Health Care Report Cards Pass Or Fail Essay

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Report cards were introduced in health care to equip the consumers with information on health care provider performance and to improve quality through promoting competition among providers. Using information provided through report cards, consumers could make a better-educated choice in selecting health care provider, leading to improved overall quality of care. In order to understand the impact of report cards in healthcare we will discuss about the information given in the article “ Information Resources Column: Health Care Report Cards: Pass or Fail? ”, published in the Online Journal of Issues in Nursing. The reason behind selecting this article is to understand if report cards are able to enhance the quality of care or not, along with …show more content…

As the critiques in the article emphasize, first the information in the report cards need to be presented in a way that is easily understood by actual consumers of the service. Next, physicians’ cherry picking the patients in order to maintain clean report card, further raises the question if the concept of report cards is beneficial or instead hampering the access to quality care for severely sick patients. In my opinion, although report cards might have led to better quality improvements in healthcare, but might also be responsible for leading to unequal access to quality care, which defeats the overall purpose of report cards. At this point, more studies need to be conducted to actually determine the true effectiveness of report cards on enhancing quality of care and how they impact the provider behavior towards patients to ensure that there is no healthcare disparity caused due to prevalence of report …show more content…

Reporting how the data was collected in the report card would also be beneficial as it generates accountability and trust in the minds of the user, making it more probable that the patients actually use the report cards in choosing their healthcare professional. Providing guidelines, and educating consumers on the use of report cards could be the key factors in improving its overall usage. Further, in order to ensure equal healthcare access, authorities need to figure out a way to avoid situations where physicians choose patients based on the severity of their illness. Finally, tying quality outcomes to reimbursements is an effective way to ensure that healthcare providers stay on the path of continuous quality improvement. Altogether, report cards are a great way to educate healthcare consumers and generate better accountability among providers leading to higher quality of care, but we all, as consumers or providers need to perform our roles in order to make this a successful