcomes. Therefore, coordination is a major priority of the NQS.

NQS promotes effectual prevention and treatment measures (Kamal et al., 2016). It is important to employ these measures especially for the major causes of mortality. There is an insignificant percentage of chronic diseases affecting a huge portion of the population. These illnesses account for high medical expenditures and deaths in the U.S. Heart diseases are the most common type of diseases with high costs and high mortality rate. The lack of awareness and risk factors precipitate the situation. Implementation of measures to prevent and treat heart diseases will enhance the economic and clinical health of individuals in the U.S. The National Quality Strategy prioritizes efficient prevention and treatment measures.

The NQS has taken measures whose aim is to improve healthy living by employing the best practices (Kamal et al., 2016). The citizens of the U.S. are the unhealthiest in the world despite huge expenditures by the government aiming at promoting healthy living. Approximately half of the American population have a chronic illness. These conditions account for a majority of mortality cases that are reported every year. Causes of these conditions range from unhealthy eating habits, lack of social support, and environmental hazards. The NQS works closely with communities to ensure that they detect these diseases during the early stages. Therefore, the measures that the NQS takes to promote healthy living are better than treatment of conditions after they have caused organ damage.

The sixth priority of the NQS is to makes healthcare affordable for employers, families, and individuals (Kamal et al., 20160. The expenditure on healthcare in the U.S was as high as $3trillion in 2014. The expenditure on healthcare is growing faster than the economy; hence the country may find itself in deep national debt. Measures that the NQS is promoting will make healthcare more affordable. Measures such as fee-for-service mechanisms reward caregivers by the healthcare outcomes. This is a reform to the previous care delivery measures. Therefore, the NQS prioritizes affordability of healthcare.

Conclusion

Overall, it is evident that the NQS prioritizes and aims at improving healthcare outcomes by promoting affordable care, healthy living, prevention and treatment measures, and coordination of care. It dates back to March 2011 when its first publication under the title, National Strategy for Quality Improvement in Health Care happened. Better care, healthy people, and reduced costs are the aims of the NQS. It has cooperated with stakeholders such as healthcare institutions and government agencies to achieve these aims. Hopefully, the measures that the NQS has taken will lead to an improvement in the overall health of the Americans.

References

Concannon, T. W., Friedberg, M. W., Hwang, A., & Wiitala, K. (2017). Engaging consumers in the quality measurement enterprise. RAND.

Kamal, R. N., Kakar, S., Ruch, D., Richard, M. J., Akelman, E., Got, C., & Ring, D. (2016). Quality measurement: a primer for hand surgeons. The Journal of hand surgery, 41(5), 645-651.