Prizm Development, Inc. - quality systems market assessments spine center Dallas Texas

Large employers and managed care providers find it amusing that while each physician group claims to have high quality, few actually collect data or develop "systems" that reduce treatment variation and ensure that the correct thing is done at the right time, every time. Prizm helps physicians and hospitals walk the talk. Prizm accomplishes this through implementing written clinical protocols that emphasize a conservative approach toward the use of diagnostics and surgery, which often are over-prescribed in certain specialties.

Prizm also helps the provider measure clinical outcome and collect valuable case management data that aligns the organization to the employer referral source.

Defined

Many factors contribute to quality health care. Excellent health care involves not only accurately diagnosing and treating a medical condition but minimizing the amount of interruption it brings to one’s regular lifestyle by helping patients cultivate habits aimed at prevention and management. It is imperative that medical care providers take advantage of the latest and most technologically developed treatment methods in order to demonstrate their commitment to providing the best care to patients.

Why it’s important

Detecting quality is important because with the tremendous advances taking place within the medical field today, healthcare consumers must know how to benefit from them. You must take an active role. The best healthcare will not find you; you have to seek it out.

Not only is quality healthcare of obvious value to individual consumers, its permeation into the market will continue to benefit society as a whole. As more and more people begin integrating prevention methods to avoid health problems, unnecessary medical costs will be saved.

While the United States offers the highest standard of healthcare in the world, there is still huge treatment variation based on the doctor you see. The truth is that your choice of physician will determine the quality of care you will receive.

Quality indicators

Keep in mind that measuring customer satisfaction through surveys does not necessarily measure the quality of the actual care itself. Here are some factors to look for that indicate a high level of quality care:

Accreditation
Physician credentials
Individual physician and non-physician evaluations
Accessibility of patient educational resources
Recording clinical outcome data
Utilizing technological developments
Marketing activities
Striving to improve quality of care
Strategic planning
Public relations/positive media coverage
Risk management skills
Patient education

As many as 50 percent of health care consumers actively look for information on health plans, treatment options and physicians. What type of information are they looking for, and where are they looking? Data released by the 1998 Sachs/Scarborough HealthPlus study shows that most look for condition-specific information, followed by prescription drugs and health plan research. The least number of people researched hospitals. Not surprisingly, the Internet was the leading resource for this information, and most of these researchers were women. Seniors are more likely to look to pharmacists, newspapers, magazines and direct mail.

A center of excellence approach

Centers of excellence allow physicians who are super-specialists within a given medical niche to come together and merge their abilities, automatically resulting in a high quality provider.

Physicians and therapists work together with a team approach. Their collaboration creates personalized treatment plans that reduce time away from work. Our specialists glean information from the results of diagnostic tests to learn key information specific to the patient, eliminating unnecessary testing and incorrect diagnoses. This evaluation allows us to modify treatment to cater to specific patients, thereby removing unneeded fees and treatments.

When trying to maintain a high level of care, everyone involved should be able to see the big picture of what they’re trying to accomplish along with how they can best serve patients and beat out the competition. In addition to direct marketing strategies that target employers and managed care, a center of excellence must position itself in its regional market as the single expert source for information on back and neck pain. By offering a comprehensive menu of specific information on their Web sites, health care practices educate patients, ultimately helping reach the primary goal of providing the best, most accurate care.

Reduce treatment variation with clinical protocols

Many specialties have wide treatment variation and sub optimal care. The first step to improving care through a center of excellence model is to work with the physicians involved to develop uniform clinical protocols that reduce treatment variation. Then by collecting data and comparing clinical outcome and functional status, treatment can be improved.

Prizm has developed proprietary binary path protocols that enable physicians to unify their care and ensure that individuals are getting the right thing at the right time every time, which is the end goal of any quality improvement endeavor. Further, Prizm's protocols enable a center to take a pre-set price for an episode of care.

Need more information on back and neck pain?
Click here to view resource books on spine problems, what causes back pain, what causes neck pain and when to see the doctor.