How Would You Reform Healthcare?
The American Society for Quality (ASQ) recently polled 120 healthcare quality professionals on this question. Their first target? Payment systems such as billing, coding, and insurance claims. Improving these areas would reduce paperwork that causes added expense and reduce patients’ and doctors’ frustration.
Tort reform and limiting liability claims against physicians was identified as a way to decrease the cost of liability insurance, which is generally one of a physician’s greatest costs of operation.
The experts would mandate a universal system of electronic medical records with bar-coding to provide real-time, nationwide access to patient records. Such a system would address the limited information sharing that causes rework and serious errors.
Third, the experts would implement the criteria of both the Baldrige Award and ISO 9001 in all provider organizations. If you’ve read anything on Baldrige.com, you can see the value of this recommendation.
Finally, the experts would create a free market competition for insurance and standardize preventive care/annual medical check-ups by making them affordable and readily available.
Click here to read ASQ’s press release on the poll results.
To learn more about Baldrige and healthcare, click on these articles:
- A Healthcare Role Model
- Baldrige Saves Lives
- Why Baldrige? Saint Luke’s Makes the Case
- 3 Ingredients to Improving Healthcare
(6 votes, average: 4.83 out of 5)
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