Regulatory Compliance And Patient Safety In Healthcare Administration Essay.

Prepare a research paper on regulatory compliance and patient safety in health care administration.
This assessment deliverable contains two parts. Combine both parts into one research paper to submit.

Complete the "OSHA Regulations" Toolwire scenario and the "Patient Self-Determination Act, DNR, and Withholding and Withdrawing Treatment" Toolwire scenario. Access the scenarios by clicking the linked Toolwire activity titles. Use the information in the scenarios as a supporting resource for this part of the assessment.

In preparation for this part of your assessment, read Flanders, Kaufman, Saint, and Parekh's 2009 article, "Hospitals as Emerging Leaders in Patient Safety: Lessons Learned and Future Directions," which is linked in the Resources. Then, address the following:

Has patient safety in America improved over the past few decades?

What are the major patient safety issues in America's hospitals?

How does patient safety in America compare with that of similar nations?

What can policy makers and health managers do to improve patient safety?

Major Patient Safety Issues in American Hospitals

Regulatory compliance entails the health care organizations to achieve their aspired goal of ensuring that all the rules and regulations relevant to their organisation are being followed. Regulatory compliance affects all kinds of healthcare organizations of varying sizes. Although sometimes, the regulatory compliances are viewed as unnecessary intrusion of the government and seems to impose the unneeded laws to the workers who tend to be underpaid according to the work they do, it truly is helpful towards improving the cost and quality of the care provided. The US labour law Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) of 1970 enforces the maintenance of safety and health standard in a workplace and thus provides a safe working environment for the employees (Santonocito et al., 2013).

The compliance programs aim to promote the adherence of the organization to the federal laws and ensures that the patient requirements are properly fulfilled. Noncompliance is when a subordinate staff defies or resists to follow the orders of the administrative authority. Even when a patient refuses to take prescribed medications or treatments allocated to them, it can be mentioned as non-compliance (Wilkinson & Savulescu, 2014). Noncompliance also includes all the instances when an organization does not comply with the set norms of health care and fails to achieve a positive patient outcome. The effective compliance program aims to protect the health care practices from the various fraudulent activities, abuse or even waste.

Noncompliance can be dealt with several interventions. Such as setting a reasonable limit for the people so that no enforcement is required, also unreasonable limits should not be removed. It may also be helpful to describe the directions provided to ensure better implications. Maintaining a rational attitude throughout dealing with a noncompliant person is necessary to impose the instructions (Iuga & McGuire, 2014). A member of the staff cannot force someone to do something. Instead a more practical approach is necessary to make a description and enforce the compliance of the orders provided. These recommendations may not guarantee compliance but certainly can help with reducing the chances of noncompliance.

The seven rights of a patient include the right drug, route, dosage, timing, proper documentation and their right to refuse treatment. The organization’s authorities are entailed to fulfill all these patient rights and make sure that none of it is remained uncared for. The Patient Self-Determination Act (PSDA) entails the assurance and protection of the patient’s right of self-determining the care provided by the organizations. Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) is a term that is used for ensuring that cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is not used as an intervention for any emergency cases. Withholding and withdrawing the resuscitative interventions is quite difficult for the patient and their families (Manalo, 2013). The DNR ensures that no aggressive methods are used as an intervention to save lives. 

Comparison of Patient Safety in America with Similar Nations

The patients are entailed to get the rightful service from the organizations. The clinicians are required to persuade the patients that the diagnosis they have done is entirely correct and that the treatment plan they have proposed is certainly going to be beneficial for the student. The patient’s autonomy must be ensured by the organizations. The physicians must respect the patient’s choice for the therapeutic course and together they must come to an agreement about a definite plan of action. The doctors are required to fulfill the basic rights and needs of the patients at various levels of the whole treatment plan (Wilkinson & Savulescu, 2014). Therefore, the organizations can develop a healthy patient-physician relationship that helps to provide a positive patient outcome.

