Standardization and Priorities of Healthcare Organizations
Introduction
As Leotsakos et al. (2014) note, standardization of patient safety in healthcare organizations has not proceeded with a great deal of progress in recent years though monumental steps have been made to increase patient safety in the industry. For that reason the World Health Organization (2018) has made it a priority to address standardization by initiating the High 5s project “to facilitate the development, implementation and evaluation of standard operating procedures (SOPs) within to achieve measurable, significant and sustainable reductions in a number of challenging patient safety problems.” These developments are still needed and to improve safety, Gandalf and Merlino (n.d.) have discussed how transparency, healthcare reform, and critical issues such as market share play a role in the advancement of patient safety standardization in the industry. This paper will examine the points made by Gandalf and Merlino in their podcast “The State of Patient Experience” and show how standardization and priorities of healthcare organizations relate to one another.
Transparency
Transparency is an area where improvements can stand to be made in healthcare organizations to facilitate the enhancement of patient safety policies. How so? Transparency opens up the window on care practice and shines a light in on exactly how well prepared care providers actually are. Gandalf and Moreno give the example, for instance, of the University hospital in Utah: At the University of Utah, “when doctors’ scores and comments were published on their website, several things happened. First, the scores improved. Second, the doctors had many, many more positive comments than negative comments; and they liked seeing their positive comments out there. And third, it had a significant impact on their brand because it changed the search dynamics on a site like Google” (Gandalf & Merlino, n.d.). This shows that transparency not only inspires more confidence in consumers and patients but also gives more incentive to care providers to be at their best so that they can both impress and give confidence to their patients.
Improvements in transparency still need to be made, however, as Greenfield and Braithwaite (2009) note. They call...
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