Once Florence Nightingale said: “The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.” Today more than ever the concept of doing no harm to the sick plays a key role in the health care system. To explain this concept, I will be summarizing the article titled “The Role of IT in Health Care Quality Assessment” by Roy L. Simpson.
First, the article begins by explaining how the concept of quality in health care is nothing new, it goes far back as 3000 B.C with the Code of Hammurabi stating, “If a doctor, in opening an abscess, shall kill the patient, his hands shall be cut off.” Throughout the years, there have been efforts to eliminate poor quality care given to patients. Eventually, the Joint Commission on Accreditation
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The health organizations must work toward progress in quality of care for patients. The advances made by the health organizations are more likely to have good outcomes providing benefits the patient, the providers and the payers. Most people say a good software is key to improve the quality of care given to patients. Yet one must take into consideration that these systems tend to benefit financial departments, not necessarily the patients. Some form of technology such as JCAHO, and Leapfrog Group have proven effective at making progress in the quality of care given to patients. The organizations involved in health care delivery must effectively measure outcomes by adopting ways to monitors results which include CQI and TQM. Although, information systems have their limitations they are still useful for collecting data. The benefits of information systems include gathering, sorting, and organizing large quantities of data rapidly and accurately, “automated documentation of patient data (temperature) at specified times, allowing nursing staff to concentrate on other patient care duties and tracking such quality indicators as length of stay, readmission to ICU, and incomplete data, which can be incorporated into clinical outcomes