CURRENT HEALTH CARE SITUATION PAPER

Current Health Care Situation



Current Health Care Situation paper

Introduction

When prevention turns into a detrimental effect, either causing harm to the patient or not it is termed as a medical error. The medical errors could be in various forms including; incomplete or inaccurate diagnosis of any injury, a syndrome, a disease or any other medical ailment. Although there are reasons because of which these errors occur; however, in this paper we would be taking these medical errors in terms of incautious behaviors of doctors as well as nurses which leads to different complications for the patients.

Every year, medical errors cost thousands of lives in the United States. According to a record of approximately 37 million patients, released by a health-care quality company, HealthGrades; from 2000 to 2002, 195, 000 people have died in the United States due to in-hospital medical errors which seems potentially preventable. The company took the initiative of investigating deaths across the country occurring because of medical errors. The economic, as well as the mortality impact of these errors, were analyzed by applying models created by researchers. The study identified that the number of deaths nearly doubled from those which occurred in 1999, as analyzed by IOM. Also, the IOM study was based on the data taken from only three states and the latter comprised of data from 28 states (Loughran, 2004).

Health-Care Happening

There are many reported cases of medical errors, each one claiming to cause damage to the patient. One of these cases is of a teenager from Madison who went to St.Mary's hospital for delivery but died because she was given a wrong drug at the time of inducing labor. The Department of Health is investigating the causes of this tragedy. No clear evidence was found as of what actually happened since; St.Mary's Hospital is currently using a bar-code technology in order to avoid any potential medical error (Channel3000, 2006).

Discussion

The above mentioned situation is one of the elements which contribute towards creating an impact on the reputation of St.Mary's hospital. Not only this, it may also lead to a situation where the hospital can be sued by the family of the girl, in the allegation of murdering the girl.

Taking in to consideration the situation, we will examine the corporate structure and governance, of the organization along with its culture and corporate social responsibility in the forth coming section.

The Corporate Structure and Governance

Corporate governance is required in order to separate managerial and ownership controls. Organizational structure is needed to implement the corporate strategy efficiently. In the absence of corporate structure and governance, it is not possible for an organization to functions effectively and to maintain a proper check and balance on the work processes.

The president of St.Mary's Hospital is Dr. Frank Byrne. The hospital is a part of the SSM Health Care which is sponsored by the Franciscan Sister of Mary. The structure is bureaucratic in a broader context since, in every process standardization is required to be achieved so as to make the ...