QUALITY OF CARE

The Quality of Care

Abstract

General practice plays a major role in ensuring that the patients receives accurate and timely diagnosis regarding their disease, either from a specialist or a GP as a consequence of GP referral. A delay or failure in the identification, along with referring to the fact that patients who are in need of secondary care can have profound and clinical consequences. This research paper examines the quality of referral and diagnosis especially in the general practice, with a specific reference to enabling the patients to make informed choices at the point of referral (Abel GA et.al, 2008, pp.1352-1359).

The Quality of Care

Introduction

This research has been conducted by The King's Fund; King's Fund has published many papers regarding the health care of people. In this paper namely “The quality of GP Diagnosis and Referral”. This paper provides a brief view of the variations taking place in the quality of referral and diagnosis across general practice, along with that this paper identifies the evidence based ways for improving the quality of services provided by GP's. This paper looks at the referral process known as “Choose and Book”, and the eminence indicator thresholds, which are essential to be set by the general practitioners, along with the creation of a useful set of guidelines for the clinicians (Burbach FR & Harding, 1997, pp.67-72).

Author's Credentials

Catherine Foot has a Master's in Public Policy

Chris Naylor has an MSc in the field of public health; he did his MSc from the London School of tropical medicine and hygiene

Candace lmison has two degrees; her first degree is in the field of natural sciences which she did from Cambridge University. Her second degree is in health policy and health economics, which she did from the Birmingham University.

Author's Experience

Catherine Foot was assigned at the position of policy directorate at The King's Fund in the year 2009; Catherine is currently managing the programs indulged with the works on the management of quality and outcome of GP services provided to the people. Along, with that she looks after certain issues such as; the reporting and measurements of outcomes and the quality of information. Catherine is also an active worker in the Cancer research department of the United Kingdom; she performs the role of a program director at the facility. The research is an international cancer benchmarking partnership program, the department comprises of certain health led initiatives, which is responsible for studying the rate of patients who have survived cancer. The calculations are carried out from one country to another, but mostly those countries which have somewhat similar health systems, and the expenditures on health.

She has a background in the designing of policy for cancer patients. Before she joined The King's Fund, Catherine worked as the Head of Policy at the Cancer research department of the United Kingdom's. She worked in the department responsible for providing cancer services reforms to the people, along with addressing of the facts that are responsible for health inequalities ...