For this project, you will select a state, national, or international policy in which the United States is involved to critically analyze, interview a stakeholder of the policy, perform substantial re

Running head: MEDICARE POLICY OF 2019 0

Maria Williams

Southern New Hampshire University

04/08/2020

Description of the Medicare Policy of 2019

Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act (PSQIA) is one of the most important health care policies in the United States. The Act was passed in 2005 to protect health care professionals and workers who report unsafe conditions in hospitals. The policy was formulated to encourage the reporting of adverse events and malpractices that occur in health care centers. Such events may include medical errors and accidents. The law seeks to protect the identity of professionals who report such incidences while maintaining the patients’ confidentiality. To protect patient privacy, the law imposes fines for confidentiality breaches (Nash, 2011). The policy also bestows the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) with the responsibility to publish a list of patient safety organizations that record and assess patient safety data. The Office of Civil Rights also enforces the policy among national health care facilities. The primary goal of this policy is to encourage health professionals to improve the safety and quality of health care and to understand the underlying causes of hazards in the delivery of healthcare (Nash, 2011). The policy also seeks to encourage the sharing of such results in all states within a protected legal framework, thereby minimizing any risks that are associated with patient care. In so doing, the policy hopes to reduce potential risks that patients are exposed to.

Rationale and Professional Relevance

Maintaining patient safety and quality of care are some of the most important goals of healthcare professionals. The policy goes a long way in encouraging all health care professionals to observe safety and quality standards. The Institute of Medicine regards patient safety as indistinguishable from delivery of quality care (Mitchell, 2008). Health professionals should observe patient safety practices such as use of stimulators, bar coding, computerized order entry, and crew resource management to avoid errors and improve health care processes (Mitchell, 2008). In order to comply with the legislation, nurses and other professionals should focus their attention on defining and measuring quality long before national and state level stress on quality improvements. Nurses have the responsibility in patient safety to avoid medication errors and prevent patient falls.

Stakeholder Analysis

The success of a policy depends on stakeholder participation and compliance. The key stakeholders of the policy can be broadly categorized as internal or external stakeholders. Within a health care institution, internal stakeholders include health professionals such as nurses, physicians, pharmacists, and clinical officers. External stakeholders, on the other hand, include patients, community members, government regulators, policymakers, as well as the scholarly community. The scholarly community may include researchers who investigate the outcomes of the policy and its efficacy and advise health institutions and policymakers accordingly. Government regulators at federal and state levels enforce patient safety laws.

References

Mitchell, P. H. (2008). Defining patient safety and quality care. In Patient safety and quality: An

evidence-based handbook for nurses. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US).

Nash, D. B. (2011). The patient safety act. Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 36(3), 118.

Ridic, G., Gleason, S., & Ridic, O. (2012). Comparisons of health care systems in the United

States, Germany and Canada. Materia socio-medica, 24(2), 112.