Quality Of Health Care In The United States Essay

Quality of Health Care in United States
With the United States government spending 3.3 trillion dollars, or approximately $10,000 per person, this far exceeds any other controls budget for healthcare. One would assume that the overall quality of health care in the United States would be excellent. That assumption would often be incorrect. Even with the CMS enacting many hopeful protocols and programs for quality assurance the US is still falling short. One of the easiest ways to analyze the United States shortcomings and accolades would be to examine the CMS’s clinical quality measures and how the U.S. is meeting or not meeting measures.
The first listed clinical quality measure by the CMS is health outcomes. This is probably because it often viewed as the most important thing by patients. When patients enter the health care realm they want their

health to improve once receiving care from a provider of any sort.

CMS set out a way to find if providers were improving health outcomes in the eyes of patients and titled this measurement the Medicare Health Outcomes Survey (HOS). The HOS is designed to gather meaningful data to improve quality of care and health to patient. Not only is the information available to CMS, but it is also public knowledge (https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Research/HOS/).
With the HOS, the public and government can assess different health outcomes of hospitals across the U.S., but one of the simplest way to see how the U.S. is obtaining high quality health outcomes is to compare them to other countries. The organization, Peterson-Kaiser, has developed a global health system tracker. One area of health that Peterson-Kaiser focuses it statistics on is life expectancy. They state, “Longer life expectancy can reflect success of the health system in preventing, treating, and curing illness, but can also reflect changes

in social or environmental factors” (https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/indicator/health-well-being/life-expectancy/). According to the OECD library, the United States life expectancy is 78.8 years, with Japan’s life expectancy being the highest at 83.9 years, and the average being 82 years of life (OECD). Another excellent way to compare health outcomes is to look at mortality rates. To quote Peterson-Kaiser, “Decreasing mortality rates can reflect success of the health system in preventing, treating, and curing disease, but can also reflect changes in social or environmental factors” (https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/indicator/health-well-being/mortality-rate/). Peterson-Kaiser has used the OECD library of data to determine overall age-adjusted mortality rate per 100,000 population within developed countries of the world. When viewing the data the United States overall mortality rate was 826 per 100,000 people while the average was 723 per 100,000 and the best overall mortality rate once again belonged to Japan at 598 per 100,000 people (https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/indicator/health-well-being/mortality-rate/). Viewing just these two statistics of health outcomes, the United States falls far below the curve. This shows a great discrepancy between the United States spending and the United States health outcomes.
Patient safety is another major clinical measure for health care in the United States. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) conducted a research study that found that anywhere between 44,000 and 98,000 hospitalized Americans die each year from preventable medical errors. This would mean that hospital care would rank among the leading causes of death in the United States every year. This is not to say that the hospitals in the US are not making efforts at improving their safety. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality conducted at survive analyzing hospital acquired conditions (HACs) in 2010 vs 2015. The study found “an estimated 21% fewer HACs were experienced by patients from 2010 to 2015” (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2016). The quality assurance program HAC that the CMS has enacted has shown a positive impact in the United States.
According to a study performed by Health Services Research, it is currently near impossible to compare patient all safety indicators of the United States to other international systems; they state it is problematic due to “suspected coding or ascertainment bias” (Drosler, Romano, Tancredi, and Klazinga, 2012). With respect to that information, the CDC and WHO are still very diligent in trying to obtain any information available about HAC or Hospital Care Associated Infections (HCAIs). The CDC reports that Healthcare Associated Infections (HAIs) are still a large problem the United States is facing. They state that “one to 25 people” will acquire a HAI on any day (CDC, https://www.cdc.gov/hai/surveillance/index.html). As mentioned above the US is implementing new and improved procedures to decrease these infection rates. The CDC also states they have had a 50% decrease in central line-associated bloodstream infections, a 17% decrease in surgical site infections, 8% decrease in Clostridium difficile, and 13% decrease in MRSA infections. The rate of decreased infections rates are from 2008 to 2014. (CDC, https://www.cdc.gov/hai/surveillance/index.html).
Another great quality measure to analyze would be the public health status in the United States and what the government is currently doing and focusing their efforts in public health. The Who Health Organization (WHO) has a very eloquent definition of public health, “the art and science of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts of society” (http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/Health-systems/public-health-services).
Preventing disease and encouraging healthy lifestyles should be the top priority for any developed country. Over the past 100 years the United States has made great strides in public health. Such achievements include, but are not limited to: vaccinations, motor vehicle safety, control of infectious diseases, decline in deaths from coronary artery disease and stroke, family planning, and recognition of tobacco use as dangerous (Book).