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.
Impact of Error incident on Healthcare Delivery
A major effect of error incident within the health sector is the decline in the quality healthcare delivery and the issue could negatively affect patient's safety. Typically, 98,000 American deaths per year are caused by the preventable medical errors, and 7000 of these deaths are caused by the preventable medical errors. Overall effect of medical errors on the quality of healthcare delivery involves the loss of income and health costs worth approximately $29 billions per year. (Library Index 2012).Other effect of low quality healthcare delivery is the loss of loved ones, pain, and other incalculable suffering. Medical errors are very important issue because medical error is different from error occurring within an organization, which could lead to inconveniency on consumers. Medical error could lead to death, disability and other adverse outcome. Most medical errors within American hospitals are caused because of the system problems rather than individual problems. (Library Index 2012).
Another effect of medical errors within the healthcare sector is the decline in the rating of American Hospitals. Globally, American hospitals are rated as the best hospitals in the world. Patients around the world come to the United States for quality healthcare, and if there is a decline in healthcare delivery within U.S. healthcare sector due low health quality delivery, the effect will lead to the decline in the number patients seeking treatment in the U.S. hospitals and consequently leading to the decline in the revenues of the healthcare sector.
Improvement strategies to address the medical errors
One of the...
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.
References
Ballard, K.A.(2003). Patient Safety: A Shared Responsibility. ANA Periodicals. 8(3).
Car, J. Black, a. Anandan, C. et al. (2008). A Systematic Overview & Synthesis of the Literature. Report for the NHS Connecting for Heath Evaluation Programme.
Library Index (2012). Challenges Change and Innovation in Health Care Delivery -- Safety.
Institute of Medicine. (2001). Crossing the quality chasm: A new health system for the 21st century-Summary. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2-4.
Stanford Hospital & Clinics, (2012). What is Quality, retrieved 10 February 2012 from http://stanfordhospital.org/quality/whatisquality/
Sitterding, M., (2011). Overview and Summary: Creating a Culture of Safety: The Next Steps OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing.16 (3) Overview and Summary
