Efficiency in the Health care facilities

The US Health Care system: beliefs, Values and health
The health care system is a wide area that spans over the medical aspect, the financial aspect, the ethical field, the management aspect, the political angle and the individual aspect of it where the personal beliefs, values and the health of an individual is looked into. This indicates that healthcare is wide in scope and each aspect is important in the well being of individual American.
In the study of this week, the most important and outstanding issue that came up is the fact that in a health care facility, people therein, both the patients, medics and the support staff go through a lot of challenges. These challenges are not restricted only to medical conditions but extend to the personal issues that affect the social life at the family level, at work, career wise, in the school and the community at large. Amazingly all these facts converge at the health care facility. This means there is need to have empathy as a medic or someone working in the health care facility setting to help each individual go through their challenges stronger and not to restrict ones role only to the ailment or the medical condition presented, empathy covers more that disease (Cleveland Clinic, 2013).
This above is in line with the WHO (2018) assertion that there are factors that determine our health status such as the environment we live in, the state of the environment, income levels, genetics and education level among others act to determine whether one is healthy or not. This points out to the need for the medic to not only look at the infection, or the ailment, or the condition or symptoms presented, but to be empathetic enough to probe further to determine if the other related social factors could be changed to improve the health of the individual. This means hence that blaming one for the poor health or praising one for the good health is inappropriate.
Average length of stay
The efficiency of healthcare has been a key point that patients and the beneficiaries of health care look into. One of the ways that can be used to measure the efficiency of healthcare ion any facility is the average length of stay (ALOS). ALOS is calculated by adding the total length of stay for each discharged resident in the month and dividing this by the number of discharged residents in a month usually with the same kind of ailment. It is worth noting that all other factors constant, the shorter stay is bound to reduce the cost per discharge and shift care from inpatient to less expensive post-acute settings (Donkin L, Peters J. & Gabriel A., 2018).
In a healthcare facility, productivity can be increased by reducing the ALOS. The reduction of the ALOS can be done by a number of measures. The most outstanding measure is through streamlining the processes in the hospital. Streamlined systems can be achieved by standardizing the work and services in the hospital, implementation of bar-coding in the hospitals to save on time wasted looking for patent records, streamlining the laboratories services with interface solutions (Jone P.R., 2013). There are however factors that act to hinder the efficiency of systems set and hence increasing the ALOS in the health facilities. One of the common factors identified is the level of cooperation that the medics receive from the patients at the next of kin in the process of treatment. Adherence to the prescribed medical interventions is yet another aspect that will determine the ALOS of each patient. In case of the psychiatric facilities, the length of time that the patients have been mentally ill will greatly determines the ALOS. The other issue that needs to be considered when using ALOS to determine efficiency is the average time needed to obtain and process samples for individual patients. The state of the disease a patient presents is yet another factor that has to be looked into when using ALOS since the more advanced stage the disease, the longer the ALOS for the given patient. It will also be prudent to note that the acute disease will have a different ALOS as compared to the chronic disease since the care the care for the same condition if chronic and if acute will greatly differ.
References
Cleveland Clinic, (2013). Empathy: The Human Connection to Patient Care. Retrieved September 18, 2018 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDDWvj_q-o8
Donkin L, Peters J. & Gabriel A., (2018). Factors influencing the length of hospital stay among patients resident in Blackpool admitted with COPD: a cross-sectional study. Retrieved September 18, 2018 from https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/5/e000869
Jone P.R., (2013). Factors responsible for differences in average length of stay in US hospitals. Retrieved September 18, 2018 from http://www.hcaf.biz/2013/USA_ALOS.pdf
WHO, (2018). Health Impact Assessment (HIA): Determinants of Health. Retrieved September 18, 2018 from http://www.who.int/hia/evidence/doh/en/