Case Study: Grady Memorial Hospital

Grady Memorial Hospital, also simply known as Grady, is the public hospital for the city of Atlanta. It was found in 1892 and is one the largest hospitals in the state of Georgia. Grady has become known for its amazing trauma service. As the hospital website notes, they are the region’s premier level I trauma center (Grady, 2016). While Grady excels at taking care of the critically injured, it still has areas that need some work. Based on the data from Hospital Compare two of the measures that need some improvement are the patient experience and timely effective care, particularly the emergency department. These two measures are associated with the quality dimensions of timeliness and patient centerness. Timely and effective care can play

If patients constantly have to wait an excessive amount of time they will either leave before they receive care or could end up becoming sicker as a result. Donabedian’s three-element model structure, process and outcome have become the gold standard for defining quality measurement (Varkey, 2010). Structure relates to the health care setting, which includes the hospital policies, procedures and design. Process evaluates if the right actions were taken for an intended outcome and how well the actions were executed to achieve the outcome. Outcome focuses on the patient, it measures the patient’s condition, behavior, and response to or satisfaction with care (Varkey, 2010). Although each of these measures focus on different areas, they indicate areas that need improvement. Also, the measurement from structure and process plays an important role in the patient’s outcome. If the hospital has the right staff, equipment and

A website like Hospital Compare presents patients and their providers with important information on hospitals. They can view patient satisfaction surveys and see how hospitals are handling important diseases like stroke and heart condition. Patients are able to choose a hospital that will provide them with the care they need and they can avoid hospitals that lag behind in key areas. Another benefit is that hospitals are held more accountable. It is bad business for any hospital to have low rankings. Externally reported measures allows the public to see how well a hospital is performing, which can equate to more business or a loss in revenue. These reports put a spotlight on hospitals and forces them to fix areas that need improvement. A major challenge to externally reported measures is the data. If the data is not collected correctly or lacks accuracy it can cause more harm than good. Information that is not accurate can cause a hospital its reputation. The hospital would have to spend time fixing the error and the public perception that the false report has caused. Benchmarking can be benefit in these reports as it allows health care facilities to see where they stand when compare to either national standards