Rising Health Care Concerns: Advances for Saving Lives - Essay Sample

Introduction

The world has experienced a recent increase in the number of health care conditions that are affecting human beings in various ways. Most of these conditions, if they are not treated within a short time, may become fatal, leading to the loss of human lives. Due to this risk, there have been a lot of advancements in the health care industry to save human beings from perishing. Various health care centers have been built, and modern facilities have been adopted to ensure that quality health care services are provided to the patients suffering from different conditions. As much as many measures have been undertaken to improve health care, there are still some problems that hinder the effective delivery of health care in various facilities. One such health care facility that has been developed to provide proper health care service to the members of the public is the Maryland Hospital. Maryland hospital has strived to ensure that appropriate medical assistance is provided to the patients. However, there are various challenges in different areas that require quality improvement to ensure that quality services are provided. One of the main services that Maryland Hospital provides is surgery, whereby there have been various surgical errors preventing quality health care. This paper will focus on the quality improvement design aimed at preventing surgical errors in Maryland Hospital.

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Details of the Organization

Maryland hospital is has emerged as one of the most re-known health care facilities providing appropriate medical services. This hospital is found in the heart of Las Angeles, where it has managed to serve the residents of the city of a while. The hospital was established in 2002, and over the years, it has managed to grow steadily to be able to meet the standards of the public. The hospital began as a small health care center with the capability of serving only 50 patients in a day and admitting 40. Over the years, the hospital has managed to grow, and it has adopted modern equipment which have been used to expand the facility. The expansion of the facility has made it possible to accommodate close to 200 patients in a day. Also, the hospital has been able to admit more than 300 patients. The hospital provides a wide range of medical services. However, the main focus of the hospital is to provide surgical services to various patients. Maryland hospitals serve a broad demographic of the patient coming in for treatment. The hospital has a wide range of facilities that have enabled it to attend to patients who are both old and young. Also, there is not any form of discrimination within the hospital as all the patients, regardless of their background, can receive medical care.

Pros and Cons of Quality Improvement Design

The quality improvement design that has been scheduled for Maryland Hospital is the prevention of surgical errors, which have been on the rise recently. The adoption of this quality improvement design will benefit the health care facility in the sense that it will improve the quality of the health services delivered. Surgical errors occur at times, and when they do, it means that the intended outcome of the surgery will not be achieved (Pham, HYPERLINK "https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wITaWIEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra" Aswani, Rosen & Lee, 2012). In such a scenario, there is a likelihood that the patient who was undergoing surgery may be affected as the condition he or she was being operated on will not be a success. This issue means that the quality of health care will reduce since the surgeries will not be effective in treating the people. Therefore, the advantage of the quality improvement design, in this case, is that it will ensure that the errors which are mostly committed during surgery are reduced. In the process, the quality of health care services increases (Nazari, 2016).

The second advantage of the quality improvement design is that it helps in increasing the reputation of the hospital. Any hospital that is known to carry out effective surgeries with no error will gain a positive reputation from the members of the public (Geller, Shehab & Lovegrove, 2014). Therefore, when surgical errors are prevented, certain operations will be done; thus, the hospital will be trusted by the members of the people, and this means that it will receive more patients.

As much as surgical error prevention may be beneficial to a health care facility, there are some cases whereby it may come with certain cons. The first con associated with surgical error prevention is the cost. Some of the surgical errors are due to low-quality instruments (Dumville, Gray & Walter, 2016). Therefore, new equipment may be required to reduce surgical errors. However, getting some of these equipment is usually not an easy task since they are expensive. In such cases, the health care facility is forced to strains its budget so that it can be able to purchase the equipment. Little money is then left to handle other operations of the hospital, which may not turn out effectively.

The second con associated with this quality improvement design is that it may require the medical personnel to be skilled (Makary & Daniel, 2016). At times, getting medical staff with the skills needed to conduct surgery without any form of error may be difficult. In this case, the health care facility will go through a lot of challenges while trying to look for medical personnel who are equipped to handle any surgery with an error.

