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Quality Metrics for Chronic Disease Management

The quality metric for managing chronic disease measures the performance of a health care organization in the management of the chronic disease by supporting the needs of the patients (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2010). Chronic disease management may be undertaken within the hospital setting by hospital nurse or at home by home care nurse. This paper seeks to compare patient’s length of hospital stay as a quality metric for managing chronic disease in the hospital setting and patient satisfaction as a quality metric in the home care setting.

The length of stay of a patient in the hospital can be used as an indicator of the quality of the management of the patient’s condition hence, acting as a quality metric (Austin, Wills, Blizzard, Walters, Wood-Baker, 2010). Notably, longer hospital stays of a patient with chronic disease signify poor quality management of the patient’s condition while quicker recoveries characterized by shorter hospital stays clearly posit high-quality management of the patient’s condition. Similarly, patient satisfaction is a quality metric for managing chronic disease in home care setting. However, in this setting, patient satisfaction is evaluated through personal interaction between the patient with chronic disease and the home care provider (Browne, Roseman, Shaller, Edgman-Levitan, 2010). By conducting a one-on-one interview with the patient about his/her health management progress, the level of satisfaction of the patient can be determined and used as a metric to measure the quality of services offered.

 Both of these metrics are critical in facilitating change that may improve the management of the chronic disease. For instance, increased length of hospital stay may have some underlying factors grounded on infectivity and inefficiency of the organizational policies (Austin, Wills, Blizzard, Walters, Wood-Baker, 2010). Therefore, this metric may induce the need for change in the organizational policy to improve the effectivity and efficiency of the healthcare organization thus, facilitate changes that may improve management of chronic disease. Patient satisfaction, on the other hand, is a critical indicator for quality of services and patient outcomes as it posits the true picture about the performance of healthcare providers in both practice settings. In a hospital setting, patient satisfaction is a quality metric that measures how much the patients are satisfied with the quality of services offered by health professionals in the setting (Browne, Roseman, Shaller, Edgman-Levitan, 2010). To measure this satisfaction, patients with chronic disease in the hospital setting participate in a survey in which they fill questionnaires designed to evaluate the quality of services in the hospital. This way, the data collected can be used as a metric of quality for the management of the chronic disease. Notably, the feedback obtained from such survey and interviews can be used to make necessary changes in the clinical setting focused on improving patient satisfaction (Browne, Roseman, Shaller, Edgman-Levitan, 2010). That way, patient satisfaction, as a quality metric may facilitate change that may improve management of chronic disease.

The current automated trigger systems are very effective in managing patient safety because it occurs retrospectively or prospectively and without any dependence on the care giver’s willingness to report self-report (Muething, Conway, Kloppenborg, Lesko, Schoettker, Seid, Kotagal, 2010). For instance, automated trigger systems efficiently identify triggered cases such as the occurrence of an adverse drug event for further review. However, I believe these systems are reactive responses when educating patients on disease management because they only focus on the occurrences around the patients’ safety while impacting very little, if any, in the educational process of the patient. Notably, the current automated trigger systems are focused on events around the patients that triggers a reactive response to review other than educating the patient on disease management (Muething, Conway, Kloppenborg, Lesko, Schoettker, Seid, Kotagal, 2010).