Health Care

REPORT ON

THE DEVELOPMENT OF QUALITY AND SERVICE IMPROVEMENT AGENDAS IN ENGLAND

AND

IT'S IMPACT ON HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE

SUBMITTED BY

MODULE: QUALITY AND SERVICE IMPROVEMENT

UNIVERSITY OF BRADFORD

Module - Quality and Service Improvement

Introduction

Although health care is probably the best in the world for the rich, its high cost and limited government intervention implies that it is weak or even nonexistent for the poor and unemployed. 15% of the population in the United Kingdom is uninsured, and publicly funded programs, Medicare and Medicaid only cover people over 65, disabled and poor. Over the past period, a variety of methodologies for process improvement from manufacturing and service operations have been switched to health care. Health care is heading for a serious crisis worldwide. Reforming and improving healthcare is one of the most troublesome issues facing the United Kingdom, the entire Europe, and, indeed, the rest of the world. When we advocate the use of principles of quality management in health care, we must be careful about what we mean (Dingle, 2008, pp. 98-109). There are many different approaches to quality management. Not all have been equally successful. The cost of incorrect or missed diagnoses is harder to estimate, but is undoubtedly high as well. Mistakes in diagnosis lead to inappropriate or even harmful treatments, as well as the need for additional care once the actual health condition is diagnosed. Finally, both diagnostic mistakes and inappropriate treatment increase indirect costs because they require additional documentation and extra administration.

Healthcare Issues

Increasing costs and decreasing coverage are not the only factors bringing the employer-based health care system to its knees. The federal government has also taken a huge hit because of this financing mechanism, which not only does not require employees to pay income taxes on the health care benefits they receive hut also allows employers to deduct them from their taxes as expenses. The “Treasury of U.K” loses more than $200 billion per year because of this tax break—almost doubles the mortgage deduction (Hagland, 2009, pp. 37-42).

Lately, most citizens are dissatisfied with the health system of their country, and many interest groups have lobbied politicians to change the system to one that guarantees universal coverage, by health insurance for all citizens. However, as every country in the world, many of the proposed reforms have been lost as political promises, and meanwhile the health system in the United Kingdom is more deteriorated each year according to public opinion (McLaughlin & Kaluzny, 2006, pp. 3-40). The only certainty is that U.K as a nation has not considered the issue of health as a human rights issue but as a free market enterprise. In this aspect, there are three landmarks that mark the daily debate on health system in U.K:

The high costs of social security system and Medicare

The inequality of the health system varies across different groups in society, including ethnic minorities (Hughes & Blegen, 2008, pp. 265-80).

At one hand, there are the problems of financing our healthcare system through Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, and ...