7-1 Assignment: Data Quality, Errors in Drug Prescriptions

Data Quality
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Data Quality
Data quality in healthcare systems is important because it prevents occurrences of errors that could lead to adverse incidents such as wrong medication in hospitals. Poor data quality threatens the safety of the patients and also increases healthcare costs such as in cases where the patient has to undergo a fresh medication to correct the error (Raghupathi & Raghupathi, 2014). Quality data also enables the exchange of health records and information which is applied in research and performance measurement. Examples of data quality include the use of dictionaries that standardizes the definition of terms used by different personnel in healthcare (Byrd, et al., 2013).
Data quality minimizes the errors in drug prescriptions and clinical diagnosis, and by so doing increases the accuracy of diagnosis and treatment thus leading to quality healthcare (Fayers & Machin, 2013). EHR helps in measuring of healthcare quality through provision of availing data to the managing staff to assess how the diagnosis is done and whether it meets the required standards. Failure to meet Joint Commission Standards would lead to diverse consequences. The healthcare practitioners could not have met the standards required which mean that the patient safety will be impaired (Greaves, Ramirez-Cano, Millett, Darzi, & Donaldson, 2012). The quality of care would be low, and the individuals could be liable to the law which could see them prosecuted in a court of law as a breach of healthcare standards.
Lean Six Sigma is a process for solving problems in an organization. It consis...