Viewpoint: The Many Faces of Quality Care and a Need for Accountability

What is Quality Care?

Entering into the healthcare business, especially delivering complicated dialysis treatments, carries with it an enormous responsibility that must ensure patients are receiving quality safe care. This life-sustaining treatment can become life-threatening, in a second’s time. Staff should be adequately educated and trained to meet individual patient needs before, during and after treatments, as well as listening to, acknowledging and resolving patient complaints. In addition, clinics should promote an atmosphere to prevent patients from feeling fear of reprisal for questioning practices or asking questions. Clinics should provide honest reasons when mistakes occur. ESRD conditions should be adhered to, ensuring compliance-facility policies and procedures, ensuring staff are following physician orders, and ensuring staff are compliant with standards of care. Staff should be educated to understand what the patient is experiencing, and patient education and active involvement in their treatment.

Real Clinic Benefits of Quality Care

With providers becoming even more responsible for ensuring their patients receive quality care, caregivers might observe the following in patient areas.

• Decrease in preventable potential negative outcomes
• Decrease in preventable actual negative outcomes, including, but not limited to, death
• Decreased numbers of costly preventable hospitalizations that often result in additional acquired costly medical conditions and increased hospital length of stay
• Decreased costly days spent in rehabilitation/nursing homes, post-acute care hospitalization, decreased costly home health visits, supplies, medical devices, durable equipment, etc.
• Decrease in unnecessary medications
• Improvement in patient outcomes
• Improvement in patients’ quality of life, general well-being and longevity

Additionally, providers might observe the following.

• Fewer complaints filed
• Decrease in lawsuits filed
• Decrease in malpractice insurance, and other insurance premiums
• Patient satisfaction
• Improved patient-provider relationships