Healthcare policy presents multiple barriers, from organizational challenges to inefficient policy design and restricted resources. Despite the obstacles that affect health policy development and the challenges of policy faced by the healthcare system, it’s essential to understand what healthcare policy is, why it’s important to your day-to-day functions, and how it actually works.
Healthcare policies provide operational guidance and help with standardizing care. Overall, they are the backbone of a well-functioning healthcare system. They ensure proper healthcare navigation as well as effective and equitable clinical care to patients.
Regardless of your role in the industry, understanding the relationship between healthcare professionals and policy can be beneficial.
Understanding Healthcare Policy
In simple terms, healthcare policies are the rules, regulations, and complete guidelines established to achieve specific healthcare goals. Healthcare policy as a whole consists of a variety of fundamental topics, such as health insurance and managed care. Policy also covers other sub-areas of the industry, such as mental, global, and public health, which are just three categories of health policy.
Understanding healthcare policy is only half of what healthcare professionals need to know — you also need to understand its purpose and how it works throughout society. Health policy serves as a framework for decision-making and actions across different focus areas, including patient care and pharmaceuticals.
On a broader scale, health policy is also designed to have significant positive impacts on things such as:
- Clinical care improvement
- Equitable access
- Disease prevention
- Range of private sector involvement
- Promotion of healthcare communication
Overall, health policy provides a direction for healthcare delivery and is meant to make healthcare safer for the public and professionals alike.
The Importance of Health and Safety Policy
Over 3 million annual deaths are caused by unsafe care. Healthcare policy affects workers and patients by preventing potential incidents of unsafe care delivery. This is possible by outlining specific regulations, standardizing care, and presenting methods for adhering to all regulations related to your role and specialty.
Consider the primary reasons why health and safety policies are crucial to your day-to-day functions.
Protecting Patient Health
Health and safety policies are designed to protect patients from preventable harm. These policies include guidelines on infection control and medication management, safe patient handling practices, and reporting processes. By adhering to these policies, healthcare providers can minimize the risk of hospital-acquired infections, medication errors, and other adverse events.
Ensuring Provider Safety
Healthcare workers face multiple hazards, from exposure to infectious diseases to the strenuous physical demands of delivering consistent patient care. Healthcare policies ensure continued safety by focusing on risk management and compliance and centering internal guidelines on critical aspects of care.
Compliance With Regulations
The importance of health policy spans into regulation adherence and directly affects what healthcare professionals can and can’t do throughout different processes, from patient care to administrative tasks. Overall, it helps healthcare facilities comply with local, state, and federal regulations.
Promoting a Culture of Safety
Healthcare policies make it more possible to meet regulatory requirements in industries considered to be high-risk. This type of standardization aims to improve communication, reduce errors, and improve overall staff performance. This affects your role as a healthcare provider or administrator, considering that policy provides ways to organize performance tracking and policy adherence.
Enhancing Patient Trust
The patients you work with and the care you provide them are the primary reasons healthcare policy exists. Consider that at least 37% of millennials don’t trust the healthcare providers they see. Healthcare policy is meant to decrease the percentage of distrust in health providers across all age groups.
Clear health and safety policies demonstrate a commitment to high standards of care, patient satisfaction, and more trust in the healthcare system.
Making Policy Adherence Less Complicated
Healthcare policy is designed to streamline operations, facilitate more effective communication, enhance training and development opportunities, and guide better clinical decision-making tactics. The importance of health and safety policy directly affects your day-to-day functions, whether you’re a provider, compliance professional, or administrator.
While health policy consists of various moving parts, a primary way to approach and monitor policy adherence is to use automated software options. Doing so eliminates the manual component of policy training management and simplifies the way staff receive updates.
To learn more about simplifying your healthcare and safety policy development and distribution, schedule a demo today.
