Quality and Safety in Healthcare

Running head: QUALITY AND SAFETY IN HEALTHCARE
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Quality and Safety in Healthcare
Student’s Name
Intuitional Affiliation

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Introduction
Many firms and sectors in the world are striving to meet the need of their
customers. A firm that is offering quality good and services to its customer is likely to
perform better compared to those who don’t offer quality and safe services and goods.
The quality of a commodity is the degree to which a good or a service meets the needs of
a customer. Safety is the assurance of no risk when using a particular commodity. In
healthcare, quality means the acting of delivering the best possible services to the patients
using the appropriate resources and knowledge while safety is the act of reducing risk due
to medical error or medical to a minimum acceptable level.
The objective of this report is to address the need for quality and safety
improvement in the healthcare sector in Australia using theoretical concepts of quality
and safety to a health setting. I will also include strengths, weaknesses and challenging
issues in the Australian healthcare sector and recommend a new course of action.

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Australian Health System.
In Australia, healthcare is provided by universal health care and private providers.
The main health care services are offered publicly in the primary health care and public
hospitals while the private sector provides the remaining services such as dental and
physiotherapy and private hospitals. Medicare Australia is in control of administering
health care. Medicare its mainly concerned with payment of nursing staff and doctor and
the funding of state-run clinics and hospitals. In the year 2005/2006, Australian statistic
data on health sector showed that the country had one doctor per 322 people and one
clinic bed per 244 patients (Cormie et al.,2015). The statistics also show that the country
currently has 70,200 medical specialist that includes the doctors and other specialist and
257,200 registered nurses. Despite growth in the workforce in the healthcare sector in the
country, there is still a deficiency of health professionals.
Standards in the Australian health system
Australian commission of safety and quality sets the rules that control and guide
the scope of practice in the healthcare sector. In every three years, the commission
accredits health care services in the country against National Quality Health services
(NSQHS) standards. The process of accreditation involves quality assurance methods and
checking whether the systems are working effectively to offer the expected standards of
quality and safety.
The commission provides accrediting resources to aid staff who are ready and
preparing for the assessment on its standards. These resources provide the necessary
health policies and supporting procedures that are used by staff or students to meet the