Health Policy Associates: Executive Summary

The quality standards for an organisation set down the ‘rules’ around the products and services the business provides, the suppliers and services they use, how staff are recruited and trained and how customer service is dealt with.

Today we will have the pleasure of learning about the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. This government agency is tasked with improving safety, quality, effectiveness and efficiency in the health care system. We will examine the role of this governmental regulatory agency and the impact it has on the health care industry, current laws and regulations being faced by the AHRQ and the impact these laws and regulations have on providers and hospitals. Once we are done learning, we will all be able to relate situations we see or have seen in our own lives and communities.

HRSA – Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The mission of HRSA is “to improve health and achieve health equity through access to quality services, a skilled health workforce and innovative programs” (About HRSA, 2017). HRSA programs provide high-quality primary healthcare to pregnant women, people with HIV/AIDS and to those who are geographically isolated or medically vulnerable. Also, it provides training to the healthcare professionals and maintains databases that protect against healthcare malpractice, waste and fraud. In addition, to assist an organization with its quality improvement (QI) efforts, HRSA apprehends the need for a toolkit of objective educational tools and resources” (“HRSA Clinical…”, n.d.). This toolkit consists of practical and convenient tools which support an organization’s new or existing QI program by implementing proven strategies and performance measurement techniques. The major goals of HRSA include “improving access to quality care and services, strengthening the health workforce, building

NU 412 Health Policy Week 3 Discussion Board response student response to Carla Fisher by Kathryn Moultrie

Under the PPACA/ACA a.k.a Obamacare, there is a health insurance mandate on small with 50 or More Employees. Businesses with fewer than 50 full-time workers are partially exempt from penalties. So, assuming a small business decides to employ its fiftieth employee, this could be a very expensive hire because businesses that employ 50 or more workers and don't provide health insurance will be subject to a tax penalty of $2,000 for each uninsured employee beyond the first 30.

Fueled by President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty”, the strongly Democratic-controlled Congress amended the preexisting Social Security Act to create Medicaid in 1965 as a joint state and federal health insurance program for select cohorts of low-income Americans. In “Introduction to US Health Policy”, Donald Barr highlights the complex structure of Medicaid by examining how it was modeled on the Kerr-Mills Act of 1960 to allow individual states the power to choose if they wanted to provide this voluntary program for their subpopulation of poor denizens and also let them decide the extent and quality of this health care coverage under broad federal guidelines. As an incentive for states to enact Medicaid, the government agreed to reimburse

In 2006, Massachusetts discovered a way to make the state required individuals to buy insurance and by providing tax credits to certain individuals to make insurance more affordable. This is how Massachusetts drastically reduces its uninsured rate. The ACA adopted three key reforms that made the system successful. The first one was to guaranteed issue and community rating requirements. The second one requires individuals to maintain health insurance coverage or make a payment to the IRS. The third one make insurance more affordable by giving tax credits to people with a household income.¹ (nedy,ginsburg, breyer,sotomayor,andkagan,jj.,joined., 2014)

Healthcare policy is driven my many stakeholders such as the government, healthcare insurance, hospital administrators and governing bodies, NGO and the public. Each of them has a unique and important perspective. Healthcare institutions such as hospitals, providers care for the quality of their service in terms of accuracy of diagnosis, appropriateness of therapy and the resulting health outcome. Providers want to provide the best service and preventive care. They also prefer to use the latest tests and treatments to provide accurate diagnosis.

Throughout the tenure of this course it has afforded the opportunity to visit concepts and formally used processes which supports quality systems. Throughout the process, it allowed and in-depth review of several notable organizations and exam their practices while deciding what could be adopted within my current organization of higher learning to facilitate improvements. Some of the teaching would encourage the focus on common needs rather than on common procedures which fosters understanding, communication, sharing, alignment, and integration while supporting innovative and diverse approaches. Throughout the lessons it also encourages the use of tools, techniques, systems, and organizational structure select depend on key factors like

My Business Quality Management degree program has prepared me for the business world and enabled me to not just understand business processes from quality perspectives but also improve those for driving organizational change through quality improvement. The Southwestern core curriculum has prepared me to advance in my career options. My degree has helped me develop business management skills as well as improved my ability to offer ideas and insight into best practices. With my degree, I have the skills to utilize information to improve the quality of products and services and evaluate customer satisfaction based on the consistent delivery of top quality products and services that are completed on time, and meet specific customer defined levels of quality. Utilizing my education experience combined with my personal experience, I am able to use appropriate business concepts and generally accepted quality management theories and practices like Lean, Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, Baldrige and Benchmarking techniques to aid business decision making.

General Manager of QIC, J Jonson, along with Quality Managers are responsible to ensure that along with quality levels, customer satisfaction is met at a minimum. Where possible it however, these standards should be aimed to be exceeded through the employment of this quality management system. Their main obligation is to ensure that all staff within our organisation are competent with their respective roles in achieving high levels of quality and meeting all levels of requirements set – customer, statutory and regulatory. Our quality policy (section….) as well as our quality objectives have been put in place to ensure that we manage and improve these processes. Regular business meetings will incorporate a system review that will also cover areas that consider resource quantities and their necessary provision.

The European Centre for Total Quality Management, University of Bradford School of Management, Bradford, UK

Many businesses will focus on acquiring new customers rather than pay attention to the quality of the product or service. It is important for businesses to acquire the attention of the customer, with it’s quality and innovation, as the customers carry the profits of the company.

The purpose of IS0 9001 is to provide an appreciation of the fundamental principles of quality management systems and an explanation of the terminology used in the family of standards.

ISO 9001:2000 makes specification regarding a quality management system wherein an organization (i) is required to exhibit its capability to consistently deliver products that fulfils customer and the relevant regulatory mandates, and (ii) focuses on enhancement of customer satisfaction by effective application of the system and processes for continuous improvement of the system and the guarantee of adherence to customer and pertinent regulatory requirements. Each and every requirement of this International Standard is generic in nature and is intended to be applicable to all enterprises irrespective of type, size and product provided. In case any provisions of this international standard are unable to be applied to any organization because of the inherent nature of an organization and its product, exclusion criteria can be applied. In cases where exclusions are made, claims of adherence to this International Standard are not acceptable unless these exclusions are restricted to mandates within clause 7, and these exclusions do not impact the enterprise's ability, or responsibility to deliver products which are able to meet customer and related regulatory needs. (International Organization for Standardization, 2011a)