How can healthcare providers work to improve quality
Prompt: How can healthcare providers work to improve quality at the same time that payers are reducing access to services?
Speaking from firsthand experience, rural areas are often at a deficit relating to the variety of choices for primary health care. For this reason, it can be easy for providers and their offices to have a lax attitude regarding quality because they are aware that patients do not have competing practices to switch to. This attitude does not serve the patient population and can do great harm to the business. In similar ways, payers limiting choices of either services or providers can give institutions a feeling of entitlement and indifference if they are part of a short list of available resources. I witnessed this firsthand within a previous place of employment as insurance specifications changed in favor of the organization. They became the only office in the state to provide the specific services within the scope of insurance payment. For this reason, patients from all over the state flocked to these providers despite consistently poor outcomes from the medical procedures. Rather than continuing to work on quality measures to encourage growth within the business, the providers saw this change as an opportunity to rapidly increase patient numbers to benefit the budget. Shortcuts were taken and time with patients was drastically cut to ensure the greatest number of appointments scheduled per day. One simple way to put the patients and quality care first could have could have been to institute appropriate length of appointments. Schedules were often so crowded that providers would need to chart while seeing the patients and they typically did not have much time to speak directly to the patient. Setting guidelines for slightly longer appointments could have allowed the healthcare providers time to provide better quality education and genuine discussion with each patient. However, when patient numbers are increasing even with poor quality, it can be easy to overlook quality improvement measures
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