Standards of Evaluation

CASE STUDY: SLP Standards of Evaluation
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Summary
According to the article, the ongoing efforts to improve the quality of primary health care in the United States need to visit the training aspect of health care. Studies indicate that the quality of outpatient care provided by resident physicians is actually better than the care provided by staff physicians (Zallman et al, 2010). But the problem was that such a conclusion was limited because the researchers who came to such a conclusion used few variables to conduct the study such as using a specific illness and population. The purpose of this article was, therefore, to test this conclusion by comparing outpatient care over a range of different factors which would offer a more reliable conclusion.
Five Quality Indicators
In preparations for the study, the group of medical researchers initially had 20 quality indicators which eventually became 5 categories in accordance with clinical importance. The first indicator was the management of chronic diseases; this is related to conditions such as coronary artery disease, the indicator checked if physicians used the most efficient method to treat. The second indicator was appropriate antibiotic use. While antibiotics can be used for most infections, the use of antibiotics is actually not recommended for some conditions such as infections in the upper respiratory tract (Zallman et al., 2010). The third indicator reviewed preventive counseling; physicians are responsible for advising patients especially if they fall into high risk categories which make them susceptible for chronic illnesses. The fourth indicator is screening tests such as blood pressure tests; these are very important because they give comprehensive studies concerning a patient’s overall wellbeing with each visit. The fifth indicator had to do with the improper medical prescriptions for elderly patients who are 65 or older. In fact, there are 33 medicatio...