Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Home
  • Our journals
    • Clinical Medicine
    • Future Healthcare Journal
  • Subject collections
  • About the RCP
  • Contact us

Future Healthcare Journal

  • FHJ Home
  • Content
    • Current
    • Ahead of print
    • Archive
  • Author guidance
    • Instructions for authors
    • Submit online
  • About FHJ
    • Scope
    • Editorial board
    • Policies
    • Information for reviewers
    • Advertising

User menu

  • Log in

Search

  • Advanced search
RCP Journals
Home
  • Log in
  • Home
  • Our journals
    • Clinical Medicine
    • Future Healthcare Journal
  • Subject collections
  • About the RCP
  • Contact us
Advanced

Future Healthcare Journal

futurehosp Logo
  • FHJ Home
  • Content
    • Current
    • Ahead of print
    • Archive
  • Author guidance
    • Instructions for authors
    • Submit online
  • About FHJ
    • Scope
    • Editorial board
    • Policies
    • Information for reviewers
    • Advertising

Steps to be taken to provide quality healthcare

Abhay Verma
Download PDF
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7861/fhj.7.1.s80
Future Healthc J February 2020
Abhay Verma
ANEIAH, Shillong, India
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Article
  • Info & Metrics
Loading

Introduction

Improvement involves a substantial shift in our idea of the work of healthcare. If healthcare is going to benefit fully from the science of disease biology, we need to be sure that the changes we make systematically incorporate generalisable scientific knowledge. To guide our design of change, we need to characterise the setting in which care is actually delivered (microsystem, mesosystem and macrosystem) in sophisticated ways.1

Materials and methods

In this fast-growing world, daily we achieve many milestones in the field of medical science, but still there is need for improvement in quality of healthcare and patient safety. Low-quality healthcare, wrong diagnosis, over-use of steroids etc are common problems for almost every country.

According to a report of the World Health Organization, 05 July 2018, 10% of patients are adversely affected during treatment in high-income countries, and nearly 40% of healthcare facilities in low-income countries and nearly 20% of high-income countries lack sanitation.2

Methods by which we can improve quality of healthcare and patient safety

  • Driving improvement through national quality policy and strategy.

  • Setting standards for clinical practice.

  • Engaging and empowering patients, families and communities.

  • Use of continuous quality improvement programmes and methods.

  • Strong legislation and regulations.

  • Implementation of medicines, devices and technologies that are safe in design and use.

  • Financing mechanisms that enable and courage high-quality care.

  • Need of skilled, motivated and adequately supported health workforce.3

Results and discussion

Case study: Ethiopia – national healthcare quality strategy 2016–2020

Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Africa, with a population of around 100 million. Since 1995, the country's health sector has undergone significant reform through implementation of a Health Care Financing Strategy. The Health Sector Transformation Plan identifies four transformation priority agendas: ensuring the delivery of quality health services in equitable fashion; focusing on district-level transformation; strengthening health information systems; and creating a compassionate, respectful and caring health workforce.

Case study: Mexico – national strategy for quality consolidation in healthcare facilities and services 2001

A comprehensive systemwide quality improvement strategy was launched in Mexico in January 2001. The main objectives were to promote quality of care as a core value in the culture of healthcare organisations, both public and private, and to improve the quality of services across the healthcare system.

Discussion

To ensure that multiple levers are used to improve quality in healthcare, governments, policy-makers, health system leaders, patients and clinicians should work together to develop, refine and execute a national quality policy and strategy; adopt and promote universal quality goals; and monitor and report quality of care results for continuous improvement efforts.

Conclusion

Beyond the effect on people's lives, poor-quality care wastes time and money. Making quality an integral part of universal health coverage is also a matter of striving for longer and better lives. Building quality in a health system is affordable for countries at all levels of economic development, in fact, the lack of quality is an unaffordable cost, especially for the poorest countries.

Conflicts of interest

None declared.

  • © Royal College of Physicians 2020. All rights reserved.

References

  1. ↵
    1. Syed SB
    , Leatherman S, Mensah-Abrampah N, Neilson M, Kelley E. Improving the quality of health care across the health system. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2018;96:799. www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/96/12/18-226266/en [Accessed 19 October 2019].
    OpenUrl
  2. ↵
    1. World Health Organization
    . Technical series on primary health care: Quality in primary health care. Geneva: WHO, 2018. www.who.int/docs/default-source/primary-health-care-conference/quality.pdf?sfvrsn=96f411e5_2
  3. ↵
    1. World Health Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, The World Bank
    . Delivering quality health services: A global imperative for universal health coverage. Geneva: WHO, 2018. http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/272465/9789241513906-eng.pdf?ua=1
Back to top
Previous articleNext article

Article Tools

Download PDF
Article Alerts
Sign In to Email Alerts with your Email Address
Citation Tools
Steps to be taken to provide quality healthcare
Abhay Verma
Future Healthc J Feb 2020, 7 (Suppl 1) s80; DOI: 10.7861/fhj.7.1.s80

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Share
Steps to be taken to provide quality healthcare
Abhay Verma
Future Healthc J Feb 2020, 7 (Suppl 1) s80; DOI: 10.7861/fhj.7.1.s80
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Jump to section

  • Article
    • Introduction
    • Materials and methods
    • Methods by which we can improve quality of healthcare and patient safety
    • Results and discussion
    • Discussion
    • Conclusion
    • Conflicts of interest
    • References
  • Info & Metrics

Related Articles

  • No related articles found.
  • Google Scholar

Cited By...

  • No citing articles found.
  • Google Scholar

More in this TOC Section

  • Watchpoint: an NHS-grown electronic communication system shown to improve patient safety
  • A quality improvement project on improving the compliance of ‘oxygen prescription with target saturations’ in a district general hospital
  • Therapies in ACS: the pitfalls of prescribing
Show more Quality Improvement and Patient Safety

Similar Articles

Navigate this Journal

  • Journal Home
  • Current Issue
  • Ahead of Print
  • Archive

Related Links

  • ClinMed - Home
  • FHJ - Home

Other Services

  • Advertising
futurehosp Footer Logo
  • Home
  • Journals
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
HighWire Press, Inc.

Follow Us:

  • Follow HighWire Origins on Twitter
  • Visit HighWire Origins on Facebook

Copyright © 2021 by the Royal College of Physicians