continuous quality assurance meaning

Continuous Quality Assurance in Public Health

Continuous quality assurance, according to Cockerham (2014), entails maintaining the desired degree of high-quality services and results. A strategy known as quality assurance ensures that the predetermined standards for the best medical care are reached. It is the initial stage of the quality development process. The goal of continuous quality assurance in public health is to raise the bar for patient treatment while also raising expectations for the regulators, communities, and administrative assessors. In addition to focusing on fulfilling clinical requirements, quality assurance also places a strong emphasis on achieving results. This paper will concentrate on the efforts of continuous quality assurance in public health and the ethical foundations related to the efforts.

Patient-Physician Relationships and the Quality Delivery of Services in Public Health

The continuous quality assurance looks into the quality control, the privacy of the patients, the contentment of the employees, customers’ satisfaction, and the accreditation. Patient-physician relationships are crucial aspects in the influence of quality results. Quality efforts have been put in place to ensure that there are positive physician-patient interactions which in turn contribute to the delivery of quality services. Firstly, efforts are put in place to ensure there is the clear explanation by the physicians of the procedures utilized in the process of delivering the services, and the patients, in turn, are allowed in making decisions about the proceedings. This allows an understanding that leads to positive clinical outcomes (Kelley, Kraft-Todd, Schapira, Kossowsky & Riess, 2014). The proper approaches are put in place to improve the relationships between the patients and the physicians, and in turn, the job satisfaction of the physicians is improved.

Providing Information to the Patients

Providing information to the patients is another effort to ensure the patient-physician relationship is maintained. In many instances, the physicians do struggle in understanding the patient information needs. Therefore, the patients are provided with useful and relevant information that in turn increase the patient passivity. Thus the physicians can perceive and meet the patient needs. The information that the patients require to be provided with include the clinical skills as it relates to the public health. Consumer guides are also given to the patients which in turn will contribute to the quality of health care and reduces the costs by the promotion of provider and clinical responsibility.

Allowing Community Participation in Health Development

Allowing community participation in health development is a quality effort that contributes to the patient-physician relationship. The community is allowed to participate in making decisions that nurture mutual action for public health. The individuals are allowed to fully take part in making decisions that concern services, research and in programs that influence their health. This is effective when the voices of the persons are listened to and taken into account. The community participation entails the enquiring of their opinions and the reactions they have concerning the plans regarding policies and services. The community can also be involved in the determination of priorities and the implementation of the policies in place. The community can also be allowed to predominate in community control and the developmental and engagement processes.

Interaction Between Physicians and Patients

The interaction between the physicians and the patient is vital for quality health care delivery and such as the duty of the physician in delivering quality health care is necessary for public health. Some physicians believe that the quality efforts should focus on showing leadership which can lead to improvement in quality and also gives the physicians a transformed independence over the practice of healthcare and medicine. While working with the government to reduce costs, physicians can intervene to ensure the considerations of quality healthcare is at the top of agenda (Chambers, Glasgow & Stange, 2013). This approach is essential for it aids control of costs through constrained freedom of choice and patient co-payments.

Ethical Foundations of Quality Efforts

In efforts to deliver quality healthcare services, ethical requirements should be put in place as patient safety is enhanced. Both the physicians and patients have an ethical responsibility to take part in quality assurance, though it must conform to the stated ethical regulations. The public has expectations of quality health care that is safe, timely, efficient, equitable, effective, and patient-centered (Faden, Kass, Goodman, Pronovost, Tunis, & Beauchamp, 2013). Ethical issues usually come up because the interventions used to improve the quality services may in some cases result in harm, affect some patients unfairly, and waste the scarce resources. The ethical considerations look into the responsibility of the healthcare providers to improve the quality of care and at the same time, the patients to cooperate with the established efforts. The patients have a role to participate in quality efforts which may include; the treatments used on them, allowing collection and utilization of the information regarding their medical conditions, and the results attained after any medical intervention.

Responsibility of Patients

The responsibility of the patients in the cooperation is subject to reasonable standards, which allow the patients to access the general information concerning the quality efforts and they should be asked for conversant approval to be included in the quality efforts. They should also be kept free of any harm and safe from any defilement of their rights. For instance, the patients should be guaranteed that their personal information is kept confidential and their participation in the quality efforts does not expose them to greater risks than the ones involved in the standard medical care (Faden et al., 2013). The healthcare workers also should be asked for their conversant approval in being involved in the quality efforts, and the efforts should be imposing minimal risk as compared to their normal work condition.

Conclusion

In conclusion, continuous quality assurance in public health should be regarded highly to ensure that the delivery of quality services is maintained at all times. A patient-physician relationship should be improved significantly with efforts to improve the clinical outcomes. The patients should be allowed to take place in making decisions in measures relating to the quality assurance efforts. For the efficient delivery of quality services, the needs of the patients should be met accordingly while at the same time ensuring that the physicians have their job satisfaction. Ethical considerations are put in place to ensure that the safety and the patients are maintained as well as looking into the welfare of the public health workers. Each party has a role to play that conforms to the ethical standards that have been set.

References

Chambers, D. A., Glasgow, R. E., & Stange, K. C. (2013). The dynamic sustainability framework: addressing the paradox of sustainment amid ongoing change. Implementation Science, 8(1), 117.

Cockerham, W. C. (2014). Medical sociology. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Faden, R. R., Kass, N. E., Goodman, S. N., Pronovost, P., Tunis, S., & Beauchamp, T. L. (2013). An ethics framework for a learning health care system: a departure from traditional research ethics and clinical ethics. Hastings Center Report, 43(s1), S16-S27.

Kelley, J. M., Kraft-Todd, G., Schapira, L., Kossowsky, J., & Riess, H. (2014). The influence of the patient-clinician relationship on healthcare outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. PloS one, 9(4), e94207.