Key Principles of Modern Health Care for Better Outcomes
Principles of Modern Health Care
Main Principles
Health Promotion and Health Education – to keep the population informed.
Social Community Problem – questions concerning public health care and actions to be taken should be engaged by everyone.
Equity in Health – when public health is in question, there must be no difference between rich and poor.
Prevention and Check-In – Health Education – a physician should teach the people.
Financial Resources – public health care is more important from the economic than the humanitarian point of view.
Primary Care Equity – a physician’s place is where people live, not in laboratories and offices.
Principles of Modern Medical Care
Health Care Broadly Defined:
Access:
Choice:
Includes prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and management of illness including medical, surgical, and mental health. We consider health promotion, rehabilitation, and palliation as essential services.
Health care is fundamentally based on personal, professional, and trusting relationships between individuals seeking care and those who care for them.
Health care organizations and institutions should exist primarily to improve the health of patients.
Health care should be accessible to all regardless of employment, education, social, economic, cultural, or linguistic status. Financial, geographic, and organizational barriers should not limit access to care.
The ability to creatively and appropriately employ scientific and technological innovations in the interests of patients should be facilitated and enhanced by health care organizations and institutions.
Patients’ Rights:
- Patients must have the right to choose their health care organizations and their clinicians within these organizations.
Confidentiality:
- Personal medical information must be confidential and accessible, in a timely fashion and with the patient’s permission, only to those responsible for the patient’s care and only in the patient’s interest.
Responsible Health Care Organizations
- There should be no profit made from the care of patients.
- Health care organizations are accountable first and foremost to the patients they serve.
- Any resources saved by system efficiencies and improvements should be reinvested in the care of patients and not returned to investors.
- Competition among health care organizations is helpful only when it improves the care of patients.
Responsible Professionals and Patients
- As professionals, we must responsibly allocate the finite resources available for health care.
- The legal, ethical, and moral obligation of clinicians to provide care in accordance with the highest professional standards is fundamental.
- Those who take action to correct conditions that prevent safe practice or high-quality patient care must not suffer discipline or dismissal for their actions.
Disclosure
- There should be full disclosure available to patients and the public about the financial arrangements between health professionals and health care organizations and between organizations and for-profit corporations. The licensure and job title of every person providing direct care should be clearly evident to patients and family.
Quality and Peer Review
- Health care should be subject to review by peers and the public. This includes easy access for patients and clinicians to expert and second opinions.
Research and Training
- Research and professional training are essential to the long-term vitality of our health care system.
- Both require the explicit support of all health care organizations and local, state, and federal governments.
Simplicity and Clarity
- Health care should be delivered and paid for in the simplest fashion possible.
- Repetitive and complex paperwork, administrative delays, and confusing forms distract clinicians from the care of patients and are unnecessary barriers to effective and efficient patient care.