Cost and Quality in Healthcare

Rising health care costs became an issue after the Medicare and Medicaid programs were formed in 1965 and have continued to be a factor in the United States economy since then. “By1970, U.S. government expenditures for health care services and supplies had grown by 140%, from $7.9 billion to $18.9 billion.”() By the 1990s the annual increase in the government health care expenditures was finally brought under control and has fluctuated between a 5% and 8% increase each year since then. This essay will discuss the different factors contributing to the rising costs of health care in the United States, as well as how the cost of health care affects the accessibility and quality of medical care throughout American history.

The articles I chose for my annotated bibliography were about healthcare cost and quality. The theme in many of these articles was about healthcare cost and does it affect patients experience. In some settings like hospitals, the cost of quality affects patient experience. The largest component of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product goes to healthcare spending (17% in 2009), and yet the quality is unsatisfactory. It was also interesting to find out that more people die each year in the United States from medical errors than from highway accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS (National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine, 2002).

The IOM Report Brief is a significant revelation that indicates where the US healthcare delivery system lacks in offering quality care to every in the US. This report not only discusses the problems in the healthcare system but also presents recommendations as to how the government can improve it. This paper examines as to what the progress is made in the field of healthcare after this report was written.

Quality of service should be one of the most important and well monitored goals for any medical facility, from your small town family doctor’s office, to nursing and rehabilitation facilities, all the way to large hospital systems. The quality of service provided in a facility doesn’t just affect the patients. Quality of service also affects the bottom line, or whether or not the hospital system is profitable. In order to better access the system’s current quality of service and to devise improvement plans I would need to explore issues that have significant effect on quality of care such as, patient satisfaction and retention, medical errors

Quality Improvement (QI) is an organizational approach leading to the quality of patient care and patient services through use of specific guidelines, principles, and methods to ensure quality of care for every patient and health care facility throughout the world. Quality outcomes focus on the principles of quality management. These measurements investigate the quality of care, patient outcomes and consumer needs, through being part of the participant group. This quality improvement discussion will review the foundational frameworks of QI and explanation of each framework in detail. Included in this QI report will be

Though the spending has lessened in recent years ,when compared with other economically developed countries the cost of the health care in U.S is much higher and ranks poorly on quality indicators (Burke & Ryan, 2014).Evidence suggest that patient quality outcomes not generally correlated with variation spending .Beneficiaries are expected and deserved for high quality care within affordable

A challenge that the healthcare nation is facing is to provide the quality of care that is expected and obtain low healthcare cost. Working hand in hand with the private sector and government is in hopes of improving the quality of care that each patient deserves and maintaining the cost so that research can continue. The purpose of this paper is to look into relationships between healthcare cost and quality healthcare.

Substandard quality of health care is duly recognized as a major form of medical crises with potential to jeopardize the functioning and purpose of the American health care system. Whereas on the one hand medical costs of treatment are rising, on the other malpractices and non compliance on the part of medical professionals and institutions compounds the problem and seriously questions the quality of health care being provided to citizens. However, before proceeding further it is important to understand what is exactly meant by the substandard quality of care. The substandard quality of

Total health care spending in 1975 consumed about 8 percent of the U.S economy in 1975. Today it accounts for nearly 16 percent of the gross domestic product and is projected to reach nearly 20 percent by 2016 (Orszag, 2007). One of the reasons for rising health care costs is due to costly new medical technologies. Some of these new medical advancements allow for physicians to treat previously untreatable conditions. It is unclear as to whether these new options are cost effective. Most people believe that more expensive care equates to better health care. There is significant evidence to support that more expensive care does not necessarily mean higher-quality care. This suggests that there may be an opportunity to reduce health care spending without impairing outcomes The most compelling evidence of that opportunity comes from the substantial geographic differences in spending on health care within the United States-and the fact that they do not translate into higher life expectancy or measured

Quality and financial viability being closely tied is an extremely salient point. Furthermore, the Affordable Care Act has influenced the requirement for high-quality, cost-effective care provision by implementing Value Based Purchasing (Aroh, Colella, Douglas, & Eddings, 2015). In addition, there are presently Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) quality indicators that effect reimbursement for hospitals (Xu, Burgess Jr, Cabral, Soria-Saucedo, & Kazis, 2015). For example, if a facility does not meet the indicator threshold for catheter associated urinary tract infections, central line infections and/or pressure ulcers their reimbursement is affected. Given that the quality of care provided by a hospital is

More methods are being created and taken place to ensure, inspect, repair and correct performance where it is needed to do so. MCOs have developed a new status quo of improving and performing better every year with tools such as the “Quality Drivers of Care” (Miller, 2004). One of these tools, perhaps the most important one, is the voluntary accreditation of MCOs by organizations such as the National Committee on Quality Assurance, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, and the Utilization Review Accreditation Commission, among others. While MCOs are not required to do so they choose to, to show the industry that they are being assessed in the quality and service they provide and that improvements are in fact being made. They are also drivers in effectiveness and quality assurance as MCOs now find themselves competing amongst each other not only on costs but also on their effectiveness.

The quality of health care in America is very scary; if you are lucky to have a great job with an excellent insurance that will cover any health scare than you’re very fortunate. The insurance companies are playing God with who will live or who will die. Americans pay more on health care than any other countries and still have to deal with paying high co-pays and medicines that is not covered by their insurance. Healthcare is more vital to people than most other goods or services, and we have a strong shared interest in guaranteeing that the healthcare system works as well as it can. The consequences of poor quality can be awful. People spend a lot on healthcare and health insurance, and these costs have risen much more rapidly over time than

Time and again, hospitals are often called upon to improve the quality of its various health care activities in order to better serve patients and immediate communities. A quality improvement plan thus helps in the selection of high priority areas and the utilization of evidence-based practices in conducting the improvement (Berenguer et al., 2010). In view of the healthcare improvement needs of Sunlight Hospital, this paper seeks to classify and justify five measurements of quality of care in a hospital, specify the four main features in a health care organization that can be used in the design of a quality improvement plan, and suggest the salient reasons quality of care would add value and create a competitive advantage

Quality is one of the most essential elements of healthcare. As stated by the Agency of Health Research and Quality, “Everyday, millions of Americans receive high-quality health care that helps to maintain or restore their health and ability to function” (Agency of Health Research and Quality, 2014). Improvements have become vital to the success of health care organizations and in the Healthcare Quality Book, it is explained that quality in the U.S. healthcare system is not at the standard that it should be (Ransom, Joshi, Nash & Ransom, 2008). Although this has been a reoccurring issue, attempts to fix the insufficiency have been less successful than expected.

We hear a lot about the quality of Healthcare within the United States in today’s day in age. Health care quality is pretty much getting the right care to the right patient on time at the right time every time the quality of health care affects everyone in the United States and determines what kind of care is given. In this article the role attachment is how to get good quality of healthcare and where it already stands. There are tons of people out there with health care who can afford and there are those out there that can’t afford it. Although those things are important what kinds of care are they offering out there and if the quality there offering is right? More people today are receiving healthcare as some are not receiving healthcare and some due to experiences some are receiving more than they need. With that being said the United States has not met the standards that they should have in order to have quality healthcare. What particularly is the quality of good healthcare? To me in order to get good quality health care it should be available and affordable also care choices and costs and benefits that will allow patients to make decisions about the level of care that is best fit for them also respectful such as privacy, comfort, convenience of care, and security and not discriminating because most of times people get discriminated against whether they have Medicaid, Medicare, or