Poor Service Quality
Definition and Relationship with Stakeholders
Poor service quality refers to the existence of inefficiencies in the provision of the essential health care services required by the public. Health practitioners are supposed to abide by the rules of this profession and promote the ethics of the Hippocratic Oath. All stakeholders in the health care sector play crucial roles in promoting the efficiency of these facilities. Efficiency in the health care sector is defined in terms of the following aspects. Health care supervisors and practitioners should provide appropriate leadership and accountability to promote efficiency in these facilities. Nurses should ensure patients get safe and effective health care services to promote disease prevention and treatment initiatives (Mockford, 2012). These services should be accessible, flexible, and responsive to address the challenges facing various groups of patients. The stakeholders should promote, protect and improve the health and social well-being of patients by enhancing effective communication and sharing of relevant information. Health stakeholders that do not play their roles effectively promote poor service quality.
Causes
The case of the Royal United Hospital Bath NHS Trust shows that some poor service quality occurs due to unavoidable reasons. For instance, the health facility provides acute health care services to about 500,000 people, yet it does not have adequate employees. The facility cannot use its annual budget of £230 million and the 4, 600 staff to provide high-quality health care services to the community. This means that not all emergency patients may get immediate and proper attention due to the limited workforce. The health facility cannot solve this problem without assistance from donors and the government. Some sectors like the critical care and neonatal units did not have adequate nurses. Therefore, the trust should train more nurses to fill the vacancies in these units. Poor communication amongst nurses and other health care practitioners resulted in delays and poor responses to urgent situations (Mannion, 2008). It is right to argue that the trust’s notices are misleading because they promise to manage patients’ situations within a short time yet the institution knows this is impossible, especially during disease outbreaks. The limited hospital beds (595) hamper the efficiency of nurses to provide quality services to inpatients. Lastly, the hospital has neglected its risk assessment responsibilities and that is why more patients continue to flock there despite knowing that the facility is congested.
Impacts
Poor service quality risks the health of patients and health practitioners. Human health is very delicate, especially when a person is sick (Arasli, 2008). Life is irreplaceable and nobody should take risks. Poor service quality may cause the death of patients, even those suffering from treatable and manageable diseases. Nurses, patients, and visitors are at risk of contracting diseases if poor mechanisms are used to quarantine those suffering from communicable diseases (Mockford, 2012). Governments and other financiers of health care facilities may waste a lot of money if there are no proper mechanisms to ensure high-quality services. Patients and their families may spend unnecessarily and waste their money due to this weakness. Health care facilities that do not manage this weakness properly may have a poor reputation and regulators may decide to close or suspend the operations of facilities that do not deliver services according to the expectations of stakeholders (Staniszewska, 2011).
Importance of Prevention Mechanisms
Poor service quality prevention mechanisms should focus on benefiting all health care stakeholders including patients, nurses, governments, and donors. Mechanisms like the addition of qualified staff and training the existing ones will guarantee patients that their needs will be attended to within a reasonable time (Mockford, 2012). The reputation of a business can be improved and protected if it controls issues that cause poor service delivery. In addition, these mechanisms will build an effective relationship with its employees and the public. There will be no extra and unnecessary costs and this means that the business will not close.
References
Arasli, H 2008, Gearing service quality into public and private hospitals in small islands: empirical evidence from Cyprus, International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 8-23.
Mannion, R 2008, Payment for performance in health care, British Medical Journal, vol. 336, no. 7639, pp. 306.
Mockford, C 2012, The impact of patient and public involvement on UK NHS health care: a systematic review, International Journal for Quality in Health Care, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 28-38.
Staniszewska, S 2011, The GRIPP checklist: strengthening the quality of patient and public involvement reporting in research, International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care, vol. 27, no. 04, pp. 391-399.