The Secretary of HHS is mandated by the National Care Act to establish a national strategy to improve healthcare services delivery, patient health outcome, and population health. The plan inspires and guides nationwide efforts to coordinate efforts from the public and private sector to improve the quality of health and healthcare for the citizens. The strategy serves as a blueprint for identifying and prioritizing quality improvements efforts and for sharing lesson learned, in addition to measuring the success of the federal states and the private sector stakeholders in healthcare throughout the country (NSQIH, 2011; U.S, 2013).
HHS in 2011 released a report to the Congress that established six priorities and three aims for the strategy. The three objectives of the quality plan include; better care by improving the overall quality of care to ensure that healthcare is patient oriented, accessible, reliable and safe. The other aim is healthy communities by improving the health of the population through proven interventions that address behavioral, social and environmental determinants of health as well as high-quality care delivery. The last aim is affordable care by reducing the cost of quality healthcare for the citizens, families, employees and the government (NSQIH, 2011; U.S, 2013).
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The six Priorities of the strategy are; making care safer through the reduction of harm caused by its delivery, Ensure engagement of each person and family as partners in their care and promoting effective communication and coordination of attention. The other priorities are promoting the most effective prevention and treatment practice for primary causes or mortality beginning with cardiovascular disease, collaborating with communities to promote the use of best practices to enable healthy living and making quality care affordable for people, families, employers and the government by developing and spreading new health care delivery models. The priorities have a total of seventeen long term goals with three goals touching on each priority apart from the last priority that has two goals (NSQIH, 2011; U.S, 2013).
The national quality strategy encourages the alignment of all healthcare programs and performance measurement throughout the country. Recently, the sector has seen tremendous improvements in patient safety, adoption of new delivery models, quality improvements, and alignment of data from the public and private sector, and a decrease in the overall healthcare cost throughout the country. The National quality strategy report of 2012 identified three approaches to accelerating improvements across the board for all the aims and priorities of the plan. The three strategic opportunities are; developing a national strategy for data collection, measurement and reporting that enhances performance measurement while improving the efforts of the stakeholders in the private and public sector and both the national and community level. The other strategic opportunity is to develop an infrastructure at the community level that takes care of the improvement efforts while offering resources for the community to benchmark their performance in addition to mechanisms to identify, share and evaluate the progress. Lastly, development of payment and delivery system reforms that emphasize on primary care that rewards value as opposed to volume, promote outcomes that are centered on the patient, efficiency, and attention in addition to seeking to improve quality while eliminating or reducing waste from the system (NSQIH, 2011; U.S, 2013).
SWOT Analysis
Opportunities
Collaboration between the public and private sector to develop healthcare delivery networks, infrastructure, information sharing and addressing cardiovascular illnesses. Such partnerships have made it possible to offer quality health care to the community by ensuring that relevant information is shared among all stakeholders and efforts that are aimed at combating common problems are developed. The integrated delivery networks have made it possible to deliver healthcare at the local, community and national levels while making it possible to influence policy at the different levels. They have ensured patient satisfaction by enhancing public participation and patient representation in all strategic meetings. Has enabled America to develop quality healthcare throughout the country by establishing a framework that can be followed by all stakeholders and a reporting mechanism where deviations are noted and corrected on time (Brunoro & Kadash, 2013; NSQIH, 2011; U.S, 2013).
Threats
There is competition for specialty programs that do not support the strategy and are mostly targeted at the wealthy population. Such programs make it less affordable for the middle-income person to afford to make it accessible to a select few. Similarly, some of the strategic opportunities are difficult to implement in a free market where different stakeholders are driven by various goals. It is expected that some of the practitioners will be driven by volume rather than value. Reduced government reimbursements make it difficult to implement some of the strategies and improve the quality. Increased competition for healthcare networks is likely to have an adverse impact on the implementation of the plan (Brunoro & Kadash, 2013; NSQIH, 2011; U.S, 2013).
The national quality strategy is an essential resource that aims at improving the health, quality of care and lowering the cost of healthcare. The hospital system in the US should formulate specific strategies that are unique to their operations from the generalized national quality strategy. They should enhance their collaboration in all facets of health including developing approaches that take into account the needs of all the stakeholders. They should incorporate the priorities into their daily operations as a benchmark to base their activities. Organizations should develop programs that are not competing with the strategy and in its place use the priorities as a guide towards developing such programs. They should develop mechanisms for implementing the strategy at all levels while ensuring that all the stakeholders are fully involved in their programs. Efforts towards a joint strategy by all interested parties will help in achieving the aims of the policy while ensuring that the citizens benefit from affordable health care throughout the country (Brunoro & Kadash, 2013; NSQIH, 2011; U.S, 2013).
Reference
Brunoro‐Kadash, C., & Kadash, N. (2013). Time to care: a patient‐centered quality improvement strategy. Leadership in Health Services, 26 (3), 220-231. doi:10.1108/lhs-02-2013-0011
National strategy for quality improvement in health care (NSQIH), (2011). Washington, D.C.: , Implementation Center.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, (2013). National Strategy for Quality Improvement in Health Care: Annual Progress Report to Congress.
