Health care reform is for the most part governmental policy that affects health care delivery in a given place. Health care reform typically attempts to:
A patient is any recipient of health care services performed by healthcare professionals. The patient is most often ill or injured and in need of treatment by a physician, nurse, psychologist, dentist, veterinarian, or other health care provider.
The Joint Commission, also known as TJC, is a United States-based nonprofit tax-exempt 501(c) organization that accredits more than 22,000 US health care organizations and programs. The international branch accredits medical services from around the world. A majority of US state governments recognize Joint Commission accreditation as a condition of licensure for the receipt of Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements.
Computerized physician order entry (CPOE), sometimes referred to as computerized provider order entry or computerized provider order management (CPOM), is a process of electronic entry of medical practitioner instructions for the treatment of patients under his or her care.
In the healthcare industry, pay for performance (P4P), also known as "value-based purchasing", is a payment model that offers financial incentives to physicians, hospitals, medical groups, and other healthcare providers for meeting certain performance measures. Clinical outcomes, such as longer survival, are difficult to measure, so pay for performance systems usually evaluate process quality and efficiency, such as measuring blood pressure, lowering blood pressure, or counseling patients to stop smoking. This model also penalizes health care providers for poor outcomes, medical errors, or increased costs. Integrated delivery systems where insurers and providers share in the cost are intended to help align incentives for value-based care.
Fee-for-service (FFS) is a payment model where services are unbundled and paid for separately.
Patient safety is a discipline that emphasizes safety in health care through the prevention, reduction, reporting, and analysis of medical error that often leads to adverse effects. The frequency and magnitude of avoidable adverse events experienced by patients was not well known until the 1990s, when multiple countries reported staggering numbers of patients harmed and killed by medical errors. Recognizing that healthcare errors impact 1 in every 10 patients around the world, the World Health Organization calls patient safety an endemic concern. Indeed, patient safety has emerged as a distinct healthcare discipline supported by an immature yet developing scientific framework. There is a significant transdisciplinary body of theoretical and research literature that informs the science of patient safety.
A patient safety organization (PSO) is a group, institution, or association that improves medical care by reducing medical errors. Common functions of patient safety organizations are data collection and analysis, reporting, education, funding, and advocacy.
Christine K. Cassel is a leading expert in geriatric medicine, medical ethics and quality of care. She is planning dean of the new Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine. Until March 2016, she was president and CEO of the National Quality Forum. Previously, Cassel served as president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) and the ABIM Foundation.
To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System is a landmark report issued in November 1999 by the U.S. Institute of Medicine that may have resulted in increased awareness of U.S. medical errors. The push for patient safety that followed its release continues. The report was based upon analysis of multiple studies by a variety of organizations and concluded that between 44,000 to 98,000 people die each year as a result of preventable medical errors. For comparison, fewer than 50,000 people died of Alzheimer's disease and 17,000 died of illicit drug use in the same year.
Clinical Nurse Leader (CNL) is a relatively new nursing role that was developed in the United States to prepare highly skilled nurses focused on the improvement of quality and safety outcomes for patients or patient populations. The CNL is a registered nurse, with a Master of Science in Nursing who has completed advanced nursing coursework, including classes in pathophysiology, clinical assessment, finance management, epidemiology, healthcare systems leadership, clinical informatics, and pharmacology. CNLs are healthcare systems specialists that oversee patient care coordination, assess health risks, develop quality improvement strategies, facilitate team communication, and implement evidence-based solutions at the unit (microsystem) level. CNLs often work with clinical nurse specialists to help plan and coordinate complex patient care.
Donald M. Berwick is a former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Prior to his work in the administration, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement a not-for-profit organization.
Don E. Detmer is Professor Emeritus and Professor of Medical Education at the University of Virginia.
Health Information Technology (HIT) is health technology, particularly information technology, applied to health and health care. It supports health information management across computerized systems and the secure exchange of health information between consumers, providers, payers, and quality monitors. Based on an often-cited 2008 report on a small series of studies conducted at four sites that provide ambulatory care – three U.S. medical centers and one in the Netherlands – the use of electronic health records (EHRs) was viewed as the most promising tool for improving the overall quality, safety and efficiency of the health delivery system. According to a 2006 report by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, broad and consistent utilization of HIT will:
Patient participation is a trend that arose in answer to perceived physician paternalism. However, only rarely can unchecked physician paternalism be justified, and unlimited patient autonomy would presumably be equally abhorrent.
The Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 (PSQIA): Pub.L. 109–41 (text)(pdf), 42 U.S.C. ch. 6A subch. VII part C, established a system of patient safety organizations and a national patient safety database. To encourage reporting and broad discussion of adverse events, near misses, and dangerous conditions, it also established privilege and confidentiality protections for Patient Safety Work Product. The PSQIA was introduced by Sen. Jim Jeffords [I-VT]. It passed in the Senate July 21, 2005 by unanimous consent, and passed the House of Representatives on July 27, 2005 with 428 Ayes, 3 Nays, and 2 Present/Not Voting.
The United Hospital Fund of New York (UHF) is a nonprofit organization that focuses on improving health care in New York. It conducts health policy research and supports numerous health care initiatives through fundraising, grantmaking, and collaboration with other health care organizations. Since August 2017, the organization is led by Anthony Shih.
Joseph P. Newhouse is an American economist and the John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy and Management at Harvard University, as well as the Director of the Division of Health Policy Research and of the Interfaculty Initiative on Health Policy. At Harvard, he is a member of the four faculties at Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Harvard Medical School in Boston, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, and Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge.
Health care quality is a level of value provided by any health care resource, as determined by some measurement. As with quality in other fields, it is an assessment of whether something is good enough and whether it is suitable for its purpose. The goal of health care is to provide medical resources of high quality to all who need them; that is, to ensure good quality of life, cure illnesses when possible, to extend life expectancy, and so on. Researchers use a variety of quality measures to attempt to determine health care quality, including counts of a therapy's reduction or lessening of diseases identified by medical diagnosis, a decrease in the number of risk factors which people have following preventive care, or a survey of health indicators in a population who are accessing certain kinds of care.
The Emergency Care Coordination Center (ECCC), within the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the policy home for the emergency care community within the federal government. The ECCC seeks to strengthen the day to day emergency care system so that the nation is prepared in times of crisis.
