Improving Local Health Care:
Quality health care is an important aspect in the modern health care system because of the necessity for quality and safety improvement measures. This concept is described as the extent in which health care services for patients and populations enhance the possibility of desired health outcomes. These services also need to be consistent with the existing professional knowledge in the field. Consequently, quality and improved care services are determined through evaluating the impact of these services on desired outcomes and the extent they adhere to procedures based on scientific and professional knowledge. As part of improving health care services, health care systems should adopt several process-improvement strategies. These strategies should recognize ineffective care, inefficiencies, and avoidable errors and then effect changes on the system to result in improved care.
Incorporating Unapplied Telecommunications Concepts:
Based on the last visit to the local health care system in the community, there is need for service providers to incorporate unapplied telecommunications concepts to improve local health care. The main concept that would have improved the previous visit is communication and coordination of care through which the health care providers synchronize their initiatives through discussing tests and outcomes (Angst, Devaraj & D'Arcy, 2012, p.258). The coordination of health care processes and outcomes would have improved the outcomes of the quality of care received during the last visit.
One of the major ways with which communication and coordination of health care would have improved the quality of care received during the last visit to the community's health care system is by lessening the duration of patient stay and hospitalization. This telecommunication concept could have lessened the length of stay through establishing priorities that contribute to improved care services for patients.
Communication and coordination of care services in the local health care system should involve the use of IT-assisted techniques. These techniques are crucial to improved patient outcomes because of their role and effect in communication in patient care. The need for IT-assisted communication in patient care is attributed to the fact that many transactions in a health care system involve information sharing between patients, physicians, nurses, and staff. In the current health care system, Information Technology...
IT-assisted communication and coordination of care help in improving patient outcome because IT provides strategic benefits and operational efficiencies.
Some of the major examples of IT-assisted communication strategies and techniques include telemedicine,
electronic health records, and e-prescribing.
Electronic Medical Records (EMR) promotes easy access of a patient's
medical history, especially for consulting doctors or physicians. Consequently, the
physician has the ability to work with other
physicians in devising a suitable health care plan for the benefit of the patient. Secondly, the access to the patient's medical history ensures that there is no room for duplication of care services or errors in delivery of care. The other example is e-prescribing that would contribute to improved care since it ensures that medications are recognized universally, which lessens the
risk of error and poor outcomes due to wrong medications or dosage.
Process Improvement Frameworks:
The need for quality and safe improvement measures to ensure quality health care services is widely recognized across the entire health care system. Actually, the complexity of health care is derived from inefficient processes, differences in provider education,
health insurance, and changing care mix of patients. Based on a report by the Institute of
Medicine, a significant percentage of
medical errors are brought by faulty…
