Improving the Quality of Health care

A Provider's view

Abstract

The Ministry of Health and Welfare in May 1995 published a white paper on health and welfare. This year's white paper on health had a special reference to quality, information, choice and understanding. The paper is a comprehensive account on health care in Japan and in the very first chapter the paper analyzed the results of 2000 questionnaires concerning health status, health service, and health security systems. The result was that 50 percent expressed satisfaction,19 percent marginally satisfied, and 3 percent were very dissatisfied with overall health care services. Improving satisfaction is the first and foremost responsibility of health care providers. In order to achieve this goal, we must first improve professional standards and this needs objective evaluation. Like in other countries, Japan has been conducting this evaluation within three dimensions of health services, namely structure, process, and outcome. The establishment of an objective organization in 1995 to do this evaluation is a step in this direction.
But high professional standards do not guarantee the customers satisfaction. Special emphasis is necessary to foster the common perception about what constitutes high quality of health service between providers and customers.
General question on satisfaction tend to draw high scores from customers if the question was asked by health care providers. We should be specific about procedures which are regarded as optimal by both providers and customers and to ensure that these are actually provided. These procedures should be declared as a component of patient's rights. To discover specific problems of each patient based on the survey of satisfaction on agreed procedures and to correct these short comings is essential in continuing improvement of satisfaction which ultimately leads to a higher quality care.