The United States has a quality enterprise that focuses on improving efficiency and quality of medical care. The organization is known as the National Quality Strategy (NQS). The NQS works by ensuring that all sectors in the community are united in enhancing health care and health quality. The NQS concentrates on achieving better care by creating a more reliable, safe, accessible, and patient-centered care system. Secondly, the NQS aims at creating healthy communities through promoting evidence-based interventions to tackle environmental, social, and behavioral health determinants. Finally, NQS aims to make quality care affordable to the government, employers, families, and individuals. To achieve all these, NQS has six key priorities, which this paper will discuss.
The first component of the system is providing safe care by decreasing adversities that may arise as a result of health care delivery. Currently, the safety of patients has become the primary concern of stakeholders and the general public. The cause of this concern is the increasing number of victims of adverse medical errors. According to the book of Romans, individuals should try their best to help those who are weak (Holy Bible, New Living Translation, 1996/2015, Romans 15:1). Therefore, to remedy this situation, several legislative measures had to be created to protect the patient from being harmed while receiving medication. Through the medication-quality management approach, such measures as using clear handwriting and professional education have been promoted to reduce errors.
The other element is to ensure that every family and individual work together in the process of care. When families and patients work together in making decisions and planning about their care, costs are lower, patient satisfaction and experience improve, and health results are better (Harvard Business Review, 2011). To ensure that this occurs, individuals and families can be enlisted as partners. The enterprise can develop processes and systems to harness insights from families and individuals concerning chances for constant improvement, gaps in care, and their experiences. For instance, they can use family advisory councils and focus groups to receive more knowledge about the care process.
The NQS further suggests that there should be the promotion of effective coordination and communication of care. To achieve this objective, the organization proposes the improvement of quality of care communications and transitions throughout care settings (Nash et al., 2012). In addition, the body further advocates for the enhancement of care for patients with disabilities and chronic diseases (Shrank et al., 2019). This enhancement can be done by following a care strategy that addresses and anticipates symptom and pain management, functional status, and psychological needs. Doing so offers medical practitioners a platform to coordinate with each other, thereby improving patient outcomes.
The fourth component of the system includes the promotion of the most effective treatment and prevention measures for leading mortality causes. Some diseases are known to cause more deaths in patients compared to others. Among these leading causes are cardiovascular illnesses such as heart attacks and coronary artery disease. Evidence-based practices of prevention and treatment increase the survival chances of a patient (Kilbourne et al., 2018). They are proven tactics that have been supported by several successes in the field. By promoting such practices, the organization is improving the life expectancy for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. In addition, effective treatment measures further help in reducing medical errors.
The next element involves the community and the promotion of wide use of best practices. The primary goal of this proposal is to ensure that the community and the people living in it are leading a healthy life. To ensure that everyone in the community is aware of what needs to be done, individuals must consider the best practices. These approaches should be aligned with community circumstances, such as competing needs, political and social perspectives, and health concerns (Adirim et al., 2017). A committee can be utilized to provide directions on which best practices favor the community. The committee does not have the mandate to command actions that a community should pursue or assign roles to individuals. However, it can encourage the community to address issues using a structural tactic to ensure that every member leads a healthy life.
Finally, the NQS is committed to promoting affordable health care for every individual in society. For a society to be healthy, making quality care available is not enough. Some individuals may not be able to afford such services because they may be too expensive. To ensure that everyone is catered for within the community, there is a need to provide affordable care. The advantage of this is that it would reduce the gap that exists between the rich and the poor in society in terms of health care. Affordable care services mean that everyone is capable of accessing quality care.
The NQS is an enterprise in the United States that primarily focuses on efficiency and quality of medical care. The organization’s objectives are structured into three general categories which include, better care, healthy communities, and affordable care. Through the medication-quality management approaches, there has been a reduction of medical errors. Furthermore, the organization encourages families and individuals to work as a unit when it comes to health care. The significance of this is that it provides more insight throughout the medication process. These details are essential in the improvement of health care providers in the future. The use of best practices is further encouraged, as this helps tackle chronic illnesses and disabilities.
References
Adirim, T., Meade, K., & Mistry, K. (2017). A new era in quality measurement: The development and application of quality measures. Pediatrics, 139(1), e20163442. Web.
Harvard business review on fixing health care from inside & out. (2011). Harvard Business Press.
Holy Bible, New Living Translation. (2015). New Living Translation.
Kilbourne, A. M., Beck, K., Spaeth-Rublee, B., Ramanuj, P., O’Brien, R. W., Tomoyasu, N., & Pincus, H. A. (2018). Measuring and improving the quality of mental health care: A global perspective. World Psychiatry, 17(1), 30-38. Web.
Nash, D. B., Clarke, J. L., Skoufalos, A., & Horowitz, M. (2012). Health care quality. American College of Physician Executives.
Shrank, W. H., Rogstad, T. L., & Parekh, N. (2019). Waste in the US health care system. JAMA, 322(15), 1501. Web.