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Quality is defined by the National Academy of Medicine as the degree to which health services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge (CMS). While quality is important to healthcare, too much investment on the same might lead to a very high variable cost such that breaking even becomes hard and in that case healthcare starts to be non profitable.

Ways CMS (Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services) helped in healthcare quality improvement through HIT adoption

1.It has helped reduce burden for providers.

2.It also helped to signify ways of improvement.

During the past 10 years in the United States, several policies, such as the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, have led to accelerated HIT adoption and implementation in health care settings, especially implementation of electronic health record (EHR) system (NLM 2017).

Recommendations to convince the laggard providers that HIT implementation leads to improved healthcare quality.

1.Employ the right team for the job, this will help to build a team of skilled professionals for every departments in the organization.

2.Provide the team with the necessary resources in which will make them perform there duties effectively.

Paulchris (2018) attributes measure to manage cost to a leadership style of the organization. According to this research, leadership should be in such a way that promotes collaboration, motivation and innovation. Leadership and good leadership for that matter should aim at achieving goals cost effectively and one way to do that it to have a creative, innovative, collaborative and motivated team.

The approach an healthcare facility has matters a if quality improvement is going to have a serious cost implication. According to Burgess (2018), facility size and current level of performance determines if a hospital will be cost effective when introducing quality improvement. The solution I see to the problem is treating cost itself as a quality issue where when cost against profits become too much, this is interpreted as negatively affecting the quality of the hospital.

References

Burgess, J. F., Jr, Shwartz, M., Stolzmann, K., & Sullivan, J. L. (2018). The Relationship between Costs andQuality in Veterans Health Administration Community Living Centers: An Analysis Using Longitudinal Data.Health services research,53(5), 3881-3897. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6773.12975

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2012) Quality measurement and Quality improvement

https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/MMS/Quality-Measure-and-Quality-Improvement-

Health information (HIT) Adaptation : Refocusing on the journey to successful HIT Implementation

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5608986/

Paulchris, O. (2018)Balancing Quality Healthcare Services and Costs Through Collaborative Leadership, Journal of Healthcare Management: November-December 2018 - Volume 63 - Issue 6 - p e148-e157doi: 10.1097/JHM-D-18-00020