The key characteristics of a healthcare organization provide a fundamental framework essential for its quality outcomes, success, and effectiveness. The solid relationship between quality outcomes and healthcare reimbursement has become increasingly critical within the healthcare organization as it remarkably facilitates the organization’s reputation, client attraction, and negotiation of favorable reimbursement contracts with payers. Equally important, reimbursement models that reward quality outcomes have enabled the healthcare organization to prioritize and invest in initiatives that objectively aim at offering quality and comprehensive healthcare services. There are various healthcare organization characteristics. The first one is mission and vision. The mission and vision provide the healthcare organization’s sense of direction that aligns with its purpose, goals, objectives, and the impact it aims at making within the healthcare sector.
Moreover, it is patient-centered care. The healthcare organization emphasizes offering quality and comprehensive patient-centered care that is evidence-based to meet the patient’s well-being, satisfaction, and preferences (Håkansson Eklund et al., 2019). The financial regulatory bodies and insurance payers often tie reimbursements to the quality of healthcare services rendered. Therefore, when the healthcare organization has high-quality clinical outcomes and high patient satisfaction scores, it receives enhanced reimbursement rates and other financial incentives (Jeurissen et al., 2021).
To add on is quality and safety, where the healthcare organization prioritizes minimizing medical errors, a clean environment free of blood spillages and sharps on the floor, and evidence-based care to continually improve patient outcomes. The financial regulatory bodies and insurance schemes also link the reimbursement rates to value-based care, optimizing the quality and efficiency of services. Therefore, when the healthcare facility delivers healthcare services with quality outcomes, it will be heavily incentivized by financial regulatory bodies and insurance firms. Consequently, is ethical standards. Healthcare organizations usually uphold ethical standards like autonomy, justice, beneficence, non-maleficence, privacy, confidentiality, equity, and respect. Lastly is collaboration and teamwork. Healthcare organizations promote effective collaboration and good relations among healthcare providers for better outcomes.
Medication errors are among the common patient care issues across many healthcare facilities that provide an opportunity for quality improvement initiatives. Medication errors are usually encountered at various phases, including the prescription stage, transcribing stage, dispensing stage, administration stage, and monitoring of drugs (Tajik, 2020). The errors mentioned above can result in potential and devastating drug side effects that can lead to prolonged hospitalization, increased healthcare costs, and even death. The financial considerations can impact medication errors as follows. First, the financial constraints within the healthcare facilities can lead to inadequate staffing levels and high workloads amongst healthcare providers, which increases the risk of medication errors.
In addition to this needs to be improved training and education for healthcare workers on medication safety and error prevention strategies due to the financial hardships of the organization. Lastly is an inadequate computerized prescribing system and barcode scanning technologies which remarkably improve medication safety and reduce errors. Investment in such technologies requires many funds, which most healthcare organizations need more.
A comprehensive and practical initiative that can be implemented to curb medication errors is the Medication Safety Enhancement Program (MSEP) which objectively aims at mitigating medication errors and enhancing patient safety through standardization and simplification of medication administering protocols, integration of technology in prescription systems and inter-professional collaboration (Sarfati et al., 2019). The interprofessional recommendations that significantly minimize medication errors include effective communication between healthcare providers to accurately reconcile medication at all care transitions, including admission, transfer, and discharge, comprehensive education and training amongst clinicians to have enough skills and knowledge for drug safety, proper prescribing and administration practices, and interprofessional collaboration.
The leadership role within the healthcare organization will support the successful planning, analysis, and implementation of the Medication Safety Enhancement Program (MSEP) by the end of the next fiscal year to reduce medication errors by 25% within the healthcare facility. The planning will involve coordinating relevant stakeholders like pharmacists, IT personnel, and nurses, while the analysis will encompass reviewing medication reports, medication administration protocols, guidelines, and workflows. Lastly, implementation will be facilitated by providing resources and staff training.
The assessment of the Medication Safety Enhancement Program (MSEP) for its applicability will involve evaluating its overall design and structure, including goals and objectives, evaluating its level of support to healthcare providers, and examining its key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure medication safety outcomes.
References
Håkansson Eklund, J., Holmström, I. K., Kumlin, T., Kaminsky, E., Skoglund, K., Höglander, J., … & Summer Merenius, M. (2019). Same or different? A review of reviews of person-centered and patient-centered care. Patient education and counseling, (1), 3-11.
Jeurissen, P. P., Kruse, F. M., Busse, R., Himmelstein, D. U., Mossialos, E., & Woolhandler, S. (2021). For-profit hospitals have thrived because of generous public reimbursement schemes, not greater efficiency: a multi-country case study. International Journal of Health Services, 51(1), 67-89.
Sarfati, L., Ranchon, F., Vantard, N., Schwiertz, V., Larbre, V., Parat, S., … & Rioufol, C. (2019). Human‐simulation‐based learning to prevent medication error: A systematic review. Journal of Evaluation in clinical practice, 25(1), 11-20.
Tajik, M. I. (2020). Medication errors.
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