Genetic Codes of Health Services
In our country, there are health services in over 1,500 hospitals, including public, private and university. The number of days spent sleeping in the hospital in 2013 is calculated as a total of 30.1 million days (health statistics Yearbook). According to the World Health Organization 2008 data, an average of 234 million surgical interventions are occurring all over the world annually, and this figure is increasing every day. As a wide range of health services take such place in our daily lives, the service delivery is so important that it adapts to evolving technologies and differentiated expectations, making efforts to improve health service quality become even more critical.
Many difficulties encountered in the healthcare service offer, especially in employees, lack of motivation, job satisfaction, decreased patient satisfaction or patient safety weaknesses, as well as many other problems bring. For example, according to the Health Grades 2011 report, there is a total of 708,402 preventable medical errors that threaten patient safety only in the U.S. health care institutions in 3 years (2007-2009).
The obstacles that are listed in front of continuous improvement in healthcare services, in meetings or in academic studies, are usually shaping up on the axis of ‘ being very different from the nature of health services and other services ‘. Therefore, it is not easy to develop systematic solutions to problems without understanding the complex structure of health services, a kind of genetics.
What are the qualities that differentiate health services?
In order to provide a contribution to the improvement of quality in health service delivery, I have also devoted a chapter in the book to the properties of health services to systematically discuss these problems in my new book. No matter how well we understand these characteristics of health services and the genetic structure of the service, we can actually solve the problems arising from these characteristics of the service and improve the services. We briefly summarize these prominent features of health care;
Urgent and cannot be postponed most of the time
Demand in healthcare services; Rather than pleasure and choice, it is rising from necessity. Therefore, health services cannot be postponed.
Complex and variable
As the number of services offered increases, the degree of complexity is increasing.
A combination of different occupational groups
Many activities such as different medical services, hospitality services, technical services, automation, education and research are in a limited space together.
Difficult to define and measure outputs
The compounding of the health service applied to each patient makes it difficult to identify the service and standardisation of the outputs.
High level of specialization
The emergence of new diseases, changes in the treatment, rapid developments in science and technology, increasing the degree of specialization in health services increases every passing.
Snow is not a priority
Unlike all other sectors, priority and primary purpose in healthcare services is not to profit.
Services variable
The physician’s job request can vary from patient to apply for the same disease. The job demands of different physicians for the same patient and disease can vary.
Options restricted
The options of healthcare areas are limited by the decisions of Technology time and authority (physician, etc.) that offer this service.
Tolerance Low
When it comes to human health, the tolerance against inaccuracies and ambiguities is low in the services and procedures offered.
Information asymmetry
Health care areas do not have a sufficient level of information about the technical details of the services they will receive, as they are informed.
Functional Dependence High
A large number of people and units serve at the same time to the patient who admitted to the healthcare institution. All of these services are affected. For example, the quality of laboratory test results affects the physician’s decision to treat.
Resources:
- Health Grades Patient Safety-2011
- Health Statistics Yearbook-2013
- Expected-realized-perceived service quality and multi-dimensional quality in healthcare services – detail Publishing-2015