Quality care is a hotspot topic throughout our country. CMS, the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, the Ambulatory Surgery Center Association, healthcare payors, and legislators, just to name a few, have jumped into the fray of quality care. Rhetoric is strong concerning how to control the rising cost of healthcare. While U.S. healthcare has come under fire, it is interesting to note that foreign countries approach U.S. firms to assist them in improving their hospitals and send their citizens to our country for the latest care.
During recent years, there has existed a turf battle between hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers. Who is the better provider of patient care services?
Hospitals provide high acuity care in a sophisticated high tech environment. Hospitals can provide centrally located services for cardiac, trauma, obstetrics, neurology, neonatal and other inpatient services. We need hospitals that are excelling in quality care, and must support their existence!
The ASC is an upshot of our healthcare having evolved to the benefit of our citizenry. With the advances in technology and technique much of what had to be done in a hospital setting 30 years ago can now be done safely in the outpatient environment. The data supports this move with evidence of higher patient satisfaction, lower infection rates, lower complication rates, and fewer errors.
The answer to quality care is extraordinarily simple. All providers must stay focused on the task at hand while providing individual patient care. Nothing should take precedent over the individual care of the moment. How does a provider accomplish this feat when we are challenged with 'doing more with less', decreasing reimbursements creating urgency to be more efficient, or distractions of institutional layers of bureaucracy, whether at the hospital or government level? The only way to improve patient care is to focus on the details of the moment. The ambulatory surgery center setting has provided the answer to staying focused.
In a well-managed, accredited ASC, the focus of the entire organizational structure is on the delivery of outpatient surgery patient care. Without the distractions from other areas of urgent/emergent patient care situations, the physicians and staff drill down to the details of providing the best experience for this patient's episode of healthcare. The processes are tight in the 'how to' from the moment of scheduling and registration through the discharge of the patient. The oversight of the processes is minute in detail. Daily onsite management with the intimate involvement of the administrator, director of nursing and business office manager leads to immediate resolution of patient individual needs. Staff is involved in the quality operations and oversight of the facility from patient satisfaction through facility safety. The Board and Medical Executive Committee review the previous month's reports and hammer out methods to improve processes.
This ownership of the process leads to an in depth understanding of and commitment to a quality patient care outcome. The engagement of ALL providers of care in a collaborative focus-driven environment leads to an excellent result for the most important person - the patient.
Learn more about Regent Surgical Health.
Read more insight from Joyce Thomas:
- Critical ASC Mistake: Physician-Owners Forgetting to Prioritize the ASC
- Maximizing Board Productivity
- Critical ASC Mistake: Physician-Owners Forgetting to Prioritize the ASC
