Home Patient Care

Improved Patient Care

Health is wealth, as the saying goes. And for those who are not in good health, the next best thing that we can ask for is to receive the best patient care from our health care providers. With the increasing demand for better care, greater awareness among the public, more health care regulation, keener competition, the rise in medical malpractice litigation, and concern about poor outcomes, we can say that improving patient care should be a priority.

To improve patient care, there are medical and non-medical factors to be considered, as well as a comprehensive system that is “patient oriented” and improves both medical and non-medical aspects must be adopted.

Before anything else, it must be recognized by all those who work in the system that the patient is the most important person in a medical care system. This single factor makes a significant difference to the patient care in any hospital. With patients being the priority, the health care provider is able to create a management system that emphasizes on cost recovery. A patient who receives high quality services and can afford it is one way to tell that patient care has improved and at the same time patient satisfaction is higher.

The non-medical factors that should be considered to improve patient care are the following: accessibility and availability of both hospital and the physician should be assured to all those who require health care, waiting times for services should be minimized, information should be made very clear, check-in and check-out procedures should be “patient-friendly”, communication with the patient and the family about possible delay should be done, and ancillary services should be available to both patient and attending families.

Some of the medical aspects to be considered for improved patient care are: well-trained personnel, present and properly maintained equipment, use of proper instruments, use of appropriate medications, and use of newer technologies.

Physician Efficiency vs. Patient Involvement in Patient Care

Having to go through a medical process can really be a frustrating experience especially when the patient is left unknowing about it. But how much does a patient want to know about and be involved in their own care? The response to this question cannot be fully relied on a single answer simply because many personalities and emotional complexities are involved when it comes to patient care.

Doctors like to simplify issues into neat categories, each of which have a clear management plan. This, however, is not necessarily applicable in patient care especially when it involves different personalities and emotions. One cannot simply eliminate the feelings of patients especially when satisfaction of the care they receive is involved.

In this case, the battle between increased physician efficiency through well-planned medical processes and better healthcare understanding buy the patient is the dilemma. Which of the two is best for patient care? There is reasonable argument for both.

A well thought of medical plan can be beneficial to an extent. There are physicians that prefer to spend their day practicing in a world of medical fact and deductive reasoning without taking into consideration patient reaction. The more practice, the less the mistakes are. But it can be argued that higher efficiency does not represent the rate at which patients are satisfied customers.

On the patient side, the ability of the medical team to involve them in their own care and make them aware of the plan lessen the patient’s frustrations with treatment. Doctors that are well-loved by their patients are those who spend time with them, to answer questions and provide a picture of what the coming days and weeks might look like. However, it can be argued that most of the questions can be answered not necessarily by the doctors themselves but by a less senior and equally able medical practitioners working for the admitting service.

Both have valid arguments and probably the best patient care in one that involves both as well.

Certified Patient Care Technician

The Certified Patient Care Technician assists nurses, doctors and other healthcare professionals in providing direct patient care in a variety of health care environments. As a CPCT, you may carry out different tasks as assigned by the healthcare management. One of your responsibilities is to provide a basic patient care including bathing, feeding, and assisting patients to the ambulance. They are also assigned to acquire and distribute patient care supplies. Change bed linens and process dirty linens properly. You can perform safety checks to keep patient rooms clean, maintain clear paths in hallways and return equipments that are no longer in use. You might not be as big as nurses and doctors, but are necessary to make the procedures move swiftly.

Patient care technicians, also known as nursing assistants or nurse aides, perform basic care procedures in clinics and hospitals homes. Their duties include monitoring patients, drawing blood, checking vital signs, and conducting electrocardiograms, in addition to assisting patients with bathing, feeding and transporting. Some formal education is required. Clinical training as well as state certification is generally needed to work as a patient care technician. You need to have a high school diploma before pursuing a profession as a patient care technician. The majority of the employers look for candidates who have completed a patient care technician certificate program and are state certified; on the other hand, some companies will sign up students presently signed up for patient care technician certificate programs and have completed a training program offered through a hospital, an elderly care facility or technical center.

Hospital training programs generally last 2-3 months and mix classroom instruction and hands-on training. Some hospital training programs may be available to high school students that are then prepared to enter the work force upon graduation; others require previous experience as a nursing aide. For all those looking to complete a formal training course, there are many community and technical colleges that offer patient care technician certificate programs. Most programs take one year or less to accomplish and will make preparations for students to take a state certification exam; some programs require applicants to carry a CPR or EMT certification before they apply.

The National Healthcareer Association (NHA) grants clinical certification for patient care technicians, associates and nurse technicians. Completing particular training programs and experience is needed for you to go ahead and take a national certifying examination. Though certification is optional, some states require certification to ensure that patient care technicians are prepared to operate in a specific environment, like nursing homes or hospitals.

To corrupt an old quotation, there is nothing like a new transaction program to focus the mind of a medical center manager. The U.S. medical care program is seeing a surge of distribution program analysis, motivated by numerous transaction projects such as CMS’s medical center readmissions reduction program (established through the Affordable Care Act). New patient care designs, such as the Presbyterian Healthcare Service’s “Hospital at Home” in Albuquerque, New Mexico and the Mercy Health “Care Transitions Program” in Cincinnati, Ohio are moving patient care out of the constraints of hospitals and medical centers and placing them to the individual’s houses. There, individual knowledge and care synchronization may be more effective, thus avoiding additional expensive medical center bills.

Preliminary data recommend that these programs work. Yet the record of the U.S. medical care program informs us that these interesting projects can crumple to perverse actions. The execution of inpatient potential transaction in 1983 triggered the home medical market. However, along with improved patient care in houses came issues about sky-rocketing costs, excessive use, unsuitable use, and scams.

To find the ‘special sauce’ that will truly move our wellness care program from one targeted on dealing with illness to one targeted on health, we need to carefully assess these interesting new projects, in particular, looking at their impact on the greatest endpoint, population health. The problem of paying for health rather than illness has been a traditional situation. As George Bernard Shaw mentioned in 1906, “That any sane nation, having observed that you could provide for the supply of bread by giving bakers a pecuniary interest in baking for you, should go on to give a surgeon a pecuniary interest in cutting off your leg, is enough to make one despair of political humanity.” If GBS were in existence today he might be very carefully buoyed up by the current initiatives to deal with this centuries old situation.