Health Care And Quality Care

“There are three basic goals for a National Health Care System; 1) keeping people healthy, 2) treating the sick and 30 protecting families against financial ruin from medical bills”, (Physicians for a National Health Program, 2016). No truer statement could there possibly be written or proclaimed as there is a crisis in healthcare costs across the United States. United States, one of the most developed western country, yet we suffer from – higher infant mortality rates, have shorter life spans and are affected by more chronic disease and or illness – than our contemporaries all while spending the most for insurance per capita and less annual doctor visits with less physicians, (OECD Health Data 2015). There is a question to be answered, “why”, why are we trailing our contemporaries and more important than that is, is our National Health Care system really working for us? The year 2010 was the beginning of change in the United States where we transitioned from primarily private insurance and welfare to a universal healthcare model, under President Obama with the signing into Law of the Affordable Health Care Act March of 2010. The purpose of the Affordable health care act is to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable healthcare, however in 2016 we are still questioning we’ve been successful based on funding, government sponsored healthcare programs, effects on the current HCO, elderly, military and accessibility.

Health care spending in the United States of America as a percentage of the economy has reached astonishing heights, equating to 17.7 percent. This number is shocking when compared to other counties; in Australia health care is 8.9 percent, in United Kingdom 9.4 percent, in Canada 11.2 percent. If the American health care system were to hypothetically become its own economy, it would be the fifth-largest in the world. While these statistics sound troubling, they lead us to look for answers about the problems surrounding our system. The first health insurance company was created in the 1930s to give all American families an equal opportunity for hospital care and eventually led to a nationwide economic and social controversy that erupted in the 1990s and continued to be shaped by the government, insurance companies, doctors, and American citizens. In this paper, I will go in to detail about the various opinions regarding the controversy, the history behind health insurance companies, and the main dilemmas brought out by the health care crisis. Greedy insurance companies combined with high costs of doctor visits and pharmaceutical drugs or the inefficient hospitals all over America can only describe the beginning to this in depth crisis. Recently, the United States health care industry has become know for the outrageous costs of insurance models, developments of various social and health services programs, and the frequent changes in medicinal technology.

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.

Healthcare is a hot topic for all Americans and everyone has their own views on how the healthcare system should run. This includes the public and the politicians. Today we are going to address issues in the United States healthcare system including access to care for both physical and financial reasons, how payment for care runs the industry, and quality of care in the aspects of internal factors including: public insurance plans, and private insurance, as well as the external factor of the economy.

Steven Brill’s, America’s Bitter Pill, finds that there is a common theme among all factors of healthcare: access is restricted, the cost is unwarranted, and quality is disproportionate to the costs.

The U.S. healthcare framework fails to meet expectations contrasted and different nations on various measurements access, quality, and productivity (Baicker, 2004). The United States spends on healthcare services twice per capita what the normal industrialized country spends, hence elaborating of inefficiencies in management of these services (Baicker, 2004). High U.S. healthcare care spending without similar increases in health results has driven a few specialists to reason that the U.S. healthcare framework is on the level part of the generation bend for healthcare administrations, or maybe past the purpose of consistent losses. An alternate conclusion could be drawn in particular, that the United States is not even on the effective developmental point. When the point of consideration is characterized as the treatment for a given condition, the expense of providing any certain level of consideration is exceedingly variable (Baicker, 2004). Indeed, even within a specified geographic range, the expense of healthcare say, a cardiac arrest, relies on upon the doctor 's healthcare service and facility to which the ambulance brings an individual. It will influence duration spent in the emergency unit; numerous specialists included in treatment, and instances of readmission to the clinic after release.

In the last two decades, there have been countless debates on the need to reform the United States of American health care system. The reform is to enable a more comprehensive system that will address pressing issues such as the growing number of uninsured American. The USA is one of the leading countries when in to healthcare and its systems. It is also the country with the most spending when it comes to healthcare. According to an article published in the commonwealth fund, the United States health care system is found to be the most expensive in the world, but it also shows the U.S. underperforms relative to other countries on most dimensions of performance (Davis, Stremikis, Squires, & Schoen, 2014).

“The biggest problem with health care is not with insurance or politics. It is that we are measuring the wrong things the wrong way” (Kaplan & Porter, 2011, p. 46). Total healthcare expenditures and expenditures as a percentage of GDP have been considerably higher in the U.S. Hospital care, physician and clinical services, and drug prescription expenditures have been the principal components contributing to growth in healthcare expenditures in the U.S. compared to other countries. The study also analyses and compares the growth of healthcare costs. Three different perspectives on the health care “cost crisis” are understanding the value of health care, most health care costs are fixed and healthcare cost covered by health insurance program. In this paper share ideas to help solve the cost crisis in healthcare.

