The 6 Domains of Quality in Healthcare
- Evergreen Chapter
- Oct 21, 2023
- 7 min read
Tanish Patel, Debanshi Mishra, Ha Le
Safety
One of the factors of healthcare quality is safety, or “how well healthcare avoids harm to patients from the care that is intended to help them.” Healthcare safety is more specifically described as patient safety. Safety extends beyond basic physical safety and includes how comfortable patients are with the healthcare system, and how they are treated. Safe healthcare systems treat patients with respect and understanding and deliver high-quality healthcare with minimum risk of errors or injury. Some of the most common sources of patient harm are medication errors, surgical errors, infections, sepsis (when the body has an extreme immune response to an infection), diagnostic errors, unsafe transfusion and injection practices, and patient misidentification. To score high on safety and improve how safe healthcare is, healthcare systems must aim to reduce these sources of patient harm.
Credits: Hospitals Magazine
Healthcare safety can be measured just like the other five domains of healthcare quality - through structural, process, and outcome measures. Structural measures judge how well a healthcare provider supports high-quality healthcare through things like their capacity, systems, and other processes (e.g. facilities, staff, and resources). Process measures determine how well healthcare organizations serve patients within the proper recommendations and guidelines for clinical practices. Outcome measures focus on the results of healthcare, and how positively or negatively a healthcare provider’s services impact the health of a population.
Effectiveness
Credits: Cornerstone Urgent Care
Another one of the six factors of healthcare quality is effectiveness. Healthcare effectiveness is described as “providing services based on scientific knowledge to all those that can benefit and not providing services to those not likely to benefit (avoiding underuse, and misuse, respectively).” This also ties back to healthcare safety, since effectiveness refrains from providing healthcare to those that could be harmed by the systems, boosting healthcare safety. To achieve healthcare effectiveness, “healthcare providers must provide healthcare that achieves its purpose and use the most appropriate treatments and procedures to achieve desired results.” Again, how effective healthcare is can be measured with structural, process, and outcome measures.
Credits: Kara Slating, Memorial Health System
The Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) is a method of measuring healthcare effectiveness used by the government to determine how insured patients are being cared for. By increasing preventive healthcare, the number of doctor visits drops overall and patients get better outcomes, contributing to greater healthcare effectiveness. HEDIS impacts both healthcare providers and insurance companies, as well as consumers. Data collection is critical in gauging healthcare quality since it allows the measurement of healthcare quality to be reliable and accurate. Administrative data, patient medical records and surveys, and standardized clinical data are all methods of reliably recording data about the six domains of healthcare quality, including safety and effectiveness.
Patient-centered
Patient-centered care is a vital aspect of healthcare quality that focuses on putting the patient at the heart of their healthcare experience. It means that doctors and healthcare providers treat patients as partners in their care journey, and consider their unique needs, wishes, and feelings. This approach places the patient as an active partner in their healthcare journey, recognizing that patients are not just recipients of medical treatment, but individuals with unique backgrounds, values, and preferences. One of its key principles is practicing open and empathetic communication between healthcare providers and patients. By being active listeners and involving patients in shared decision-making, healthcare teams can better understand patients' concerns, provide tailored care, and address their specific needs.
Credits: Appen
This patient-centered approach improves health results as well as patient happiness. Patients are more likely to follow treatment programs and take part in preventative healthcare practices if they feel appreciated and involved in their care. This approach also recognizes the role of social, cultural, and personal variables in influencing an individual's health, in addition to clinical processes, as a part of healthcare. Patient-centered care offers superior quality healthcare by including these factors into the care plan. It also encourages a better approach to medicine, which ultimately benefits patients and the healthcare system as a whole. Patient-centered treatment acknowledges that everyone is unique and that what works for one person may not work for another. It takes into account every aspect of the patient's life, such as their family, culture, and your own circumstances. By doing this, it makes sure that healthcare is about caring for the individual as well as treating the sickness, improving healthcare for everyone.
Timeliness
Credits: LinkedIn
Another very important aspect of high quality healthcare is timeliness. It entails receiving medical care very quickly and effectively, without unnecessary delays. Patients who receive healthcare promptly wait as little as possible for appointments, surgeries, and the release of test results. It also guarantees that medical professionals are reachable when needed, whether for standard treatment or in life-threatening emergencies. Timely interventions can reduce problems and keep people in the best possible health if they are treating chronic diseases. It represents a healthcare system's dedication to giving patients' needs top priority, honoring their time, and maintaining one of the most important aspects of high-quality treatment. Timeliness isn't just about patient satisfaction, it also significantly impacts health outcomes and the cost-effectiveness of healthcare delivery.
Essentially, timely healthcare is about getting the right care at the right moment. It’s a very critical component in achieving positive patient experiences, improved health outcomes, and an efficient, effective healthcare system that values and respects both patients' time and well-being, ultimately contributing to the overall quality of healthcare services.
Efficiency
Credits: Caitlin-Marie Miner Ong
Another key component of healthcare quality is efficiency. Efficiency describes a healthcare setting where little to no waste is made in supplies, energy, and equipment. In other words, for healthcare to be efficient, the amount of care provided to the customer/patient is increasingly greater than the amount of products used. To achieve efficiency in healthcare, one method is by designating healthcare workers’ tasks.This means that workers can only complete the tasks that are assigned to them. By doing so, task delegations can be less convoluted within the healthcare system, which will improve communication. Furthermore, another method is the reliance of technology in healthcare. This can include allowing patients to sign documents virtually to reduce paper waste.
Credits: Shutterstock
Efficiency in healthcare has three levels of measurement: system-wide level, sub-sector level, and disease-based level. The system-wide level of measurement focuses on the financial inputs and outputs of healthcare, such as total amount of money spent on products, as well as those dealing with human resources, such as total number of doctors. The sub-sector level, on the contrary, focuses more on activities that take place in the healthcare system, such as the total number of consultations a doctor may have. Finally, the disease-based level of measurement uses specific details found in disease-related cases in healthcare, such as survival rates of a disease. Overall, these three levels of measurement take into account different inputs and outputs to accurately calculate a healthcare organization’s efficiency.
Equitability
Equitability in quality healthcare refers to the equal care that patients/customers receive. In other words, patients/customers do not receive unfair treatment on the basis of their race, ethnicity, gender, geographic location, and socioeconomic status (which takes into account their social class, financial security, and education). This core value can be achieved in healthcare through building trust between patients/customers and healthcare workers/organizations. To acknowledge patients’/customers’ preferences in terms of their treatment is one way to build this trust. Another way to improve equitability in healthcare is by taking into account a patient’s/customer’s personal situation. For example, to address and help a patient in need of financial aid in their treatment is one way to do so.
Credits: Supplemental Health Care
Today, equitability in quality healthcare can be measured using an outline called the health equity measurement framework. There are several components that are taken into account in this framework, such as a patient’s/customer’s health beliefs and political viewpoint. Other examples include a patient’s/customer’s living environment and accessibility and availability to healthcare. Overall, all of these components are used to help healthcare workers ensure that their patients/customers are receiving equal care. In other cases, the health equity measurement framework can also help with resolving unequal treatment of their patients/customers as well.
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