To evaluate the excellence of the hospitals, it is quite crucial for hospital accreditation on the patient’s experiences in terms of health care quality. The patient’s experience is, therefore, termed as the way of measuring conditions of the services provided by the hospitals to enhance satisfaction. It is, therefore, a quantitative method which requires inferential and descriptive research for a particular area for accurate data to be evaluated and a clear picture to have arrived. Quality is hence the fundamental requirements that any health organization requires for it to continue with the competition, challenges as well as the demand in the market. For this reason, healthcare accreditation helps in standard settings as well as improving the outcome, structures and the process of quality health provision.
Literature review.
A range of behaviours and interactions of patients with the health care systems define what patient experience is all about. These interactions include, care received from the doctors, health plans, nurses and other kinds of stuff in the hospital as well as the physical practices done in the hospitals. Patients also experience as an integral part of the health care quality encompasses the following: several aspects of healthcare delivery valued by the patients when they receive or seek the care. They include timely access to the appointments, the access to information as well as efficient communication with the healthcare providers.
Perfect understanding of the patient’s experience is, therefore, a vital step of moving towards what is called patient-centred care. A researcher can, therefore, assess the extent to which patients receives responsive and respectful care after assessment of various aspects of patient’s experiences. Moreover, evaluation of safety and effectiveness of health care is also useful alongside patients experience is assessing the health care quality. Though patents satisfaction and knowledge are often used interchangeably, one must find out from the patients whether something should be included in a health care setting or not depending on their experience and satisfaction rates.
The (Consumer Assessment of Health Providers and Systems CAHPS) has come up with various ways of information gathering on the patient’s experiences. The CAHPS coordinates with the patients and requires them to report on the various aspects which they think are essential for them to and which are the best according to their experiences. Through this, they are capable of making generalizations and make standards from a sample of respondents to validate the measures that the providers could rely on during their operations.
For the operation to be considered successful, a positive respondent is required with more substantial evidence points. The points could be excellent communication between the patients and the care providers as well as essential outcomes of health care processes. Health care outcomes include better clinical outcomes, lower unnecessary care utilization, the ability of the patients to adhere to the advice given by the healthcare providers and more improved safety practices. Evaluation of these outcomes has, therefore, created a significant focus across the globe to improve the patient outcomes, provision of quality as well as safety care. It has also increased the urge for the stakeholders, care providers, as well as the policymakers to adopt some more regulated activities to measure the ability of the health care systems.
One of the critical criteria by which the quality health care services can be evaluated is through patient’s experience. Research shows that the patients who are more satisfied with health care providers are more conversant and compliant to the treatment plans. Moreover, they can, therefore, maintain close and regular follow up links with the caregivers and are more willing to recommend others to the same hospital. It can, therefore, be concluded that both patient satisfaction and hospital accreditations are the best and the essential qualities of quality healthcare. Results obtained thus may be used to monitor the shortages of the care provides, provide necessary interventions and serve as a valuable source of efficient and tactical forecasting of the health services.
The research conducted, therefore, shows that there is a positive impact on the accreditation of health care on patient’s experiences in various fields. Some of the significant areas include the out-patient, in-patient department, the emergency department, pharmacy and the physiotherapy department services, laboratory departments, among others. All these departments operate differently but under one roof called the hospital. It is, therefore, essential to gather information about the experience gained by the patients from each department for the efficiency of the hospital.
Efficiency on each department can be used to determine the effectiveness of the hospital, and most likely is used in the ranking of services provides and comparison against other hospitals. For instance, the impact of hospital accreditation on the emergency department (Shaikh, 2017) revealed that there is a significant improvement of patients after the certification was done. Moreover, there was no significant difference in the age distribution of the patients before and after the accreditation was done, meaning there was a pertinent information relay to other patients irrespective of their ages. Other aspects that were not affected include geographical responsiveness, language and the number of visits conducted after accreditation.
However, several significant elements changed after accreditation was conducted. They include, a substantial increase in the level of satisfaction responses concerning waiting time, a considerable improvement of decision making of the patients care between before and after accreditation because of the explained treatment assured. A significant safety and cleanliness difference is achieved, and privacy of patient’s data and information is obtained. Therefore, in general terms, there more improvements in standards when health accreditation.
In addition to this, a patient’s confidentiality is boosted since the hospital can be able to enhance the privacy of the patient’s information in the best way possible. More trust is created in the health care system as people believe that their problems will not be exposed to other patients. Hospital accreditation also increases the flow of patients in the hospital as compared to before certification. The increase in the customer flow is depicted from the increased trust in the health system, the improvements made in the hospital after the accreditation, among other aspects.
In conclusion, health accreditation is useful and has positive impacts on both the hospital side and to the patient’s side. A quantitative method which requires inferential and descriptive research for a particular area for accurate data to be evaluated and a clear picture the positive impacts to the hospital may include, an increased flow of more customers, a more competitive advantage over other hospitals. They also may enjoy good economies of scale, more link-ups and trust from the patients. On the other hand, the patients benefit from improved services from the hospitals in terms of medical and psychological aspects. Patients also experience excellent responsiveness from the medical practitioners or the health care providers.