Introduction
Healthcare organizations in the United States strive to achieve quality in every area of operations to meet the National Quality Improvement Goals. An analysis of different hospitals demonstrates how each tries to maintain quality by developing different strategies and creating new departments to help serve the community effectively. The report shows a comparison between two hospitals located in Texas State, Las Colinas Medical Center and Amarillo VA Health Care System. The comparison analyzes the performance of each hospital regarding fulfilling National Quality Improvement Goals.
Quality awards received by each hospital
Las Colinas Medical Center
The hospital received the Top Performer on Key Quality Measures Award in the years 2012, 2013, and 2014 on VTE, Surgical Care, Pneumonia, Perinatal Care, and Heart Attack areas. Health care organizations that receive the Top Performer on Key Quality must be accredited and show a lot of excellence in accountability measures and quality performance following the Joint Commission guidelines.
The Las Colinas Medical Center offers the following health care services; Surgical services, imaging/diagnostic services, gynecology, interventional radiology, maternity services, and normal diagnostic services (The Joint Commission).
Amarillo VA Health Care System
The main accredited programs and services offered by the hospital include behavioral health care, home care, hospital, laboratory accreditation, and nursing care center (The Joint Commission).
Comparison
Emergency Department
Las Colinas Medical Center and Amarillo VA Health Care System have two emergency departments, but with different hospital rates. The amount of time a patient arrives at the hospital's Emergency Department to the time of admission differs in each hospital. At Las Carolinas Medical Center, the hospital rate is 209 with 381 eligible patients while the rate was 240 minutes with 233 eligible patients at Amarillo VA Health Care System. The outcome from both hospitals shows Amarillo VA Health Care System experiences longer delays but admits fewer patients to the emergency department (The Joint Commission).
Immunization
Both hospitals did not record any form of immunization from the survey conducted between July 2014 and June 2015.
Perinatal Care
Perinatal care is measured through many elements. Elective delivery is one of the factors that influence perinatal care. It measures the total number of pregnant mothers experiencing elective vaginal of cesarean section at equal or greater than 37 weeks gestation to less than 39 weeks. The national average rate for elective delivery is 3 percent. Las Colinas Medical Center recorded zero percent while Amarillo VA Health Care System's rate was anonymous. The Perinatal Care is also determined by exclusive breast milk feeding. The Exclusive breast milk feeding represents the total number of newborns exclusively breast milk fed in the entire hospitalization. Las Colinas Medical Center recorded 44 percent of the 284 eligible parents while Amarillo VA Health Care System did not record anything. The national wide average rate is 51 percent according to the National Quality Improvement Goals. Finally, Exclusive breast milk feeding excluding mothers choice demonstrates the Perinatal care. The exclusive breast milk feeding considering the mother's choice shows the measure of the overall number of newborns exclusively breastfeeds during the entire hospitalization. The rate was 65 percent of 193 eligible patients at Las Colinas Medical Center and no record for the Amarillo VA Health Care System. The national wide acceptable rate was 65 percent (The Joint Commission).
Stroke Care
Increasing and quantifying the quality of care is continuously gaining a lot of attention in the U.S. medicine. The health care sector puts more efforts to ensure the community is free from chronic diseases like Stroke. Healthcare providers play a great role in influencing the outcome of different stakeholders responsible for achieving the National Quality Improvement Goals. The main areas of comparison in stroke care include antithrombotic therapy by the end of hospital day 2, assessment for rehabilitation, discharge on antithrombotic therapy, discharge on statin medicine, stroke education, and thrombolytic therapy. Both the Las Colinas Medical Center and Amarillo VA Health Care System offer similar services in stroke care, but the Las Colinas Medical Center seems to have more resources to deal with the situation (The Joint Commission).
Substance use
The U.S. healthcare department provides health services to millions of Americans with mental and substance use problems and diseases. Substance use acts as one of the leading causes of major disabilities and deaths experienced in the society today. Treating patients suffering from conditions introduced by drug use is more effective in promoting a healthy society (National Academies of Sciences 4). The comparison of two hospitals from Texas State on substance use reveals great efforts put by hospitals management to meet the National Quality Improvement Goals. On alcohol and other drug use treatment provided by the hospital, the Las Colinas Medical Center did not have a specific number of patients admitted or discharged with the problem while Amarillo recorded a 63 percent of 27 eligible patients. The average rate expected from the state was 66 percent. Results from the comparison shows Amarillo VA Health Care Systems is more concerned about the well-being of victims of drug abuse compared to Las Colinas Medical Center (The Joint Commission).
Tobacco treatment
Amarillo Hospital demonstrates a higher rate of acceptance for patients admitted with problems of tobacco use compared to Las Colinas Hospital. Las Colinas hospital management does not have special departments for dealing with people experiencing problems with drug use and tobacco smoking.
Venous Thromboembolism (VTE)
Venous Thromboembolism (VTE) leads to pulmonary embolism and it causes a lot of hospital deaths. Hospitals should create safe, cost-effective, and efficient strategies to avoid Venous Thromboembolism (VTE) to promote quality of healthcare offered to patients. Las Colinas Medical Center demonstrated high concerns for patients with Venous Thromboembolism (VTE) and recorded high discharge rates, effective therapies, and fewer admissions. On the other hand, the Amarillo VA lacked necessary resources and professionals to deal with the problem and demonstrated no significant results (The Joint Commission).
Conclusion
Results from the comparison of the two hospitals reveal efforts put by the U.S. health care system in developing approaches aimed at diagnosing, managing, and curing diseases. Hospitals meet National Quality Improvement Goals by practicing strategies aimed at improving the quality of care and allowing every person access safe and cost-effective care.
Works Cited
National Academies of Sciences. Improving the Quality of Health Care for Mental and
Substance-Use Conditions: Quality Chasm Series. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press. 2006.
The Joint Commission. “Quality measure set comparison.” The Joint Commission. 2016. Web.
April 02, 2016. http://www.qualitycheck.org/CompareMeasureSetsPg.aspx?zip=&dist=-1&idx=0&s=-1&st=TX&st_nm=TEXAS&careId=&careGrpId=&provId=2&provGrpId=&settingId=&populationId=&nm=&cty_id=-1&cty_nm=&provIdtracker=2&provGrpIdtracker=&careIdtracker=&careGrpIdtracker=&DecisionType=&c=155410&c=2159
