As one of nine experts selected to design a report on the quality of the country’s health care, Judith Hibbard, University professor of planning, public policy and management, believes many improvements should be made in the medical field.
A recent increase in the awareness of problems in the medical field has prompted the creation of the National Health Care Quality Forum, a non-profit organization that studies the medical industry. Board members of the forum chose a panel of health policy experts to establish a national system that will improve conditions.
One of the major concerns of the forum’s panel is the number of deaths that are caused by medical errors. More Americans die every year — an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 — as a result of health-related errors than in automobile accidents, Hibbard said.
The Quality Forum seeks to cut the number of medical error deaths and injuries in half in the next five years.
“Experts in the field have known that there are serious health care problems,” board member John Rother said. “People are not getting the care they need.”
Often, the medical errors are a result of faulty prescription, Hibbard said. But in most cases, it is not the fault of an individual; the necessary tools are not always used or are not available.
“Even when we know something is going to save lives, it’s not always done,” Hibbard said.
Hibbard and the other panel members are charged with developing the National Quality Report, which will evaluate the health care delivery system and recommend measures to improve the quality.
“There isn’t anything more important than taking care of people,” said Michael Cook, a member of the forum’s board of directors. “There is evidence that there are breakdowns that could be avoided.”
Although the panel is still mapping out its study strategies, the group has committed to completing the report, mandated by Congress, by 2003.
The experts will examine the effectiveness of hospital systems, which are not always held accountable for incorrect procedures. As a possible solution, the panel will look at the successful organization of the airline industry’s system. After crashes, airline agencies immediately develop safeguards to try to prevent the same types of incidents again, Hibbard said.
“We need to develop systems that find where the errors happen and study them,” she said.
Additionally, the forum will try to make the industry more consistent across the country. For example, Cook said effective medical practices in Oregon should also be used in South Carolina.
“We must find out how to convert existing knowledge that will raise the performance at all levels,” Cook said.
Another goal of the forum is to find a way to provide health insurance for more people. Approximately 44 million people in the United States are not medically insured, according to the Institute of Medicine, a supporter of the National Health Care Quality Forum.
“We’re not very good at providing access to our population,” said Hibbard, who received her doctorate degree in 1982 from the University of California at Berkeley.
For the project, Hibbard is traveling to Washington, D.C., about once every two weeks, an exhausting yet vital schedule to keep.
“It’s complex but really important for people to understand at least the broader issues,” Hibbard said. “My hope is that people will pay attention to this because a lot of important decisions could be made.”
Hibbard was selected for the panel because of her work to help the public better understand options in health care.
“She’s done some really ground-breaking research on how to talk to consumers about (medical care) and the choices they make,” Rother said. “She is really the leader on how to communicate to consumers.”
As a whole, the panel includes some of the finest health care experts in the country, Rother said.
“All of the major stake holders are on the board,” Hibbard said. “The hope is that there is some agreement on what to report to consumers.”