Healthcare Quality and Costs



Healthcare Quality and Costs

Introduction

One of the important drivers of performance in healthcare settings is the quality of the processes. The processes that are typically related to the patient care need specific quality, as well as, experiential conformance to yield better outcomes. The healthcare organizations typically fail to understand this and struggle to perform on such quality dimensions thinking that it will bear them extra costs. The costs associated with the quality of healthcare is considered as a point that usually stops the healthcare organizations to put in more money to increase the quality of operations that are already taking place in the organization. There is generally a tradeoff between the financial performance and the clinical quality. There are many examples of such healthcare organizations that have high levels of conformity in quality and are also able to control their costs. There also are examples that the healthcare organizations that have better quality in terms of clinical performance have problems managing their costs. They face financial burden that bring them to the back foot also in terms of the clinical quality that they were offering. It is, however, a general perception and a proven fact that the healthcare organizations that focus their directions on providing quality services ultimately also yield financial results in the long run (Senot, Chandrasekaran & Tucker, 2013).

Discussion

Public Sector Organizations

The government of the United States of America spends a major portion of its Gross Domestic Product on the sector of healthcare. This is the greatest amount spent on the healthcare among all of the industrialized nations of the world. The expenditures done on the healthcare sector represent almost one-seventh of the gross domestic product of the country. On the other hand, the costs of the healthcare facilities, as well as, the reach to the ...