Positive Impacts of Mandated Reporting in Healthcare

Scholarly Writing, Mandated Reporting
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Scholarly Writing, Mandated Reporting
Introduction
The occurrence of medical incidents such as the administration of medication errors, hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), surgical site infections, and the equally diverse subsequent complications adversely affect the delivery of quality patient care. Such occurrences correlate to increased length of hospital stay, higher costs of care, and even fatal complications leading to a rise in mortality rates. The increasing demand for quality care among patients and the calls by different stakeholders for increased accountability and transparency in the healthcare system reiterate the need for an effective performance improvement intervention in healthcare. The intervention would allow patients and other stakeholders to review the performances of healthcare providers across different aspects of patient care. Public performance reporting, as it was earlier known, enhanced patients’ decision making in selecting their preferred healthcare providers as informed by the reports of their performances across different care processes. The federal and state governments would later enact legal provisions for mandated reporting for different care processes and overall performance in the quality of care delivered. Mandated reporting accounts for remarkable improvements across the different sectors of health care including reduced cases of surgical sites infections for different surgeries and significant reductions in medication errors. It also accounts for improved overall performance among different healthcare providers, recording equally increased revenues from the broader consumer base through the widespread recommendations from satisfied patients. In essence, mandatory reporting is an effective interventional measure towards enhancing patient safety and quality of care as it provides an overview of the state of all the key domains of health care for the implementation of improvement initiatives where needed. Provided herein is an analysis and evaluation of mandatory reporting through the lens of its impacts across different domains of healthcare as informed by a review of selected literature.
Impacts of Mandatory Reporting
Both the state and national governments of the United States have set legal provisions for mandated reporting on different aspects of care through diverse parameters. The morbidity and mortality rates recorded by healthcare providers are some of the parameters used to highlight the performances of hospitals. The United States Health Care Financing Administration, for instance, publicized the annual mortality rates for approximately 17 groups of patients in the surgical and medical domains (Wasfy, 2015). Such publications inform patients on the quality of care delivered by different healthcare providers and thus making the best decision for seeking medical or surgical patient care. Positive outcomes such as reduced rate of surgical site infections and medication incidents reflect positively on healthcare providers and the healthcare system. Such positive outcomes reflect the delivery of quality care leading to increased recommendations among patients and increased revenue base for healthcare facilities with good performance reports. Mandated reporting on patient outcomes for patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting by both the state and healthcare organizations makes for an excellent application of the performance improvement intervention. The intervention also applies in monitoring the rate of surgical site infections and other hospital-acquired infections. Mandated reporting of medical errors by healthcare practitioners also highlights its application as a quality improvement intervention. The intervention also motivates healthcare providers to adopt its recommended provisions for improved care in the identified areas of progress or poor performances. A detailed evaluation of mandatory reporting across the diverse aspects of healthcare create an understanding of its impact on patient outcomes, quality of care, and the healthcare provider’s revenue base. Its impacts include:
* Increased Participation among Healthcare Providers in the Implementation of Patient Safety Initiatives
Mandated reporting across different clinical outcomes prompts healthcare providers to review their standards of operations to improve the quality of care services offered. Healthcare providers with excellent reports may also seek to maintain their good status by ensuring compliance to the set quality standards of delivering patient care. An evaluation on the impact of mandatory reporting on the adoption of improvement initiatives against central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) by Marstellar (2014), showcases the intervention’s impact on adoption of safety enhancement initiatives. The evaluation focused on the rates of CLABSIs across both the state and national healthcare providers in the United States against the adoption of mandatory reporting. States with the legal provision of mandatory reporting witnessed significantly lower rates of CLABSIs compared to healthcare facilities in states without the legal provision mandating public reporting. The evaluation further observed that states with mandatory reporting provision had higher participation of healthcare providers in the adoption of the recommended interventions for the reduction and prevention of CLABSIs. It is evident that mandatory reporting encourages healthcare providers to adopt safety improvement initiatives leading to the delivery of quality patient care. A report by Halpin (2011) observes that the rate of hospital-acquired infections in California reduced significantly after the adoption of mandatory reporting on the same by the state. Embracing mandatory reporting for adopting diverse patient safety interventions reflect positively on the healthcare providers’ ability to deliver on the increasing demand for quality care among patients. Mandated reporting also influences the healthcare providers’ perspective on the importance of participating in the implementation of patient safety initiatives (Vukovic, 2017). Both the state and national governments can also access such information to provide assistance to healthcare facilities in the rural areas with limited resources to implement mandatory reporting for patient safety improvement initiatives. In essence, mandatory reporting encourages healthcare providers to adopt safety improvement interventions as they seek to avoid bad reputations or poor recommendations from patients and other stakeholders on their quality of care delivered. It motivates healthcare providers to adopt patient safety initiatives leading to improved quality of patient care and other merits of positive results.
* Improved Patient Outcomes
Positive or improved patient outcomes characterize the delivery of quality patient care. The improved patient outcomes also reflect reduced cost of care as it shortens the length patients’ stay in hospital (Gai, 2019). The adoption of patient safety interventions is a pre-requisite to improved patients outcomes as evidenced by the impact of embracing mandatory reporting on the adoption of patient safety initiatives. Widespread adoption of mandatory reporting functions to intensify the healthcare system’s compliance with set standard operating procedures for improving patient safety. Consequently, healthcare facilities and practitioners record remarkable improvements in patient outcomes across the different healthcare sectors. Clinical outcomes make for one of the key elements or parameters for assessing and evaluating the performance of healthcare providers in mandatory reports for patient outcomes across different sectors of care. According to Campanella (2016), public reporting on clinical outcomes is integral to motivating healthcare providers to improve the quality of care delivered. Campanella and colleague’s systematic review and meta-analysis of selected literature on the impact of mandatory reporting on clinical outcomes finds a strong correlation between public reporting and improved patient outcomes. Such improvements motivate healthcare providers to maintain the quality of care delivered while also encouraging others to adopt the quality improvement provisions suggested in the reports. Wasfy (2015) also echoes the same sentiments on the impact of mandated reporting in cardiovascular medicine. The auth...