SHARES
Are you getting good access to safe and effective healthcare services? More than anything else, you are heart to the entire healthcare system. Your decisions on how to take care of your own health will influence the quality healthcare delivery.
In fact, health spending in industrialized countries doubles over the past 30 years. However, the highest spending healthcare systems are not always the best performing one. One of the reasons is the fragmentation of health systems. In other parts of the world, the lack of financial investment does result in poorly established healthcare systems.
6 Principles of Quality Healthcare
Healthcare systems are important investments by the community to take care of the health of one another. This may be a life-saving surgery for those with severe injury or illness, a continual care for a lifelong disease, or even as a preventative measure for healthy people. All these healthcare services have very different goals and target very different human needs. Regardless, when it comes to measuring the quality of healthcare services, it usually boils down to these 6 principles.
1. Safe Healthcare
Do no harm. After all, the least we would want from a healthcare service is to end up with poorer health. Matter of fact, just as a healthcare system can save lives, the same life-saving procedures can take lives too. The quality goal in this context should be to reduce the odds of causing harm to users. In other words, always carefully weigh the risk versus benefit to guide decisions.
2. Effective Healthcare
Life in itself holds many mysteries. There may be a multitude of factors at play that makes a sick person well again. Even with great advances in medicine, many aspects of life remain unknown and unexplored still. Notwithstanding that, quality healthcare aims at delivering the best care available that is proven to work. As an analogy, there may be hundreds of ways in farming your crops. It is always worthwhile to find out the one that suits your circumstances eg the location, the soil, climate and needs.
3. Efficient Healthcare
Mother Nature blesses us with great resources. But, the utility of the resources are always limited by the amount of work done by mankind. In other words, resources that are available to us, are always limited. This makes it necessary for everyone of us to be frugal and mindful of expensing every single resource.
The same resource can either go to waste, or be kept and worked on to create great value. Quality healthcare requires greatest value creation in-line with human needs at minimal cost. As an example, over treatment of a person having simple diarrhea with antibiotics and lots of symptoms-relieving medication or supplements that the patient does not want nor need is wasteful. These resources can be put to greater use rather than ending up in the rubbish bin, expired.
Remember, these resources are never free. To obtain it, someone’s time, energy and life must be given in exchange for it.
4. Accessible Healthcare
With limited resources, facilities and healthcare workers, it is important to locate them strategically to fulfill the healthcare needs of entire community. Also, whether healthcare services are available at the time when they are most needed is also crucial. For example, heart attack commonly happens early in the morning whereas asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) tend to exacerbate at night. Therefore, quality healthcare means healthcare services are able to match and reach people who need them, no matter where they are OR at what time.
5. Equity in Healthcare
It is a human basic need to keep ourselves well and healthy. Any form of law or rules that deny a person’s freedom from seeking means of recovery and promotion of health would be unjust. The quality standard of healthcare services should not vary with age, gender, skin colour, and socioeconomic status.
6. Acceptable Healthcare
A patient-centered healthcare system would act in the best interest of patients. If health advice or treatment did not reach users, it is as if they were never treated at all. It takes cultural sensitivity as well as a holistic and engaging approach to make sure healthcare services are acceptable.
Photo by Answergen Sengen from Flickr
You Are Heart To Healthcare Service Quality
The best way to improve service quality is to close the feedback loop. That is why your voice, action and choice matter! Naturally, our behaviours reinforce over things that we like and feel good about. Similarly, we would distance ourselves from anything that is uncomfortable or dangerous.
As such, the little goodness that we pay attention and respond favourably to, will continue to grow. In contrast, anything that is not good enough will eventually be deprived of attention and interest.
So, always have a conversation with your healthcare service providers. Make it a point to talk freely about what feels good, and what’s bad; why is this so, and how about that? After all, if we give up the chance to try and communicate early, in the end, we would still force the message across with no room for discussion. For instance, we may refuse to go for follow-up in a clinic again. Sometimes, we get preoccupied with our judgment and frown on every single piece of advice. Worst still, we may stop believing in the therapy itself and give up on treatment.
Photo by Victoria Mondloch from Flickr
Conclusion
Our health is the greatest gift of blessing, the greatest wealth of abundance!! Each and every one of us plays an important role as building blocks towards quality healthcare. The role takes the form of co-managing health, having good communication, clear honest feedback to keep shaping the healthcare delivery processes.
References:
1. Quality of care – a process for making strategic choices in health systems [Internet]. WHO. 2020. (Available from: https://www.who.int/management/quality/assurance/QualityCare_B.Def.pdf?ua=1; last updated on 2006; last accessed on 2020 Nov 9)
2. Rao GN. How can we improve patient care? Community Eye Health. 2002; 15(41):1-3.
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by Chang Xian
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