Patient Safety Indicators

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Safety is a principal concern of health care quality. There is no other way a patient can assess the quality of a health care facility other than a reasonable consensus of how safe, effective, and fast treatment delivery. Quality Indicator (QI) program involves a systematic set of organized activities; implemented by an organization with the intent to monitor, evaluate, and improve in not only the health care facility and its staff but also to the targeted patient group. Besides, a well-updated infrastructure in leadership, procedures, and policies that are essential in both organizing and facilitating the teamwork.

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A well-functioning QI team is highly dependable on information sharing. Information plays a fundamental part in the whole process. It separates assumptions medical practitioners have on their patients from what is happeningInstitute of Medicine, defines patient safety as " the freedom from accidental injury due to medical care or from medical errors." Medical errors refer to the failure of a planned action to be completed as the way it was intended or may even mean the use of an evil procedural plan to achieve the specified aim.

Most common errors that occur include cases of wrong-site surgery and lethal/corrupt dose administration(Miller et al., 2001).

The whole process of patient care cannot be complete without risk assessment, reporting, and analysis of incidents, the capacity to implement, and the recommended solutions to minimize the risk occurrence. The guidelines prided about inpatient preventable adverse events (PAEs) have mainly focused on reducing complications in surgeries, childbirth, and other complex medical procedures that are either involving a sensitive part of the body or there is the need for knowledge and experience in the conventional therapeutic process.

Media and public view of the patient care cover a more broad view of issues that are believed to be on testimonies of victims about high profile failures and disturbing unethical acts that are way below an acceptable standard.

Cases such as healthcare acquired infections, abductions, rapes, homicides are among other evils that are even considered criminal acts of the state that are still happening in some few health care facilities. However, the lack of a meaningful, reliable, and valid standardized performance measures has been the biggest challenge in assessing patient safety standards as well as in comparing the quality of care of several health care facilities. Just like with other disciplines, what cannot be measured gets too difficult to improve.

Despite the PSIs being unmeasurable, there is a widespread consensus existing that PSIs can reduce the risk of adverse injuries related to the patient's exposure to hospital care and the environment. This essay will discuss more on the significance of effective measures in safe care handling when in delicate medical procedures (surgeries and childbirth), staying healthy, getting better, accepting and staying ill, or being disable, and coping with the end of life narrative for patients on their last phase of treatment(Full blown in Aids) (Miller et al., 2001).

Carelessness and unsafe medical practices are the main factors attributed to a rise in morbidity and mortality rates in health care facilities. In 2003, Patient Safety Indicators (PSIs) was advanced by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in October 2008 launched the eight hospital-acquired conditions, which correspond to some PSIs, and would have incremental payments disallowed. PSIs frequently are adopted in awarding hospitals with lower complication rates in pay-per-performance initiatives, with boards such as those for Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

As according to a research done by Pronovost et al. (2011) to determine whether quality in U.S health care facilities has improved over time from 1998-2007 after the introduction of patient safety indicators, indicates that a total of 14 out of the 20 PSIs showed statistically significant trends. After joinpoint regression analysis; postoperative pulmonary embolism, postoperative physiological, postoperative sepsis, selected hospital-acquired infections, decubitus ulcer, laceration, and postoperative respiratory failure had an increasing annual percentage change APC. Birth trauma injury, failure to rescue, postoperative hip fracture, obstetric trauma with and without instruments, and postoperative wound dehiscence showed decreasing APCS. Improved patient outcomes, efficiency, and clinical processes related to PSIs were other observations being made in their study of over more than 115 hospitals(Pronovost et al., 2011).

There are reduced waste and cost associated with system failures and redundancy avoidance with PSIs indicators. The predictability of some conditions has also enabled the PSIs to have more significance in processes that acknowledge and solve problems before they occur.

Accomplishing this will be a commitment to the frequency of data recording and analyzing within all members involved in the caring of the specified patient. This concept of data sharing promotes the culture of quality improvement due to the easy accessibility of past recorded information of every patient. From the extensive literature covered, its adaptation and implementation of PSIs should continually be used primarily not only for quality improvement but also as secondary data for further studies.

References

Miller, M. R., Elixhauser, A., Zhan, C., & Meyer, G. S. (2001). Patient Safety Indicators: using administrative data to identify potential patient safety concerns. Health services research, 36(6 Pt 2), 110.
Pronovost, P. J., Holzmueller, C. G., Ennen, C. S., & Fox, H. E. (2011). Overview of progress in patient safety. American journal of obstetrics and gynecology, 204(1), 5-10.