Healthcare operations and quality. Health, Medicine, Nursing Essay

Healthcare Operations and Quality
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Healthcare Operations and Quality
In chapter one of Hays and McLaughlin’s Healthcare Operations Management, challenges that current healthcare systems face are identified, a system view of healthcare is presented, and a comprehensive framework for the utilization of operational methods and tools in healthcare is provided (McLaughlin & Hayes, 2008). In a separate article by Becker’s Hospital Review, five common hospital problems and suggestions for how to fix them are highlighted. Among the five problems mentioned in Becker’s Hospital Review, the main problems are physician and nurse shortages, and poor communication between providers.
The factors impacting the looming physician and nursing shortages are multifaceted: More medical students are opting to specialize, the upcoming wave of older physician retiring, the increasing number of aging Americans, who use more healthcare services, and an aging populace. Additionally, an expanding healthcare coverage, hospital acuity, burnout, and a dwindling pipeline of new physicians and nurses caused by faculty shortage that has caused the turning away of thousands of prospective students (Cooper, 2007). All these issues are occurring when various fields of specialty and nursing will soon witness the providers retiring en masse.
Another prevalent issue in medicine is poor communication between providers. The most prominent grounds of poor communication between providers can be attributed to a lapse in communication between the doctors and patients (Krautscheid, 2008). Additionally, poor communication occurs when information is unrecorded, never received, misdirected, ignored or never retrieved, and when patient records are transferred between departments. Employees and record handlers engaged in information transfer between departments can cause this lapse. This fundamental cause results in an incomplete or incorrect conveyance of information which eventually results in poor medical treatment of the patient.
Solving the shortage of physicians and nurses requires a wide-ranging approach, with alterations in several aspects in the ways physicians and nurses provide primary care (McLaughlin & Hayes, 2008). Addressing this shortage requires increased use of technology, innovative care delivery, increased planning and funding for the training of residents, and more effective ...