In recent years, there has been a growth in global awareness on ways medical facilities can improve its operations and care to significantly decrease the rising mortality rates.Apart from decreasing deaths, it also plays a big role in ensuring patient satisfaction.
The quality of service given to patients is mostly determined by the following factors; the kind of infrastructure, level of training of the medical practitioners and how effective its systems are.
For medical facilities to ensure its success, its administrators are required to come up with an efficient system that revolves around the patient.
On that note, below are a few factors that should be implemented to ensure health care facilities upgrade their patient care.
- Equipment
Health facilities should ensure they have the appropriate medical equipment to ensure faster service delivery. Equipment should be at standby and properly maintained. For instance, the laboratory should have industrial vacuum pumps and the Intensive Care Unit should have a fully functional ventilator to ensure patients get quality care.
- Properly trained personnel
Properly trained medical practitioners are critical if a health facility seeks to provide high-quality services to its patients. A lack of adequate trained personnel is a major cause of alarm.
Health facilities administrators should only recruit certified doctors, nurses, and other well-trained subordinate staff.
In-house training and other such programs should be improved so that they bring about standardization.
- Quality surgical procedures
There is a rising concern about the number of surgical malpractices being reported. To reduce the risk of common surgical procedures going wrong, quality assurance systems should be incorporated.For instance, extensive training should be given to ophthalmologists so that they can correctly diagnose eye problems reducing the number of sight-threatening conditions.
- Use of proper instruments
Health facilities should take advantage of the fact that high-quality instruments are now available at a subsidized cost. Additionally, proper inventory and record-keeping should be kept.
- Proper medication
Patients should be confident that their medical practitioners will give them the proper medication for their illnesses.
- Use of the latest technologies
Health facilities should upgrade their systems and keep up withnewer technological advancements to offer their patients the latest form of care available.
- Ease of accessibility
Patients and all those who need medical care should have full access to hospital facilities and physicians.
- Waiting time
All hospital service providers should strive to work fast so as to significantly minimize waiting times. This is a major problem in most developing countries.
The best way to monitor any progress made on improving the above is by having a suggestion box where you get continued review of responses from patients.
- Patient information
Information about all patient procedure should be delivered to them very clearly. In cases where some not-so-pleasant medical results are to be broken to the patient, well-trained counselors should be consulted first. Due to their experience, they should be the ones to deliver the news.
- Administration
The medical facility administration should have a systematic way of doing things. For example, there should be an uncomplicated way of discharging patients. Patients should be able to go home directly from the ward. Not having their families running up and down the hospital to be discharged.
