Access to Quality Health Care
Reshanda Matthews
Herzing University
Access to Quality Health Care Quality access to healthcare is important to both the patient and the economy. Some of the areas where people are more concerned with quality monitoring include, monitoring readmission rates, blood stream infections, UTIS and patient falls (Kominski, 2014). Hospitals are keener on quality measures because of various reasons. Hospitals get more patients depending on the quality of service they provide. To ensure they get the customers, they seek to provide the best quality of medical care. Hospitals use this information on quality measures to self-evaluate themselves and set goals (Menlik, 2012). Also, insurance companies are becoming keener on expenses that result from negligence and ignorance at hospitals. A case in point is insurances like Medicaid, which are no longer comfortable paying expenses incurred from Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infections. Patients are also becoming proactive with the care they receive. Many hospitals have been subject to lawsuits because of accidents that occur at the hospital such as patient falls. Performance based evaluation of employees requires an evaluation of the standard of care they provide. A nurse is responsible for their patient throughout their shift. In the event of a patient fall, it will negatively impact on their performance. Laws have also been improved to require assessment of the quality of hospitals. Finally, insurances require quality reports on the voluntary basis. Insurances are seeking to tie reimbursement based on quality. An example is paying for performance and other initiatives that are based on quality (Mensik, 2012). These initiatives evaluate both hospitals and care providers on the quality of service that they provide. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid usually withhold a