Financial Costs Of Low-Quality Service Due To Increasing Hospital Stay Length, Costos Financieros De La Baja Calidad Por Aumento De La Estancia Hospitalaria

Service Institutions of Health require assessing the financial impact of low-quality costs as a tool for decision making and continuous improvement of its overall management. This research analyzes the causes and costs of providing low-quality service and permanence in a hospital in the year 2015. This research provides a mixed study followed by a triangulation design and explanatory scope. Data were identified by two clinical auditors with extensive experience and analyzed by three researchers from different areas of health sciences. As a result, six quality failures were found: delay in the procedures (1.3 days), infection associated with health care (1.4 days), delay in decision making medical management (0.4 days), delay in paraclinic report (0.04 days) and processes which do not show any evolution (0.01 days). These facts constitute 80% of the causes of long permanence in the hospital and costs US$1,380,817. We show that most of problems related to quality are multi-causal and not only depend on the institution, but also the socioeconomic conditions of the patient and the health firms