The goal of the current American health care system is centered around making a profit. As discussed in both Health Care Meltdown and How We Do Harm, many doctors today are making a profit on over diagnosing and over charging, leaving patients with undesired care and little money. This system is not only straining practitioners and over treating patients, but drastically increasing the cost of care in America. As discussed in detail in each of the books, there are steps that can be taken to increase access to health care while decreasing expenditure.

Healthcare performance is strongly dependent on the economy, and on the health systems themselves. There are many debates on the type of health care system. Insurance companies are the crucial investor that is not only demanded but also an essential priority for most societies due to some of the complex challenges in the health system, in part derived from new pressures, such as ageing populations, growing prevalence of chronic illnesses, and intensive use of expensive yet vital health technologies (Frenk, J. 2004). Government has a diverse role in the health care system. However, based on the need and preference of majorities of American societies, a system with single government control in U.S, might not be effective and qualitative in long run. The present multi payer system is more effective in health care delivery. The reform in the overall management system of government organization focusing its role on supervising and controlling the health services’ system than distributing one is necessary.

With incredibly high costs and a lack of high quality care, the multitier healthcare system of the United States has several major flaws. The system we have established has proven to no longer be practical in most, if not all major areas. Improvement initiatives (i.e. Oregon Health Plan, Leapfrog, Lean Manufacturing, and Pay-for-Performance) have been implemented into the current system, and all of them are under experimental measures to determine if they can bring pressure off of the healthcare system. With the increasing support for universal health coverage in order to decrease health disparities in the country, the current quality initiatives seem to be the best ways to improve the quality of care, reduce costs, and increase equality in healthcare. The purpose of this paper is to scope this social problem over the last 30-50 years and carefully examine and predict future problems that may arise if the system is not corrected promptly (Pushman & Chung, 2009).

Managed care is the formation of a delivery system of medical assistance and other associated programs through contracted arrangements with additional partners or organizations. On a global scale, we are witness to a wide-range of health care delivery systems that have contrasting opinions on the financial crisis that is affecting every designed scheme. The United States health care system has continued to evolve through the years, so it is a continuous evolution of arrangements to address the needs or requirements of the addressing a health-conscious public. The U.S Health Care System is a complex arrangement (Figure 1), that is facing a multitude of issues that affect the financial ability to maintain continued

The US healthcare system has recently undergone major shift from an indemnity plan to a managed care system. This has accompanied the rise in health care cost, along with increase in our population and increase in numbers of people without health insurance. There are important situational and economic factors, in addition to cultural beliefs that contribute to the change. In the traditional US health care system, patient received complex care from non-profit independent hospitals. The insurance reimbursed hospitals, physicians, and other providers on a fee-for-service basis and did not intervene in medical decision making. Physicians acted as patient’s agents. Whereas, the managed care focuses on reducing overutilizing and unnecessary utilization,

Some hospital trusts and health authorities consistently outperform others on different dimensions of performance. Why? There is some evidence that “management matters”, as well as the combined efforts of individual clinicians and teams. However, studies that have been conducted on the link between the organisation

The healthcare system plays a key role in the economic stability of our country, as every year trillions are spent in attempt to combat disease and health issues that plaque humanity. As it makes up a significant amount of the expenditures in the economy, so the costs associated with health care of those in pain from illness and injury, including lost productivity, increased need of assistance in living and also the cost of death in some cases, is important to the economic stability and over all standard of living in our country. The key to economic prosperity is balancing the need for care with the costs of illness to keep as many people healthy and well without breaking the bank of collective society. The costs of healthcare have been increasingly problematic in recent years with so many issues surrounding the current system. With the “total health care spending in the United States expected to reach $4.8 trillion in 2021, up from $2.6 trillion in 2010 and $75 billion in 1970, meaning that health care spending will account for nearly 20 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), or one-fifth of the U.S. economy, by 2021” (Aetna). With this in mind it is apparent that as we look at the trillion-dollar industry of the medical community it seems that it needs to be a major focus of our nation as a whole and with the many issues come many creative solutions. First let us analyze the reasons behind the current cost and the major problems facing this industry and than discus what