Journal Entry for Wall of Silence

1. Explain how patients and consumers find valid and reliable information about health care providers and facilities.

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Since each State has each own regulation, consumers can find valid and reliable information about the health care provider by seeking out the state websites. For example, New Yorker can go onto www.nydoctorprofile.com, Californian can go onto www.medbd.ca.gov, and people in Massachusetts can go onto www.massmedboard.org (Gibson & Singh, 2003).

Consumers log on to www.theleapfroggroup.com to find out whether the hospital is willing to improve by implement new technology to reduce medical errors.

However, there is no tracking of medication errors yet, but its something that is going to be next.

2. In your experience, do patients and consumers investigate their providers or facilities before making selections? What about you, your friends, and family?

Before reading the Wall of Silence, I didnt know that we could look up our providers credential, history of malpractice claims, and years of experience. Most of the people I know and for myself, we do not get to select our providers. Our insurance company gave us a primary provider based on our location. Our primary care providers then refer us, specialist, that they often have contact or work.

How do quality improvement systems affect regulatory and accreditation reporting and reimbursement?

According to the commonwealth fund report, ACA requires health plans to submit reports each year demonstrating how they reward health care quality through market-based incentives in benefits design and provider reimbursement structures (thecommonwealth.org, 2015).

Hospital get reimburse by the quality of service rendered. Outcome measures give the consumer an idea of how hospital structures and processes work to reduce morbidity and mortality rate in patient (Dimick, 2010)

Most quality measures reporting is voluntary, but several private payers and accrediting organizations, including the Joint Commission, require healthcare facilities to report quality measures. These measures are then tied to reimbursement levels and accreditation status (Dimick, 2010, paragraph 3)

3. What issues come to mind when you reflect on the need for all nurses to use information and technology to communicate, manage knowledge, mitigate error, and support decision- making?

Nursing informatics is an important aspect of promoting quality healthcare through information technology. Through information technology, nurses can access information about the patient and promote quality health care production. Nurses can make better decisions when dealing with patients and provide better healthcare services. Information technology helps in the transfer of patient information to provide quick and safe healthcare for patients in different parts of the world. For instance, a patient that lives in a particular place can access quality healthcare miles away from his home. Information technology can help transfer the patient information to help in the proper treatment of the patient. Through information technology, nurses can share information about a patient to promote efficiency and mitigate the chances of committing errors. Every nurse ought to know how to check for information on the patient database to help in providing specialized health care that matches the individual needs of the patient.

Another issue that is emerging from the use of information technology to promote quality healthcare is the privacy of the patients. Information technology robs the patients of their private information. Some patients would want to keep secret their previous medical history(McGonigle, 2014). For instance, patients that have suffered sexually transmitted diseases would want to keep that part of their history private. Nurses have a difficult time to decide whether to adhere to the dictates of the profession that demands such information in the database or adhere to the wants of the patients and maintain their privacy. The knowledge that such information can be maintained in a database for a long period discourages patients from seeking healthcare from recognized institutions. There ought to be some systems that regulate patient information shared to protect the privacy of the patients. Nurses ought to use patient information in these databases for treatment purposes only. The use of such information for other purposes would not only break the Hippocratic Oath but also discourage patients from seeking healthcare services.

4. How does technology support safety at your facility? Explain how health system safety and technology will influence your practice in the next 10 years.

Technology is one of the greatest tools in promoting patient safety in healthcare. The use of technology in running the day-to-day activities of the healthcare facility helps in promoting the safety standards of the facility. There are different technologies that have helped in managing the safety of the patients in a health facility. The safety of the patient provides confidence and trust in a medical facility. Safety entails the ability to minimize chances of errors that might cause the death of a person. To improve the safety of the facility, the institution has taken various steps. One of the most successful methods is the use of EHR machines. EHR not only increase the awareness of the potential medication errors but also provide a record of a patient for long periods (McGonigle, 2014). The EHR helps the patients recognize possible mistakes made by the doctors. The facility also has quality surveillance systems that help in monitoring all parties to promote security in the facility.

In the future, various technological improvements can help this facility offer great levels of security and gain the trust of the patients. One of these technologies includes the use of genetics and genomics in identifying the genetically transmitted diseases and curing them. In the future patients that are prone to getting various diseases because of their genetics can seek treatment to avoid the contraction of such diseases. The use of patient data from their parents and previous generations can help in improving this technology. Robotics can be included in giving medical care to reduce the fatalities that occur because of human error. If the facility remains committed to adopting these new technologies, it improves the safety of the facility and gain the trust of the people.

5. Gibson and Singh compared the current health care system to less flawed, safer industries, like aviation. How do you feel about safety and quality in health care when compared to the aviation industry? Support your entry with quotations from the book as needed and with literature and sources from our course.

Gibson and Sigh advocated for the use of technology to minimize the daily occurrences of death due to human mistakes. They examined the possibility of minimizing to match other fields such aviation, which have close to zero fatalities per a thousand trips. The number of people that die daily as a result of human error can be compared to 797 plane crashes on a daily basis (Gibson, 2003). They argue that millions of people in the modern world lose their lives due to careless mistakes such as overdosing, mistaken patient identity among many other errors. Human error is responsible for causing a huge percentage of deaths that occur in hospitals and other medical facilities. Other people suffer permanent injuries because of human mistakes in the country. The use of technology has reduced fatalities in other fields and can be used to transform the health sector in the modern day.

Technology is one of the safest ways of reducing these deaths and mistakes.

Technology should be used to assists in perfecting human skills not taking over the system. Technology and data keeping should be applied in the basic procedures to avoid human mistakes in administering healthcare services. Technologies such as the use of barcodes can help reduce the chances of mistakes such as wrong medication or patient identity (Gann, M. 2015). However, the use of these technologies should respect the religious and social opinions of the users to promote the development of trust in the systems.

References

Gibson, R., & Singh, J. P. (2003). Wall of Silence: The untold story of the medical mistakes that kill and injure millions of Americans. Washington, DC: Lifeline Press.

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2012/apr/health-plan-quality-improvement-strategy

Dimick, Chris. "Quality Check: An Overview of Quality Measures and Their Uses." Journal of AHIMA 81, no.9 (September 2010): 34-38

Gann, M. (2015). How informatics nurses use bar code technology to reduce medication errors. Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc, 60-63. Retrieved from www.Nursing2015.com

McGONIGLE, D., SIPES, C., HUNTER, K., & HEBDA, T. (2014). Why Nurses Need to understand nursing informatics. Everyday Informatics, 100(3), 324-327.

Office of the coordinator for health information technology. (2013). Health Information Technology Patient Safety Action & Surveillance Plan. Institute of Medicine, Health IT and Patient Safety: Building Safer Systems for Better Care.