Outcome Measures of Healthcare Systems

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The healthcare system is always seeking to improve its quality of patient care, and one method of doing so is standardizing and quantifying performance to evaluate the effectiveness of different procedures and identify areas for improvement. While there are several types of performance indicators, most organizations target outcome measures because they reflect the effectiveness of healthcare intervention on patient health (Tinker). The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) identifies seven outcome measures to measure hospital quality: mortality, safety of care, readmissions, patient experience, effectiveness of care, timeliness of care, efficient use of medical imaging (Tinker). Several organizations are also currently advocating for healthcare cost measurement (“Measure Outcomes & Cost for Every Patient”). Overall, these indicators are necessary to ensure safe, efficient, effective, patient-centered care.

Firstly, mortality rates reflect the hospital’s capability to fulfill its principal function of saving lives and preventing death. Secondly, safety of care measures the occurrence of medical mistakes, such as hospital-acquired infections or pressure ulcers that are directly influenced by hospital intervention. Identifying weak areas leads to improved procedural guidelines. Thirdly, readmission rates after hospitalization are often considered a costly and avoidable indicator of the hospital’s ability to communicate and coordinate care regarding discharge. Fourthly, hospitals are obligated to treat patients with dignity, empathy, and support to ensure retention and attract new patients in the future. Measuring patient experience allows hospitals to evaluate the quality of patient interaction. Fifthly, measuring the effectiveness of care gauges whether hospital procedures align with the best and latest medical guidelines. Medical procedures are constantly being enhanced and modernized, and hospitals need to ensure that their employees follow the latest evidence-based recommendations. Furthermore, a large aspect of successful medical care depends not just on its quality but also on its timeliness. Measuring timeliness of care allows hospitals to discover systemic issues negatively influencing the speed of patient access to medical care, such as overcrowding, understaffing, or inadequate operational hours. Then, measuring the efficient use of medical imaging ensures that patients are not forced to undergo unnecessary and expensive tests and thus hospital technology is being used to the utmost efficiency. According to the same principle, it has been argued that the full cost of a cycle of treatment per patient should be calculated to optimize healthcare value and the use of hospital resources.