The insufficient distribution of finances within healthcare structures can significantly decrease the quality of care. It is vital to ensure that medical organizations gain timely reimbursements. Moreover, it is also necessary to establish the top-down priorities structure of the budget. In order to do so, medical organizations should analyze the healthcare outcomes measures and essentials. One of the most vital criteria for measurements is the patient’s experience and treatment outcomes. The financial reimbursement should be directly connected with the patient’s safety and outcomes issues.
Originally, the financial reimbursement for hospitals was centered on various economic indicators primarily related to profitability. Earlier studies on budget allocations within the healthcare structures focus primarily on predicting financial distress, leaving aside the problems pertaining to patient outcomes (AkinleyeI et al., 2019). Focusing on the net losses of the organization is unethical for healthcare organizations because it contradicts the initial aims of the whole provision of medical services. Based on the practical experiments, analyzing the financial reimbursements from the profitability perspective resulted in a general decrease in healthcare quality (AkinleyeI et al., 2019). Later, the researchers started to include patients’ related outcomes and measurements in analyzing the financial aspects of Medicare. The most vital estimation factors were mortality, patient populations, Medicaid outcomes, and changes (AkinleyeI et al., 2019). However, the results were primarily insufficient and required more advanced outcome measures.
Different healthcare agencies started to develop patient-related criteria to design the financial reimbursement distribution criteria. For example, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality offers the Inpatient Quality Indicators structure, which analyses particular healthcare conditions and patient outcomes (AkinleyeI et al., 2019). In other words, the patient safety issues such as readmissions and patient experience were addressed. The growing direction of the patient’s safety issues becomes one of the fundamental basis for distributing the budget reimbursements. Patient safety is a medical discipline that has emerged in response to the growing complexity of healthcare delivery processes and increased harm to patients in healthcare settings (AkinleyeI et al., 2019). This discipline aims to prevent and reduce the level of risk, error, and damage caused to patients while providing medical care.
Patient safety is a condition for the provision of quality essential health services. Quality healthcare services worldwide must be efficient, safe, and people-centered. In addition, quality health care implies providing timely, equitable, integrated, and effective care. It is essential to recognize the importance of patient safety in reducing the cost of improving the healthcare system’s general performance. The financial aspects of healthcare and patient safety are interrelated processes that should be combined.
The budget reimbursements to medical organizations should be related to patient safety issues. In general, the notion of patient safety includes the measurements and analysis of patient outcomes. In other words, the financing distribution for any medical organization should be directly connected with the patient experience and outcomes. Patient safety in the context of delivering safe and high-quality health services is a prerequisite for strengthening health systems and successfully working towards de facto universal health coverage. This strategy is the maximum possible compliance of treatment outcomes with the clinician’s and the patient’s expectations with a minimum risk of negative consequences of treatment. Therefore, the financial structure of any medical organization should be established based on the analysis and escarpments of the patient’s experience and outcomes as a part of the patient safety inquiries.
Reference
Akinleye, D., McNutt, A., Lazariu, V., & McLaughlin, C. (2019). Correlation between hospital finances and quality and safety of patient care. Plos One, 14(8), 1–19. Web.