Poor Quality Care – A Global Pandemic?

If you lead or manage a healthcare clinic or hospital or a care home, and you struggle with poor quality care in your facility, with discouraging outcomes and poor rating from patients or regulatory authorities, such as the Quality Care Commission, this article is for you.

In this article, we briefly examine the burden of poor quality care. We also highlight the simple steps you can take, starting today, to improve the quality of your services even if you are very busy.

By the way, you can learn more about how to implement some of the ideas in this article.

Now, let’s get started.

The Global Burden of Poor Quality Care

If you are in the health or social care industry for any length of time, the chances are that you are already familiar with the global pandemic in poor care. But, here is a quick recap of some significant numbers.

Figures from the Harvard Global Health Institute and the World Health Organisation (WHO) indicate that, in high-income countries, 1 in every 10 patients is harmed while receiving care. In low- and middle-income countries, an estimated 134 million adverse care events occur each year, causing 2.6 million preventable deaths.

But, that’s not all. Poor quality care also comes at a staggering economic cost.

Economic & Other Costs of Poor Quality Care

In high-income countries, 15% of hospital expenditure is due to mistakes in care or hospital-acquired infections. In low- and middle-income countries, an estimated 1.4 to 1.6 trillion USD is lost each year in lost productivity due to poor quality care and its consequences.

Medication errors alone cost a whopping 42 billion USD each year.

Poor quality care also affects other aspects of the health system. This includes poor staff morale, loss of public confidence, decreased demand for care by service users, financial loss due to litigations and many other effects.

Majority of Care Adverse Events Are Preventable

It is a significant cause for concern that most adverse events are preventable.

Globally, up to 40% of patients are harmed in primary and outpatient health care, of which 80% are preventable. In high-income countries, 50% of adverse events from poor quality care are preventable. The most detrimental errors are related to diagnosis, prescription and the use of medicines.

What You Can Do About Poor Quality Care

Now, the million-dollar question is, what can you do as a care leader or manager to prevent these deaths?

There are many quality improvement approaches and methods, but the real good news is, even the simplest of measures are effective. For example, the simple measure of engaging and involving patients in decisions can reduce the burden of harm by up to 15%, according to the WHO.

Regardless of the quality improvement method you choose, here are four simple steps you can take starting from today to transform your services for the better. You’ll reduce delays in care, save costs, and above all, save lives.

The Four Steps to Improve Care

1. Identify high priority areas with poor quality

Whether you are preparing for a regulatory visit, such as from Care Quality Commission, or you are having specific quality problems, you will need to assess your services and identify high priority areas and focus on improving those areas first. Ask yourself this. What is the one problem of your services that urgently needs attention, is important to you, and would have the highest impact on the quality of your services if solved?

2. Design appropriate interventions

Different quality problems require different solutions. You’ll need to come up with solutions based on the results of your quality assessments to meet your specific needs. There is a variety of quality improvement approaches and methods to suit various needs and contexts. The key here is to remember that “simple-and-likely-to-be-done” is always better than “complex-and-unlikely-to-be-done”.

3. Implement interventions

Action is crucial to quality improvement, but this is where most clinics and hospitals struggle. Health and social care staff are busy people. If it is everyone’s job, nobody will do it. Therefore, it is essential to assign tasks to specific individuals within your team, with specific deadlines.

4. Monitor progress

This is one of the areas often forgotten by health and social care professionals. It is crucial to conduct intermittent assessments to ensure that your quality improvement efforts are yielding results. If not, the data could help you identify where to make changes and how.

There you go. Those are the four essential steps you need to take. We hope this helps you on your quest to improve the quality of your services.

If you found this video helpful and you want to learn more, go to FixMyPractice.co.uk/improve-quality-of-care.