EFFECTS OF INCOMPLETE PATIENT HEALTH INFORMATION IN ENSURING QUALITY PATIENT CARE

As the primary communication tool between physicians, other healthcare providers and patients, adequate concise patient health information is the key to good and quality patient care and is paramount to continuity of care but when there is inadequacy in patient’s health information, the reverse is the case. Inadequate patient information is a barrier to providing high quality care. Documentation that fails to concisely convey a patient’s problem risks patient’s safety and obfuscates any effort to estimate the quality of the care rendered. Inadequate patient health information can cause a doctor to lose his license, compromise safe patient care, cause loss of revenue/reimbursement, result in poor patient care by other healthcare team members, contribute to inaccurate quality and care information, cause loss of life etc. The general objective of this study is to examine the effects of inadequate concise patient health information in the quality treatment of patients.