Assessing healthcare quality and government oversight of care

Quality of Care

Assessing Needs in the Quality of Care

Access to healthcare is not adequate in and of itself t maintain the health of a community. The quality of the accessible care must maintain a high enough level to be effective as well. Quality in healthcare can best be understood as the level of effectiveness and improvement in overall well-being that the care provides. To me, quality of care demands continuing assessment, analysis, and learning on the part of the care provider, and application of the most relevant techniques to improving each individual's quality of life. Measuring the quality of care would depend on assessing general well being in an individual/community over time.

There is great disagreement over what the role of the government should be in maintaining quality of care. The public safety issues are not under debate, as most agree that the government should demand safe treatments, but there is some obvious contention over whether or not the government should be more involved, with some claiming that the for-profit medical industry needs more oversight or control, and others claiming that "doctors and hospital administrators are far better equipped to know the answer to" such questions "than bureaucrats in Washington" (Piper 2008, pp. 114). Rising medical costs and diminishing quality of care demand that something be done, however (IOM 2009).