Earlier, the ethical responsibilities of the healthcare organizations were confined to the responsibilities of the doctors and clinical experts. Later the ethical outlines have broadened towards taking into consideration the patient rights and in building a more strong relationship between the health professionals. Although in the contemporary literature regarding the healthcare ethics consists mostly of discussions about the responsibilities and obligations of the patients (Israel, 2014). Providing the proper treatment plan and following that regimen, detailed and regular documentation of all the vital signs of the patient and prevention of any kind harm to occur are adhered to the ethical responsibilities of the health care organizations.

Several federal laws are being implemented to start building the foundation of a better understanding of patient safety and to overcome the challenges and imply the effective solutions that can be rapidly put into action (Israel, 2014).  The stakeholders are required to design various useful strategies and evaluate their outcomes regarding promotion of patient safety. Research, aimed at improving the patient safety indicated that the lacks were not due to the clinician’s not reaching up to their potentials but because of the fact that an array of inherent shortcomings are lagging the improvements in the health care system.

The major patient safety issues that the hospitals of America have to face today include the infections from the hospital devices, impairment of care or medication, leading to death of the patient. Along with these the hand hygiene maintenance, transition of care, errors in medication are also responsible for hampering the patient safety. In the mode bacteria are developing resistance against several drugs, antibiotics are becoming useless in treating diseases day by day. According to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, every year 2 million people develop an infection that cannot be treated with antibiotics (Marra & Edmond, 2014).

Policy Makers and Health Managers' Role in Improving Patient Safety

Determination of the quality of health care provided by a country is quite hard to do. Several restrictions occur during the estimation regarding unavailability or improper collection of data. Therefore the easiest way to compute the quality of health care is to estimate the changes in the mortality rates of the country. Since mortality rates are influenced by a myriad of factors related to the health care system, researchers gauge the mortality rates resulting from various diseased conditions for which health care interventions could be applicable to prevent death, to evaluate the quality of care provided. In 2006, America had the highest mortality rate for deaths related to health care compared to other nations (McQuoid-Mason, 2014).

Improvement of quality of health care and patient safety practices helps to strengthen the health care system, promote the performance of the workforce and accelerates the attainment of the health care related goals. The health information managers are required to provide their highest potential at work to develop a system that can collect and analyse the patient data and plan treatment for individual patient without any lack (Pope, 2013). They must ensure that all the processes are being done accurately. The policy makers are responsible for developing strategies and implement those strategies for the betterment of the patient safety outcomes.

References

Israel, M. (2014). Research ethics and integrity for social scientists: Beyond regulatory compliance. Sage. Retrieved from: https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ZvSICwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=regulatory+compliance&ots=AKFgO60Td5&sig=ZuuYPnUBmT9CEooFoxVE1hTi42o#v=onepage&q=regulatory%20compliance&f=false

Iuga, A. O., & McGuire, M. J. (2014). Adherence and health care costs. Risk management and healthcare policy, 7, 35. doi:  10.2147/RMHP.S19801

Manalo, M. F. C. (2013). end-of-Life Decisions about Withholding or Withdrawing Therapy: Medical, ethical, and Religio-cultural considerations. Palliative Care: Research and Treatment, 7, PCRT-S10796. doi: 10.4137/PCRT.S10796

Marra, A. R., & Edmond, M. B. (2014). New technologies to monitor healthcare worker hand hygiene. Clinical Microbiology and Infection, 20(1), 29-33. doi. 10.1111/1469-0691.12458

McQuoid-Mason, D. J. (2014). Withholding or withdrawing treatment and palliative treatment hastening death: The real reason why doctors are not held legally liable for murder. SAMJ: South African Medical Journal, 104(2), 102-103. Retrieved from: https://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0256-95742014000200013

Pope, T. M. (2013). Legal briefing: the new Patient Self-Determination Act. The Journal of clinical ethics, 24(2), 156-167. RETRIEVED FROM: https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/23923815

Santonocito, C., Ristagno, G., Gullo, A., & Weil, M. H. (2013). Do-not-resuscitate order: a view throughout the world. Journal of Critical Care, 28(1), 14-21. doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrc.2012.07.005

Wilkinson, D., & Savulescu, J. (2014). A costly separation between withdrawing and withholding treatment in intensive care. Bioethics, 28(3), 127-137. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8519.2012.01981.x