Quality Improvement And Health Care Reform By David Feinberg Summary

Quality Assurance and Patient-Centered Care
Healthcare around the world is constantly changing and improvement in quality of care is pursued. Quality assurance is vital to healthcare. According to the American Society for Quality [ASQ], quality assurance is “the planned and systematic activities implemented in a quality system so that quality requirements for a product or service will be fulfilled” (n.d). In other words, once an issue in a system is identified, quality assurance involves the implementation of activities to fix the issue and meet the required standards. The short video “Quality improvement and healthcare reform: Patient experience with David Feinberg” depicts the journey of a UCLA hospital in identifying issues in its health

system and increasing its quality of care and patient satisfaction, through quality assurance by promoting patient-focused care (University of California Television [UCTV], 2012).
When David Feinberg began his work in the leadership role in a UCLS medical center, he did a lot of bedside work with patients.

He recognized that when it came to patient satisfaction and probability of them referring friends to this medical center, they were down in the 38th percentile of hospitals in the United States. According to Feinberg, two-thirds of patients would not refer their friends to this hospital. Knowing that this level of quality care was not acceptable, Feinberg began implementing a patient focused approach to patient care. He gathered his care teams and inspired them to begin changing their care quality one patient at a time. His plan was to implement immediate changes whenever possible. For example, he states that if a patient had a problem, they would implement an immediate fix to it and if it were a systemic problem, they would implement immediate systemic fixes to solve the problem. Further, other changes such as in the hiring process and patient hand-off process were made in order to promote a patient focused provision of care. Feinberg states that using patient-focused care, the UCLS medical center is now in the 99th percentile of hospitals based on patient satisfaction and willingness of patients to refer friends to the hospital (UCTV,

2012).
Although the hospital has come a long way in terms of high quality care, Feinberg reports that they are not finished until 100 out of 100 patients will be satisfied with their services (UCTV, 2012). The video “Quality improvement and healthcare reform: Patient experience with David Feinberg” is a great example of the usage of quality assurance in healthcare. What is most motivating about this video, is the strive for excellence and for not giving up until the hospital has a patient satisfaction rate of 100%. Feinberg actively participated in striving for high-quality care by implementing changes and activities that would help achieve the standards that he believes must be in healthcare. Standards that define “high-quality care.” Quality assurance is vital to healthcare and keeps the healthcare field striving for excellence.