Quality = level of excellence.
If we walk down the supermarket isle and look at the meat selection we will notice that some brands are marketed with a quality sticker. This infers that the meat must meet specific criteria in order for it to reach the supermarket. The marketed quality sticker most likely has to meet specified criteria such as: the animal grown and fed in a specific way, the meat is only a few days old prior to reaching consumers, and it’s the tenderest part on the animal. As we can see, most items marketed in the U.S. have to meet specific criteria prior to being sold to public otherwise there would be a public outcry. However, this is not the case for our frail health care system especially if your one of the unfortunate souls that does not have health insurance. So why does this seem to be the case for goods and not for our health care? Well, one thing is for sure, we know where to look if we get sick from eating the meat. However, do we know where to look if we receive bad care? Is it the doctor’s fault? Is it the system’s fault? Where do we pin the blame if a patient receives a wrong medication? Is it the pharmacist fault for filling the medication, the doctor for prescribing the wrong medication, the system for not catching the human error or our own fault for not demanding more? It’s a very complicated system as we have heard first hand from the representative of LA Care Health Plan. So first things first, we need to do away with bad habits, and start implementing new changes that define what a quality system entails. Yet, before this happens, markers must be in place to define what quality means. Quality means-patients are not dying needlessly because of medication errors, diagnosis are accurate, unnecessary test are not performed, a patient has a chart that follows him/her through his/her lifetime, doctors servicing a specific population are specialized in that area, and lastly money is spent effectively to put a patient on the right track. These are but a few criteria that can define quality of care. Yet one thing is certain, we all need to come together and define what quality medical care means to us so that we can start taking the steps to improving our broken health care system.