Patient safety, quality, and value are new buzzwords in healthcare. No doubt, these are all laudable goals.
The problem is that true quality care cannot be put on a spreadsheet and publicly reported. It just can’t. Never.
Why?
My friend Dr. Wes Fisher explains in this beautiful post called “Wingman:”
There is talk of quality in health care. There is talk of safety. Millions upon millions of dollars are spent on “quality and safety” in health care each year. After all, without “quality” and “safety,” how can you have “value?”
Business people now call quality and safety “MIPS,” “MOC,” “MACRA,” or “measures.” To me, these are not quality, but rather very flawed attempts to define it. Acronyms and business strategies, no matter how well-meaning, can’t define “quality” or “safety” or ‘value” in health care. When it takes teams of consultants dispatched hospitals to explain how to make money with these new terms, that’s called marketing, not “quality” or “safety.”
The truth be known, “quality” is very difficult to define. That’s because each of us brings a different perspective as to what defines health care “quality.” A gruff neurosurgeon who is technically flawless in the operating room is likely perceived differently by the recipient of his services compared to his coworkers. Defining quality in medicine is like defining pornography – you just know it when you see it. The tricky thing about “quality,” though, is that we often miss it when it lies right beneath our nose.
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Please read the rest here > WingmanÂ
These words helped me. Thanks Wes.
JMM