Impact of Implementing Triple Aim Goals Nationally
Current reformations within the healthcare sector have been purposely designed to change the mode of provision of healthcare to different population groups, improve the general experiences of patients and at the same time focus on reducing the average national healthcare costs per head. The three main aims of the reforms are popularly referred to as the triple aim goals. Triple aim goals are designed to improve outcomes, although the process of measuring outcomes and identifying factors that constitute of the improvement present challenges to the triple aim objectives. For instance, we need to understand how the modification of one aim affects the rest of the triple aim goals. A hospital would implement a strategy of cost reduction through reduction of the LOS-Length of stay in hospitals but this would present adverse effects to the patients i.e. it would negatively affect the patient experiences and affect the clinical outcomes of the treatment thereby posing further risks to patient safety, readmission and finally resulting in higher costs, the very objective that was intended to be reduced.
To achieve long-term implementation of the triple aim goals within the healthcare sectors requires an effective balance among the triple aim outcomes. Based on this, there is need for all healthcare organizations to analyze their facility whether it would help improve the outcomes with the right focus of strategical organizational efforts. At the same time, such assessments will help identify the usefulness of outcomes ot the patient populations targeted while also identifying if the facility focus encompasses all aspects of the triple aim goals. At the same time, an organization’s maturity needs to be evaluated to identify the capability of a healthy facility to implement rapid outcome improvement procedures in short cycles and ensure that meaningful measure of outcomes is achieved.
Alternatively the healthcare facilities would perform a needs analysis for their patients since every domain of patients may have unique requirements. The facilities in collaboration with the healthcare sector stakeholders would design questionnaires to establish their specific measures of preferences, document, classify and evaluate the patients attributes i.e. based on gender, age, race and classifying them based on the unique requirements of each domain, and finally,, analysis of health reports to predict future expectations and align the triple goals to accommodate future expectations.
Implementation of the triple aim goals framework is critical in designing improvement within a meaningful context while also ensuring that the improvement of outcomes is measurable, visible, is relevant to the patient populations and is meaningful. This information is critical to organizational management as it helps align the health facility’s priorities to the expected outcomes. The successful implementation of the triple aim goals on healthcare facilities levels will have a national level impact. For starters, the three aims goals will help improve the national healthcare system by streamlining defects that previously hindered the provision of services to all people. Safety is among the main factors of consideration that focuses on centering provision of healthcare services on the patients, efficiency and equity in service provision. The current healthcare sector is money-oriented meaning that they are motivated by cash incentives or payments (Berwick et al., 2008); this means, for instance, to improve efficiency, the healthcare facilities would strive to increase the number of patient beds and improve the systems required to serve patients simultaneously.