UnitedHealthcare has established a Quality Improvement program to monitor and improve the quality and safety of care you receive from our network doctors and hospitals and the quality of service we provide to you. Our quality program integrates utilization and care management, credentialing of doctors and hospitals, disease management, pharmacy and Customer Care (member telephone calls) to provide a safe patient-centered experience for all members.
What you can do to make healthcare safer
Doctors, nurses and other health care providers in America work very hard every day to deliver the best care to their patients. Unfortunately, an alarming number of patients are harmed by medical mistakes in the health care system and far too many die prematurely as a result. Patient safety is one of the Nation's most pressing health care challenges. A 1999 report by the Institute of Medicine estimated that as many as 44,000 to 98,000 people die in U.S. hospitals each year as the result of lapses in patient safety. A more recent study published in April, 2011 found that on average, 1 in 3 patients admitted into a hospital suffer a medical error or adverse event.1
The following tips tell you what you can do to get safer health care. This list was developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in partnership with the American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association.
- Ask questions if you have doubts or concerns. Take a friend or relative with you to help you ask questions and understand answers if needed.
- Keep and bring a list of ALL the medicines you take. Ask about any side effects and what to avoid while taking the medicine.
- Get the results of any test or procedure. Don’t assume no news is good news. Ask what the results mean for your care.
- Talk to your doctor about which hospital is best for your health needs. Be sure you understand about follow-up care when you leave the hospital.
- Make sure you understand what will happen if you need surgery. Make sure everyone knows and agrees on exactly what will be done during the operation.2
UnitedHealthcare wants to help you find the safest and best healthcare possible. According to a study in The New England Journal of Medicine, "adults receive the recommended medical treatment only 55 percent of the time.” 3 That's why UnitedHealthcare developed the UnitedHealth Premium ® designation program, which recognizes physicians and facilities that meet guidelines for providing quality and cost efficient care. On www.mychoicenotchance.com you can see why choosing a quality doctor is important to your safe care. Some hospitals are better at treating specific conditions than others. Under the section What other resources are available?, you will see information on the Hospital Comparison program. This lets you compare hospital quality and cost for various medical conditions or procedures.
One of the measure sets used in the UnitedHealthcare Hospital Comparison program looks at how hospitals perform on patient safety measures from the Leapfrog Group. The Leapfrog Group is a national organization of health care purchasers that focuses on improvements in the safety, quality and affordability of health care. The Leapfrog Group asks hospitals if they adhere to four main quality and safety practices:
- Computerized Physician Order Entry System
- Intensive Care Staffing
- Evidence Based Hospital Referral for high risk treatments
- Leapfrog Safe Practices Score - 17 safe practices to reduce preventable medical mistakes
The Leapfrog Hospital Comparison Tool is available at leapfroggroup.org/cp with additional information from their annual hospital surveys. More information about the Leapfrog Group can be found at www.leapfroggroup.org.
1Partnership for Patients: Better Care, Lower Costs, http://www.healthcare.gov/news/factsheets/partnership04122011a.html
2National Patient Safety Foundation, A Consumer Fact Sheet. http://www.npsf.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/WhatYouCanDo.pdf
3Asch, Steven M. et al. The New England Journal of Medicine. 2006 March 16; 354: 1147–1156.
Why the Last Weeks of Pregnancy Count
You may not have a choice about when to have your baby. If there are problems with your pregnancy or your baby’s health, you may need to deliver your baby early. But if you have no medical problems and you’re planning to schedule your baby’s birth, you should wait until the 39th completed week of your pregnancy. Births scheduled before the 39th completed week of pregnancy for non-medical reasons can cause problems for both mothers and babies.
Early scheduling of births can be done either by induction (when medicine is given to a mother to induce labor) or cesarean section (a surgical procedure). Unless it is medically necessary for your well-being or the well-being of your baby, guidelines developed by doctors and researchers say it’s best to wait until the 39th week of completed pregnancy to deliver your baby. The main reason is that important development takes place to your baby’s brain and lungs during those last few weeks of pregnancy.
If you would like more information about why the last few weeks of pregnancy are so important to you and your baby visit http://www.healthy-pregnancy.com/UHC/resources/index.shtml. Here you will also find information on how often your delivery hospital schedules early cesarean sections and inductions as reported in the Leapfrog Group annual hospital survey statistics. (http://www.leapfroggroup.org/for_consumers/tooearlydeliveries)