Access to Care
Quality of Care
How Quality of Care Impacts Health
Quality of care refers to the timely, effective, and safe delivery of healthcare services, ensuring individuals receive appropriate and necessary treatment. High-quality healthcare reduces medical errors, unnecessary treatments, and delays in receiving care – all of which contribute to better health outcomes and higher patient satisfaction. Various factors influence the quality of healthcare, including the availability of skilled healthcare providers, the use of proven treatments, and the systems within healthcare organizations. Identifying differences in quality of care among different demographic groups is important to advance health equity and ensure that everyone, regardless of their background, receives high-quality healthcare.
Indicators on this page:
Preventable Hospital Stay Rate
Why this is important: Preventable hospital stays refer to people being hospitalized for conditions that could have been treated in outpatient (also called ambulatory care) settings. Preventable hospital stays can result from people not seeking care in the outpatient setting, not being seen in a timely way, lack of appropriate care from the providers they saw, or a combination of these variables. Preventable hospital stays can be seen as a measure of both quality of care and access to care (how easy it is for people to get the healthcare they need).
Definition: Preventable Hospital Stays measures the number of hospital stays for ambulatory-care sensitive conditions per 100,000 Medicare enrollees
Available data for this indicator do not allow for analysis for trends over time, by subpopulations, nor comparison between geographies.
Note: The WCHCS data team thoroughly evaluated various indicators for assessing the quality of health care and found none sufficiently meaningful in measuring health care quality in Whatcom County. Currently, only one indicator is published here because it was the closest information that was available. Many standard “quality” indicators are defined by health insurance companies as part of payment systems and do not meaningfully describe quality from a community health perspective. Nor are they available to the public. We are collaborating closely with our local healthcare community to develop improved measurement, data collection, and reporting strategies. We aim to introduce additional indicators, ensuring a more comprehensive healthcare quality assessment over time.
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