Medical errors and patient safety in U.S. healthcare delivery

¶ … Quality and Safety

Safety health and quality healthcare delivery have been the emphasis of the healthcare professionals in the last few decades. With importance been laid on the quality and safety in the healthcare delivery, healthcare organizations are continuously embracing science of safety, and quality in healthcare delivery. While there is no universal agreed definition of healthcare quality, however, the major framework of quality healthcare delivery incorporates the following dimensions:

Effectiveness of treatments and healthcare delivery based on the best practice and scientific knowledge.

Reducing wait that could lead to the harmful delay.

Ability to avoid injury to patients

Acceptance

Equity

Efficiency

Appropriateness of means of healthcare delivery.

By following these rules, the healthcare providers could effectively enhance quality of healthcare delivery. On the other hand, patient safety embraces all means and efforts to safeguard the unexpected or unintended incidents that could harm or lead to harm of one or more patients. Institute of Medicine (2001) (IOM) defines patient safety as freedom from accidental injury. IOM further states that patient safety involves establishment and process of operational system implemented in order to minimize the likelihood of errors and maximizing the likelihood to intercepting the errors in case of its occurrence.

Fundamental objective of this paper is to discuss current issues in quality and safety in the health care sector.

Patient safety is an essential and vital component in the health care delivery. While there are high importance attached to the patient safety in the Unite States, healthcare professionals face many challenges in delivering quality healthcare that could enhance safety in the U.S. healthcare sector. Evidence still shows that healthcare practice in the United States is still prone to errors and the issues could be detrimental to patient safety. To enhance patient safety, healthcare professionals, nursing educators and the stakeholders are responsible for the delivery of quality health that should enhance the safety of the patients. (Ballard, 2003).

One of the quality and patient safety issues that have been the concern of political leaders and healthcare professionals in the United States is the incident of medical error. The Institute of Medicine (2001) argues that the nation healthcare system is detrimental to safe patient care because the country healthcare delivery is prone to errors. (Car, Black, Anandan, et al. 2008). Errors could occur when planned sequence of physical activities and mental activities fail to achieve the planned outcome. Sitterding (2011) reveals that medical errors continue to threaten quality healthcare delivery and patient safety. Constant occurrence of error incident has continued to erode the public confidence in the healthcare sector in the United States.

To provide greater understanding on the quality and health safety issues, the paper considers the quality and safety issues that the researcher encounters within his organization.

Quality and Safety issues within Stanford Hospital and Clinics

The researcher is one of the staff of Stanford Hospital and Clinics in California. Stanford Hospital and Clinics is one of the best hospitals in the United States, and ranked 14 in adult specialist hospital. Stanford Hospital and Clinics is known worldwide for the treatment of cancer, cardiovascular, neuroscience and organ transplants. To enhance quality and safety within the hospital, Stanford Hospital and Clinics always engages in medical research. The hospital understands that the incident of medical error is one of the issues that could decline quality of healthcare delivery as well as reducing patient safety. Typically, Stanford Hospital and Clinics is committed to provide quality healthcare delivery. Various steps that Stanford Hospital and Clinics employed to minimize the error incident within the hospital are as follows:

To minimize the medical error, Stanford Hospital and Clinics makes quality data available to medical staff. Management of Stanford Hospital and Clinics believes that quality data pulled from the clinical records is very important in the patient treatment. Typically, a practitioner requires timely and accurate information in order to provide accurate diagnosis. Error is highly minimize within the hospital because if a practitioner makes an error during documentation process, the issue could lead to negative effect on the rating of the Stanford Hospital and Clinics. To address the incident of error within the organization, Stanford Hospital and Clinics implements a state-of-the-art electronic documentation. The hospital also provides training for the healthcare practitioners to ensure that there is accurate and specific documentation. Typically, accurate documentation assists in limiting errors. (Stanford Hospital & Clinics, 2012).

Car et al. (2008) point out that integrating of electronic health within a healthcare organization enhances quality and safety of patients. The author argues that electronic health record assists the healthcare provider to readily access comprehensive information in order to minimize the incident of error as well as enhancing patient safety and quality of healthcare delivery. While Stanford Hospital and Clinics has made several efforts to enhance quality healthcare delivery and patient safety within the hospital environment, however, the issue of medical errors is still rampant within the healthcare sector in the United States. Meanwhile, there are several ways the issue of error incidents can affect the healthcare delivery.

Improvement strategies to address the medical errors

One of the improvement strategies to address the medical errors is the integration of electronic health records in the healthcare sectors. Electronic health records will minimize the issue of medical errors because the healthcare practitioners will have access to the quality and accurate data in order to diagnose and treat patients. By integrating electronic health record in the health sector, there will an improvement in patient safety and quality healthcare delivery. Moreover, there should be more training for all health providers on the strategies to make use of electronic health records.

Plan to implement quality improvement strategies

The target audience to implement the quality improvement strategies is all the healthcare practitioners such as Doctors, Nurses, and laboratory technicians. There should be a 30-day intensive training for all medical practitioners on the strategies to implement health safety and quality healthcare.

Conclusion

The report discusses the health safety and quality healthcare delivery within the United States. A medical error has been identified as one of the medical issues affecting the quality healthcare delivery in the United States. Medical errors are the causes of several of preventable deaths in the United States. Integration of electronic health records and intensive education for all medical staff has been identified as the strategic improvement to address medical errors. Implementation of this recommendation will address the problem of medical errors in the U.S. health sector.