Describe The Relationship Between Health Care Cost And Quality (Term Paper Sample)

Cost and Quality Analysis
Name
Institution
Question 1
Various healthcare organizations in the country aim at providing high-quality services to the people. However, their objectives may not be the same, but they may be doing something almost similar. It should be noted that all of them are healthcare firms, but others are owned by the government while private individuals control a few. The goals of the two parties differ, but the services are the same. The private sector aims at generating profits as a long-term objective whereas public institutions target at providing services to the people. In this case, I would discuss AHRQ and JCAHO. These are two main agencies that have been accredited for offering high-quality services to the people. However, one is owned by the government and the second one is privately controlled (McClellan, 2011).
The following are the roles that are played by AHRQ in ensuring that they address the issues of quality and costs in an effective manner. The organization has developed strategies to ensure that they produce evidence that will make medical safe for the people. Through this, it means that people would not be struggling to find solutions and wasting their funds on problems they are not aware of. Therefore, the aim of the agency is to work towards lowering the costs incurred. This has been achieved by setting clear guidelines that are being followed by other institutions. There is a notion in our society that high-quality services are associated with extreme costs. However, with AHRQ, things have been leveled in a manner that it is not a must to use a lot of funds to get quality services. This is because the agency has made the services more accessible to the people.
The firm has made the health care services to be equitable among the individuals living in the United States. This is achieved only by developing adequate strategies to know how to handle the rich and the unfortunate in the society. The second agency is JCAHO, and it plays almost a similar role in ensuring that clients get high-quality services, but at the same time, costs are accurately controlled. However, the way they play their roles to achieve these objectives is different from AHRQ. In ensuring that they offer high-quality services, JCAHO has sought to deploy technology in various sectors and therefore, help in reducing the number of employees that are working in those areas. Also, they have invested substantially in the field of research and development so that they can be able to know the best ways in which they can deliver well while charging cheaply. This information, once obtained and certified, becomes available to other organizations under them to use without having to work on their own (Grove et al., 2012).
Question 2
It is difficult to control costs and at the same time provide high-quality services. However, currently, the agencies are working to ensure that they can develop strategies that would help them to achieve both at the same time. For instance, to lower expenses incurred in a healthcare organization, the management team is ensuring that they reduce the amount of money they pay as salaries, and the use of modern technology can only achieve this. The organizations have put in place the use of EHR to ensure that manual work is reduced in the workplace at the same time make recording keeping and retrieval to be faster. Also, the time which the staff used to offer service to the patients reduces drastically due to the automation of activities. This is not enough in ensuring that costs have been lowered and improve the quality of services (Dixon et al., 2013).
As a result, they have decided to set long-term goals to ensure that they achieve these objectives (Melnyk et al., 2014). For example, they are setting aside funds to research to come up with new methods that should be employed. Also, they are creating awareness to other organizations on the reasons why they should adopt new technologies and avoid fearing of its consequences. Lastly, they are working to ensure that the services are brought near and are accessible to the people who need them. However, through these strategies implemented, there are unintended consequences that may arise such as some of the employees may end up losing jobs that would affect their living standards.
Question 3
Advanced nurse practice consists of the individuals who have attained at least a master’s degree in their education. This category consists of midwives, nurse practitioners, and clinical specialists. The implication of this group of advanced nurse practice nurses is the nature of the quality of work they deliver. They also do not make mistakes when working be...