In many healthcare centers there is a need to improve the quality of services and safety of the patients. Envisioning is one of the best techniques that can facilitate the realization of the patient safety and improvement of the services provided by health facilities. Patients, healthcare providers and professionals need to collaborate in order to achieve this (Slocum & Papa, 2014). The professionals have been tasked to identify what changes need to be done to have better healthcare services before 2025 which will see the patients enjoy improved services hence their safety.
Studies by the World Health Organization have revealed that over 421 million people are hospitalized every year (Prince, Comas-Herrera, Knapp, Guerchet, & Karagiannidou, 2016). Out of this number, about 42.7 million cases of adverse events occur in the patients during the time they are in the health centers. This implies that patient unsafety and poor services in the health facilities is contributing to the high morbidity and mortality rate in our world. To prevent these adverse impacts caused by poor practices in healthcare centers, enough facilities, qualified health professionals, advanced technology, and safe practices need to be implemented. This will also reduce the cost incurred by patients to receive treatment. Regarding the transformation at the institutional level such as in the nursing home, hospital and ambulatory care center, it is true that patient safety can be achieved through envisioning (Slocum & Papa, 2014).
According to Slocum & Papa (2014), there are different factors which lead to unsafe nursing practices thus endangering patient safety. They include poor communication between the nursing professionals especially during handoffs, technological issues in some hospitals and incompetence by healthcare providers. Currently, measures are being sought to improve healthcare providers’ competence and facilities to provide quality services to the patients (Prince et al., 2016).
The National Quality Forum (NQF) targets to improve patient safety and quality of services provided by the healthcare givers through development and implementation of reporting system (Froimson et al., 2013). The body has defined a list of “never events” such as operation on the wrong patient, preventable post-operative deaths, patient death due to healthcare give incompetence, mismatched blood transfusion, severe “pressure ulcer acquired in hospitals, foreign body left in a patient after surgery, and major medication errors among other events (McKeon & Cardell, 2011).
There are other regulatory processes aimed at improving safety and reducing harm to the patient. These processes include implementation of better shift huddles in all the departments, publishing weekly newsletter addressing a certain patient safety, making patient safety leadership rounds regularly, and implementation of the national patient safety goals (McKeon & Cardell, 2011). If it is practiced and tactics are applied, then it will be easy to achieve quality services and patient safety through envision by 2025.
To promote the improvement of the services provided by the healthcare professionals, new quality improvement models have been implemented (Froimson et al., 2013). For instance, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has made major changes to the models used in the past for the payment. The body launched a new payment model called Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Advanced (BPCI Advanced) in January 2018 which is much better than the previous model (CMS. Gov., 2018). The traditional model advocated that the healthcare professionals to be paid according to their performance. In the new BPCIP advanced model, the healthcare professionals can be paid extra amounts if there are remaining amounts which are aimed to pay the healthcare givers. The new system aims at improving the quality of services to the patients as it requires the practitioners to collaborate in their operations in order to coordinate the provision of services while improving the services (CMS. Gov., 2018).
The quality improvement models and methods comply with the standards of the nursing practices thus they are likely going to improve the services as well as the safety of the patient. Through the evaluation of these improvements and what is required by the nursing standards of practice, improving patient safety is achieved by 2025. Envision can facilitate the achievement of better services and safety of the patient in the health industry.
References
CMS. Gov. (2018). CMS announces new payment model to improve quality, coordination, and cost-effectiveness for both inpatient and outpatient care. Web.
Froimson, M. I., Rana, A., White, R. E., Marshall, A., Schutzer, S. F., Healy, W. L.,… & Parsley, B. (2013). Bundled payments for care improvement initiative: the next evolution of payment formulations: AAHKS Bundled Payment Task Force. The Journal of arthroplasty, 28(8), 157-165.
McKeon, L., & Cardell, B. (2011). Preventing never events: What frontline nurses need to know. Nursing Made Incredibly Easy, 9(1), 44-45.
Prince, M., Comas-Herrera, A., Knapp, M., Guerchet, M., & Karagiannidou, M. (2016). World Alzheimer report 2016: improving healthcare for people living with dementia: coverage, quality and costs now and in the future. Web.
Slocum, P. C., & Papa, F. (2014). Envisioning a global role for osteopathic medicine in the 21st century: Using Blue Ocean Strategy to promote osteopathic health care as the World’s leader in healthcare education and do it more efficiently, effectively and at the lowest cost. International Journal of Osteopathic Medicine, 17(1), 38-42.