The Need for This Process

There are many patients who are suffering from various conditions. Some of these conditions tend to be serious. Therefore, the treatment approach that will be needed in this case should be complex so that the patient can heal. However, some of the patients do not easily heal from their conditions due to the mistakes that are mostly made during surgery. Therefore, this scenario shows the need for this process because when there is reduced surgical errors, it is likely that most people will be healed from their conditions.

In the process of implementing this quality improvement design, there are certain specifics required. Some of the specifics that will be required in this case include the equipment that will be used to perform the operations, the personnel should be skilled and there should be adequate time for planning.

The schedule for developing the quality improvement design will be as follows:

• Activity Period
• Assessing the need for the quality improvement design One Month
• Collecting data to be included in the quality improvement design Two Weeks
• Planning the Incorporation of the quality improvement design Two weeks
• Implementation of the Quality Improvement Design One Month
• Training and hiring of medical personnel on the quality improvement design Two Weeks
• Evaluation of the quality improvement design One Month

Communication Plan

Having a proper communication plan is important when developing the quality improvement design. The communication plan will ensure the groups responsible parties are informed of the new process and how they will uphold the changes. The communication plan that will be used in this case will involve various methods of communication. The first method that will be used for communication is holding forums with the staff official. The forum will help the medical personnel to be aware of the changes that are going to be incorporated so that they can prepare themselves well. The other channel that will be used for communication is the emails. Medical personnel attached to various surgical departments will be emailed regarding the quality improvement measures that are to be implemented. Also, notices will be placed in strategic locations within the health care facility to inform the medical staff that there will be measures to improve the outcome of the surgical activities.

Ethical and Legal Issues

Ethical and legal issues have to be considered in the process of developing a quality improvement design process in the hospital as it will guide on the right actions that should be done. Some of the legal and ethical issues have to be in consideration with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) as well as the patient bill of rights. The first ethical and legal issue that should be considered in the development of the quality improvement design is fairness. Fairness should be upholding in that every patient should receive the required level of medical attention regardless of the condition. This action will be in line with the Patient Bill of Rights which states that it is the right of every patient to receive medical care. The second ethical and legal issue related to the development of the quality improvement design is the informed consent. In this case, the patients should be able to provide consent so that their medical data can be used for research purposes. The third ethical issue that should be observed when in the development of the quality improvement process is the privacy. Privacy should be observed whereby the information of the patients should not be released to unauthorized people. This action is in line with the HIPAA act because it suggests that patient data that is in electronic form should not be shared without the permission of the owner.

Summary

In the past few years, the number of surgical errors have been on the rise and this has been a major challenge to the quality of health care provided by Maryland Hospital. Therefore, the implementation of the quality improvement design will come with a lot of positive outcomes for Maryland Hospital. The first outcome of the new quality improvement design process is that surgical errors will be reduced within the hospital. As the surgical errors are reduced, the quality of health care will go up since more people will be getting treating for their conditions. The other outcome of the quality improvement design is that it will increase the clients of the hospital due to the quality of services being provided. The increase in the number of clients will help the hospital to grow significantly.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, health care centers have been developed with the aim of providing medical services to various patients. However, there are some scenarios where adequate medical services are not provided. The quality of medical services is usually affected by the frequent errors that occur in medical facilities. One of the most common error in health care centers is the surgical errors. Therefore, it is recommended that quality improvement measures should be adopted by various health facilities so that different error can be avoided.

References

Dumville, J. C., Gray, T. A., Walter, C. J., Sharp, C. A., Page, T., Macefield, R., ... & Blazeby, J. (2016). Dressings for the prevention of surgical site infection. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (12). https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD003091.pub4/abstract

Geller, A. I., Shehab, N., Lovegrove, M. C., Kegler, S. R., Weidenbach, K. N., Ryan, G. J., & Budnitz, D. S. (2014). National estimates of insulin-related hypoglycemia and errors leading to emergency department visits and hospitalizations. JAMA internal medicine, 174(5), 678-686. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/1835360

Makary, M. A., & Daniel, M. (2016). Medical error-the third leading cause of death in the US. Bmj, 353. https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139/

Nazari, A. (2016). Developing a social media communication plan. In Strategic integration of social media into project management practice (pp. 194-217). IGI Global. https://www.igiglobal.com/chapter/developing-a-social-media-communication-plan/145678

Pham, J. C., Aswani, M. S., Rosen,...