One of the best things about living in the modern world is that the level of healthcare is so high. We’re prone to take many conveniences of modern life for granted, but this is perhaps the positive aspect that is overlooked the most. If you had been born in, say, 1700, then you’d have to contend with many more illnesses and diseases than you do now, and when you did fall ill, you may have been subjected to treatments that would not be allowed today. Additionally, we have so much technology at our fingertips that they couldn’t have even dreamt of 100 years ago, let alone 300. With artificial intelligence and health analytics now being the way forward, it’s hard to imagine what a life without advanced medical care would have been like.
And it’s not as if healthcare organizations have just advanced to a certain standard, and then stopped. They carry on developing and improving, in order to offer the best care possible. In fact, just recently, essential healthcare programs such as Medicaid and Medi-cal (check out some of the medical benefits here) have made it possible for people who come from low-income families to receive vital healthcare that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to get. Even the thought of there once being a time that this wasn’t possible is disheartening, and we should be glad that services and healthcare professionals are continuing to make advancements when it comes to the services that are being offered to the wider community.
Thanks to technology, healthcare is now more reliable than ever. We can be confident when we go into hospital that we’re going to come back out again cured of whatever illness or injury we were suffering from. This is partly due to the high reliability of management software nowadays, helping operations to run smoothly. Gone are the days of faxes and pagers – everything is run on one centralised system, keeping everyone up to date and in the right place.
Another way they do this is through benchmarking. This is the process of establishing standards and then comparing those standards with other hospitals and healthcare practices across the country. This can help a healthcare organization to determine where they’re excelling, where they’re falling behind, and what they’re not doing at all.
There are many benchmark parameters used, but the five most important are probably ones relating to the treatment of heart attack patients, emergency department care, and overall hospital performance. Hospitals like the Cardiovascular Group and similar others who are into heart care tend to be looking at these benchmarking parameters as the use of these parameters can help hospitals to become more efficient with their care and improves the standard of care for patients.
Of course, in order for this process to work well, there needs to be reliable data and interpretation of this data. To learn more about the process, check out the infographic from USC below.
Infographic Design by USC USC