Reflective Writing 2: Triple Aim Initiative in Healthcare Settings

This reflective essay delves into critical aspects of healthcare, focusing on the Triple Aim initiative, patient safety, patient satisfaction, and cost-effectiveness. The author examines the role of the Joint Commission in ensuring quality healthcare and explores strategies to improve the patient experience, enhance population health, and reduce healthcare costs. The essay discusses the implementation of the Triple Aim initiative, particularly in long-term care facilities, and proposes methods to improve nursing practices and minimize medical errors. The author, considering the role of Director of Nursing and Healthcare, emphasizes the importance of new health policies, training programs, and stringent guidelines to enhance patient safety and satisfaction while reducing treatment costs. The essay concludes by advocating for the establishment of the Triple Aim initiative to improve healthcare access and quality for all citizens.

1
Running head: REFLECTIVE WRITING
REFLECTIVE WRITING
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

REFLECTIVE WRITING
2
INTRODUCTION
Patient safety, patient experience, patient satisfaction and cost effectivity of
treatments are few of the main parameters that should be improved and developed in the
healthcare system across the globe to increase life expectancy and cure from most of the
diseases. The role of Joint Commission in ensuring the provision of quality healthcare to the
patients is abundant. It is an organization that provides health care units across the globe with
knowledge in various health related scenarios, expert opinions about complicated medical
cases so that the patient condition improves and no harm is caused to them knowingly or
unknowingly (The Joint Commission, 2020). In this essay, the principle and application of
Triple Aim initiative to improve the quality care, safety and satisfaction of the patients in
acute care setting, the way in which the treatment cost can be reduced and the practices to
minimize medical errors among front line nursing staff will be discussed in detail.
DISCUSSION
The Triple Aim initiative taken by Institute for Healthcare Improvement is a
framework that can be followed to optimize the health system performance. The main
principles of the Triple Aim initiative is to improve the patient experience in the health care
facility, which includes quality care and satisfaction, to improve the health of the total
population and to reduce the cost for availing health care facilities. The United States is
considered as the costliest place for undergoing treatment while suffering from diseases
(Institute for Healthcare Improvement, 2020). This have led to problems in the country
mostly for the patients who need a long term care facility. Majority of the population can not
support to finance the long term care facilities present in the United States currently (Chari,
Engberg, Ray & Mehrotra, 2015). Therefore, being in power I would definitely look into this
matter and would find out way in which the Triple Aim initiative can be implemented in

REFLECTIVE WRITING
3
every hospitals present in the United States, mostly in the long term care facilities. This
would help patients belonging to every financial category in availing the treatment.
I would implement the Triple Aim initiative in practicality, however it first needs
quite a few parameters and factors to look at that should be improved or developed. The
factors that should be improved include redesigning of primary care services, training nurses
and executing all the system simultaneously. After setting all the factors, I would go ahead
and implement it. The new infrastructural development in health care setting would help the
nurses provide optimum treatment to the patients. The training that the nurses would receive
help them to implement all their learning in providing quality care to the patients. It would
also help the nurses in ensuring the safety of the admitted patients. Implementation of this
technique would especially help the patients requiring long term care because of acute
illnesses. Implementation of this initiative in practicality would lead the nurses to provide the
required treatment and care they need. This would also help the Palliative Care services. The
patients admitted to these care centers are availing this service, as the end of life care
treatment is extremely necessary to support them in living a better life in jovial mood
(Whittington, Nolan, Lewis & Torres, 2015). Thus, the principles of Triple Aim initiative can
be applied to improve the quality, safety and satisfaction in the long term care setting.
The roles and responsibilities I would be having in the post of Director of Nursing and
Healthcare is enormous. The main target that I would be having while working in this post is
to improve cost effective quality care, patient satisfaction and patient safety. These are quite
essential factors that need proper maintenance and regulation to ease up the process of
availing treatment for anyone who are in need of it. The cost effectivity of the treatment is
one of the main factor for which many of the individuals belonging to weaker financial
background can not avail the treatment. I would urge the government to design new health

REFLECTIVE WRITING
4
policies that will help in bringing the treatment cost down. I would myself study the statistics
and look for ways in which the cost can be brought down. Designing new insurance policies
and making it available for the population belonging to weaker financial strata of the society.
The patient satisfaction and safety also needs to be improved as the instances of medical
accidents are increasing. I would form a team of nurses and doctors to look into the matter of
violation of safety in nursing, revise the nursing guidelines, and make some stringent rules
that should be followed in every hospitals to ensure patient safety. I would also include
special training programs for the nurses to enhance their skills so that they might ensure
patient safety. Patient satisfaction is something that I think would result from the provision of
appropriate and quality health services in the community (Ammouri et al., 2015).
Medical errors can be defined as the mistakes that the nurses generally commit while
attending patients. It is a serious concern in the United States and also leads to quite a few
number of deaths annually. The most common medical errors that have been identified are
errors of omission where a nurse forgets about taking any necessary actions to ensure patient
safety and errors of commission where the nurse takes a wrong action. Both the cases are
seen to be prevalent in the medical system. These errors can be minimized by designing
stringent policies and providing interactive trainings to the nurses so that they do not commit
any such mistakes. I would order the hospital authorities to print the newly designed
guidelines for avoiding medical errors and circulate to all the nursing members who should
always keep the policy in their mind while attending the patients. I would also initiate a
penalty system where a nurse identified to have committed any such errors would be
penalized according to the grievousness of the patient condition (Rodziewicz, & Hipskind,
2019). These practises might help to minimize the medical errors altogether.

REFLECTIVE WRITING
5
CONCLUSION
Thus, to conclude the essay it can be stated that establishment of Triple Aim initiative
in a more stringent would lead every citizen of the United States to avail the treatment and
would also help the people in need for long term treatment facilities. Stringent rules should be
made to ensure patient satisfaction and safety. The medical errors would also decrease by
following the guidelines more seriously.

REFLECTIVE WRITING
6
REFERENCES
Ammouri, A. A., Tailakh, A. K., Muliira, J. K., Geethakrishnan, R., & Al Kindi, S. N.
(2015). Patient safety culture among nurses. International nursing review, 62(1), 102-
110.
Chari, A. V., Engberg, J., Ray, K. N., & Mehrotra, A. (2015). The opportunity costs of
informal elder‐care in the United States: new estimates from the American time use
survey. Health services research, 50(3), 871-882.
Institute for Healthcare Improvement. (2020). The IHI Triple Aim | IHI - Institute for
Healthcare Improvement. Retrieved 29 March 2020, from
http://www.ihi.org/Engage/Initiatives/TripleAim/Pages/default.aspx
Rodziewicz, T. L., & Hipskind, J. E. (2019). Medical error prevention. In StatPearls
[Internet]. StatPearls Publishing.
The Joint Commission. (2020). About Us. Retrieved 29 March 2020, from
https://www.jointcommission.org/en/about-us/
Whittington, J. W., Nolan, K., Lewis, N., & Torres, T. (2015). Pursuing the triple aim: the
first 7 years. The Milbank Quarterly, 93(2), 263-300.