QUALITY OF HEALTHCARE

Quality of Healthcare in Workplace

Quality of Healthcare in Workplace

Introduction

Quality of healthcare refers to the degree to which healthcare services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes that are consistent with current professional knowledge. To improve the quality of healthcare, many evaluation and standardization practices have been developed. This entry discusses several aspects of healthcare quality, including the history of healthcare quality evaluation, the major organizations and programs created to increase the quality of healthcare, the role of academe in the quality of healthcare, evaluation phases, and incentives for improving quality (Earp, 2008, PP: 111).

Clinical governance is a term first used within the National Health Service (NHS)—the United Kingdom's state-funded health system—to describe a process for maintenance, improvement, monitoring, and accountability for clinical standards. The responsibility for clinical governance rests with the chief executive of all NHS bodies. The development of clinical governance is important because it made chief executives responsible and accountable for clinical quality in their organization alongside business goals and budgetary control. Clinical governance also challenged the “clinical freedom” of doctors. Up to its inception, a doctor only needed to justify their actions in terms that would be seen reasonable by a group of peers. The onus has now changed to one where a clinician is expected to deliver best practice, usually as defined in evidence-based guidelines; and persistent deviation from guidelines or being an outlier in audit might be cause for review (Earp, 2008, PP: 133).

Clarity of objectives

The purpose of this research is to study the clinical governance which can be used to improve the quality of health care in the workplace.

Discussion and Analysis

Although the implementation of clinical governance is formalized within UK legislation, this conceptual approach is also found internationally. It is similar to the mechanism for quality assurance discussed over two decades ago by the World Health Organization (WHO). There is an established clinical governance process in place in Australia, and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in the United States provides an example of an organization that promotes a similar agenda for quality improvement. The use of information systems to reduce errors and implement clinical governance has been recognized in France. Although they did not use the term clinical governance, the importance of best practice protocols and the use of information systems to reduce medical errors and improve patient safety were important components of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) reports of 2000 and 2001. However, these international approaches tend to focus on clinical and managerial commitment to quality through implementation of best evidence and clinical audit of outcomes. Although they recognize the need for a national informatics infrastructure, these reports do not propose statutory bodies to promote developing national evidence-based guidelines for clinical practice and the inspectorate to ensure that clinical governance is implemented in all health organizations. The legislative framework for clinical governance in the United Kingdom, including its standard setting and regulatory bodies (Hagland, 2009, PP:51).

History

During the first quarter of the 20th century, a confluence of ...