Quality Indicators
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Quality of health care in both long term and home healthcare organizations is a complex model with debates on what should be considered when measuring quality. Quality in long-term health care is complicated, with quality defined as both output and input measure. Quality had been measured using three concepts: process of care, outcome of care, and structure of care.
On the other hand, nursing home care quality is measured by structural variables like staff training, mix, and the resident’s facility characteristics. Characteristics of facilities of the resident include factors such as demography, case mix, and payer mix. The other measure is the process measures, which assess the service delivered to the residents. Shortcomings in the care process can be characterized by underuse, overuse of care, and poor procedural performance. In long term care process, problems include neglect and abuse, which is physical assault.
The outcomes of health care include health status changes and other conditions, which are as a result of the health care provided. Long-term health care quality outcome is different from acute health care income. In acute health care, a successful outcome comprises of restoration of patients to their initial state before the illness. However, long-term health care outcomes are based on criteria like maximizing the patients’ quality of life as well as physical function and protecting them from damages. The presence of various conditions, such as loss of weight and pressure sores, is viewed as an indication of low healthcare quality.
Desirable outcomes are achieved and measured by structural factors and care processes, making these two components key factors indicating and defining quality in long-term healthcare and home health care settings. Process care and structural care in the two settings are outcomes of quality of life and health.
The use of the outcome to access the quality of care is complicated in the two settings. This is because of practice and conceptual considerations in data collection of quality of life and health care status. Due to these challenges, the process and structure measure is used as proxies for quality outcomes health care measure in the long term setting.
There are multiple perspectives to be taken to account when, during an evaluation of the quality of long term health care. The quality of health care in long-term settings should not be judged by use processes, structural and clinical care outcomes, and assessment of nonmedical assistant services and access to care. This is different when it comes to home care quality measures. Clients’ and recipients’ perspectives on long term care services are likely to differ, which poses a challenge of establishing the priorities to be set on different perspectives.
In the home, health care setting assisted living, and the physical environment of the equipment contributes to safety as well as to the functional mobility of the recipients. These two factors also have a lot of impact on the quality of life of the residents. The physical environment in this setting brings out an aspect of privacy. Privacy is tired of consumer principles and should be upheld.
Home health care and long term care have various potential partners who help in providing integrated health care systems (Singh, Meyer & Westfall, 2019). There are multiple methods for identifying these partners. The first method is considering the health care challenges of the patients in question with multiple parents. For instance, aged people will require different health partners compared to young children. Aged people are affected by various challenges such as low site and chronic diseases. This is different with children. For older people, potential partners such as housing providers will are best suited. House providers give affordable housing for older adults besides offering transport and medication facilities.
As an executive of a hospital, I would consider various things when identifying various potential partners of an integrated health care system. First, the evaluation of the services offered by the partners is critical. Potential partners should have satisfactory services and facilities needed by different clients in the health care setting. In the case of house providers for aged people, these house providers should provide quality long term facilities for aged people. They should also include all the services needed by these particular patients.
Potential partners are important in health care facilities. These partners can help in the improvement of health care facilities and equipment. Improvement of these facilities increases healthcare services’ efficiency, hence better sieves to clients (Alhusein & Watson, 2019, p.499). Partners who assist in training health care providers equip them with more knowledge and skills. These skills are essential in service delivery. Besides, they help minimize mistakes and eras in both long term health care and home care.
Potential partners can help in research and innovation of different treatment methods. This is likely to improve health care service delivery. All the above help from external partners can help hospitals and health care centers achieve their set goals and objectives.
With this partnership, the health care facilities will have high efficiency when treating patients. Mistakes will drastically reduce, which means that the public will have more trust in health centers. For instance, more patients are likely to turn up to health care facilities that have registered good performance and have high technology and treatment equipment.
In conclusion, partners for an integrated health care system help improve the quality of both long term care and home care settings (Pozniak & Pearson, 2018, p.474). With the introduction of service providers such as house providers for aged people, there has been an improvement in health care quality. Other partners help improve services in health care facilities. With better service delivery, the quality of health care is likely to improve too.
References
Alhusein, N., & Watson, M. C. (2019). Quality indicators and community pharmacy services: a scoping review. International Journal of Pharmacy Practice, 27(6), 490-500.
Pozniak, A., & Pearson, J. (2018). The dialysis facility compares the five-star rating system at two years. Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, 13(3), 474-476.
Singh, K., Meyer, S. R., & Westfall, J. M. (2019). Consumer-facing data, information, and tool self management of health in the digital age. Health Affairs.