Healthcare Quality Hospital Quality Measures

Healthcare Quality

Hospital Quality Measures

In the modern day of business, any form of business must perform up the consumer standards to succeed. One area of business that has recently adopted this principle is the healthcare industry. Where once hospitals and medical centers were evaluated by word-of-mouth patient reviews, modern hospitals document and report quality measures for public review including readmission rates, UTI's, patient falls and blood stream infections. While it may seem strange initially that so many hospitals keep track of this information, when evaluated from a business perspective there are very feasible reasons for the measures.

First, hospitals track this information for referencing legal and better standards practicing. While no hospital enjoys the possibility of a medical malpractice lawsuit, the better a hospital documents serious issues, the easier it will for a hospital to find trends and remedy the problems, thus cleaning up their procedures (HQA 2011). Additionally, tracking enables the hospital to determine whether the hospital's policies and staff training issues must be somehow improved. For instance, the Washington State Hospital Association posts hospital quality measures online for all hospitals within the state (Washington 2011). The state then goes further to offer an explanation as to how each measure can be improved to improve the overall quality of care for patients. For example, the hospital sites evidence that the surgical preparation of shaving a patient at the incision site can lead to greater incision infection when a razor is used. Instead, they recommend using electric shavers or hair removal cream. So, the association is publishing the information as a means of being just as informative to the hospitals as they are the public.

The reason for improving quality of care is simple, there are a great number of hospitals available and patients now more than ever take a consumer approach when choosing a hospital. If a hospital has a poor record of infections and patient falls, those patients who have a choice will avoid the hospital. So, as the hospitals begin recording and tracking the information, those that do not choose to improve lose patients (HQA 2011). Contrary wise, those hospitals that remain on the cutting edge of improving the quality of care for patients are hospitals that will be sought after by patients who have an option.

Another possible reason for the desire to improve conditions is for the sake of attracting better physicians. Many physicians are selective as to the hospitals they serve with. For instance, most Catholic physicians tend to only seek admission to Catholic hospitals.