What does qualtiy mean to me?

Healthcare quality in my opinion cannot be answered efficiently without thinking about the cost containment aspect. With managed care taking over the United States, insurance companies everywhere are thinking of ways to control cost without upsetting consumers. This can lead to ridiculous obligations a consumer must face in order or receive adequate if not great healthcare. Within Ransom's book, there are Six IOM's: Safe, Effective, Efficient, Timely, Patient Centered, and Equitable.

Safe should be the apex of the healthcare system, no one wants to receive treatment in a facility where more than less of the patients have died due to unclean procedures. There are standards of care that hospitals strive for to boost such safety awards. Providing safe care is a paradigm to keeping people healthier and considering the facility a quality facility. Effective healthcare, means doing everything possible to help the patient so that they do not have to return. long term patients are notorious for bed sores do to little to no movement for hours on end. In order to increase their quality of life and perhaps the longevity of life, having employees move them around or even getting them out of bed will help with the quality of life they are currently living with.

Efficient and timely go hand and hand with improving quality within a healthcare facility. The quicker a patient is in and out of the hospital the more money can be made to turning that bed over to someone else. With all of the improvements in technology, doctors are able to diagnose and treat quicker than before. Technology has helped the quality of healthcare to improve from the patients perspective. They can now possible treat a tumor months earlier due to technology than they would of maybe five years ago. Patient centered and equitable, are great ways to show compassion to a patient and help them to feel like they are not just another number.

Every single IOM is harder to reach when cost containment comes into play. By having to decide what procedures they will and will not cover; insurance companies are drawing a line and making the consumer choose between what they offer and nothing else at all. With the current healthcare reform, insurance will have to change their ways hopefully, now that the government is putting forth a competition aspect.