HCMG101 Health Care System

Throughout history, major events have influenced quality improvement efforts in health care. For example, the Institute of Medicine’s report To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System revealed statistics about errors in patient safety that result in thousands of deaths annually. Health care administration leaders must be cognizant of the purpose and philosophy of quality improvement efforts as they lead the charge for improving health outcomes and patient safety.

For this Discussion, review the Provonost et al. (2015) resource for this week and reflect on the development of high-reliability health care systems. Think about how you, as a current or future health care administration leader, might address challenges when implementing high-reliability techniques for a health services organization.

Description of Johns Hopkins’ efforts to create a high-reliability health care system. Then, explain how these techniques might benefit your health services organization or one with which you are familiar. Be specific and provide examples. Explain potential health care administration leader challenges when implementing high-reliability techniques within this organization.

Paul Farmer, the global health leaders and co-founder of Partners in Health have highlighted the concept of ‘systems thinking’ in a discussion of how to improve the delivery of health care services across the globe. The discussion was a part of  "Reflections on Leadership for Social Change," the inauguration event of Jim Yong Kim as the 17th president of Dartmouth College. According to Farmer, systems thinking is the movie approach to heath care delivery. The commitment of all professionals must be towards a bigger vision. The desired advancement would be to have a more robust interaction with the patients. This would suitably address the issues of prevention, diagnosis and care for patients. In addition, there is a need of acting as a driving force for social justice and equity in the context of health care. Another approach would be to act in collaboration with environmentalists. Less balkanised view of the world would be the underlying theme of the overall concept of applying systems thinking in healthcare (Farmer, 2009).

Systems thinking is the management discipline where an understanding of a system is the key idea by exploring the interactions and linkages between the components comprising the defined system. Through putting the emphasis on explicit models used in systems thinking, our understanding of nature of health care can be revised for intervening in how to improve health. Challenges might be faced by health care professionals in adequately investigating the components of the healthcare system that lead to better health care delivery. Global health is to be linked with social justice movement if systems thinking is to be ideally applied in the context of the healthcare system (Adams, 2014).

References

Adam, T. (2014). Advancing the application of systems thinking in health. Health Research Policy And Systems, 12(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1478-4505-12-50

Farmer, P. (2009). Paul Farmer-The need for "systems thinking" in health care. YouTube. Retrieved 31 May 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukRjaQwGM3E