Analysis
Hospitals worldwide look for ways of improving the quality of care through promoting effective and quality improvement strategies. Various factors contribute to the high-performance of health care centers and improved patient satisfaction. The hospital’s management should focus on improving their services in order to achieve better patient reputation and encourage more people to seek medical assistance from this hospital. The following is a case of delays observed in the hospital’s Emergency Department (ED) where a patient spends almost 12 hours in the hospital. The ED is a crucial department and doctors and other health care providers should ensure patients receive quick and effective services. In addition, many risks are associated with this hospital because it receives many patients with different emergency cases. According to Nash & Goldfarb (2006), most hospitals ranked top in performance show a striking degree of motivation and high commitments that ensure delivery of a high-quality care.
On the other hand, the hospital needs to develop risk management processes to avoid cases of patients collapsing or losing their lives because of hospital delays. The hospital management devised a technique that would minimize such cases. The most essential factors to consider were the patients’ waiting time and congestion in the waiting, or reception area. The most recommendable performance measures for this hospital include selection of a reasonable number of measurable quality indicators and constant measurement and comparison of quality indicators. Some of the performance improvement tools devised include hiring a ‘greeter’ who would always be in contact with patients, dividing the waiting area into sections depending on the nature of the emergency, complete registration in the examination room, and use of technology to improve the registration process. The performance measurement tools used by the hospital management would work best if combined with risk management concepts. The following risk management concepts would assist in improving services at this hospital.
Risk management process in a healthcare center follows in five steps. These are; identification, analysis, control, implementation, and result monitoring. A well-managed risk control procedure helps in protecting the patient, staff, and healthcare (West, 2011). Since the risks faced by the hospital had already been identified and analyzed the remaining problem is control, implementation and monitoring. The first risk management concept that the hospital should use involves developing systems that oversee and report adverse events and unsafe conditions. The systems should be computerized in order to ensure effective communication from one office to the next. In addition, the hospital should implement an online event reporting procedure to avoid congestion in the reporting desk. In the presence of such systems, patients’ problems would receive quick services and eliminate instances of doctors reexamining a patient many times.
The second concept involves coming up with an effective administrative and committee structure that promotes coordination. The hospital management came up with a recommendation to hire more staff to take care of the large number of patients. The administration-restructuring program should focus on producing a line of events from the reporting table to the end. A patient’s information should be distributed to all necessary areas for examination. In addition, the patient risk management committee should facilitate a sharing of risk management experience and practices in all disciplines. The hospital should also have a risk management plan for every possible situation capable of happening. Finally, a monitoring and continuous improvement group should be developed. This group works to ensure no repetition of similar cases ever occurs again. Continuous monitoring of all staff members and evaluation of different activities would be their first priority. The following risk management concepts would improve the hospital emergency services and attract more patients (Ghaye, 2008).
References
Nash, D. B. & Goldfarb, N. I. (2006). The Quality Solution: The Stakeholder's Guide to
Improving Health Care. Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Ghaye, T. (2008). Building the reflective healthcare organization. Oxford: Blackwell Pub.
West, J. C. (2011). Case Law Update: A Review of Recent Rulings Of Interest To Risk
Managers. Journal of Healthcare Risk Management, 30(3), 38-45.
