Health Care Changes and Challenges

This paper pertains to the marketing of Health Care Services and provides the steps and history of marketing in health care and the effects of marketing on the health care delivery system from 1950 to 1990. It introduces the health care consumers and their role in the marketing process as well as the factors that influence consumer behavior. These factors influence the success of marketing in health care. It also provides the requirements for successful marketing and current techniques and strategies used by health care organizations.

The health care system must change to improve our nation’s health and takes strong steps to address the unsustainable growth of health care costs in America. We still have a long way to go before our health system become effective. We still have population that do not have insurance, have difficulties accessing their health care, or their needs are not met within the healthcare system. It is an investment in prevention and wellness and increasing access to primary care physician.

Our healthcare system is in a state of constant change. Just as the industry was adapting to the demands of countless healthcare reforms, the fate of regulations like the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and others like it, dangle in the wind. As the country transitions to a newly appointed administration, there is an increasing level of uncertainty among industry leaders. Federal, state, and local mandates continue to drive the need to improve the quality, costs, and outcomes of care which add to an already overburdened and burnout system. These coupled with our highly secular society who is primarily focused on the treating and curing illness through advanced technology, medications, and procedures has resulted in a

Health Care in the United States is a vast industry that has many different types of people involved in the delivery of care. There are stakeholders that affect the daily operations of health care and they are not necessarily in a hospital setting. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, AHRQ, defines a “stakeholder” as persons or groups who have a vested interest in the clinical decision and the evidence that supports that decision ("Effective health care," 2011, p. 1). These stakeholders are making decisions that impact costs, procedures, and the future of

Health care is continuously changing. In the past several years there has been a large shift in the focus in hospitals. The focus has changed from the staff to patients, patient satisfaction, and cutting costs in order to budget more tightly (Tarrant & Sabo, 2010). Because of this, along with the extreme increase in a number of patients seen and the acuity of the patients, nurses are being overworked. As a result, role conflict and ambiguity is becoming an issue. The purpose of this paper is to discuss role conflict and ambiguity, its significance, and its application to nursing.

Decrease in funding is another economic challenge in health care. The amount of finances coming from various sources not just the

The health care sector is impacted by numerous changes and challenges, such as increasing need for health care provision, changing demands from patients or rapidly evolving technologies. In the context of evolving technologies, the developments occur not only in the actual provision of the medical act, but also at the level of the complementary operations, such as health care information management.

Health care has been inclined by several significant events that have occurred throughout history. Change is the primary focus on what has shaped health care and continues to by pain of improvement, and to focus on the importance of our population and their needs. Though there are several influences politics, finance, culture, technology, health trends, and religions they all play a major contribution towards shaping the healthcare field. (Shi & Singh, 2012) Throughout this paper we will present significant events that have changed and affected health care today, give details about how the historical evolution of health care

Our healthcare system needs major restructuring. Major improvements needs to begin with "all health care organizations, professional groups, and private and public purchasers should adopt as their explicit purpose to continually reduce the burden of illness, injury, and disability, and to improve the health and functioning of the people of the United States", (Crossing the ……, 2001).

One of the greatest changes in healthcare in the past ten years has been the rise of managed care, much to the displeasure of many patients and physicians alike. Managed care arose out of concern about spiraling healthcare costs and was designed to encourage physicians to give patients treatments that were cost-effective out of their own financial interests. "The consumer strategy was directed at imposing some barriers to use by levying various forms of co-insurance. The most common approaches used either deductibles (where the consumer paid the first portion of the bill a technique familiar in other types of insurance) or co-payments (where the consumer paid a portion of the bill and the insurance company the rest) or a combination of both' (Kane et al 1994). Managed care has given health insurance companies an increasingly significant voice in how treatment is administered and allocated. Managed care has proliferated in the past decade despite considerable criticism of the practice of 'nickel and diming' patients as well as the considerable bureaucratic red tape it is has generated. Also, research indicates that healthy, well-insured patients tend to over-consume care without meaningful co-pays but poorer, sicker patients can be deterred even by moderate co-payments and suffer negative health consequences (Kane et al 1994). However, managed care has not gone away and is a reality that all healthcare

The health care industry is one of the most dynamic and delicate industries in the U.S. having experienced healthy and substantial changes for the last thirty years most of which have aimed to improve health care management and services delivery to the patients. The changes have enabled the integration of technology into the industry such as in the area of informatics, science and research and payment services and clinical treatments. The health care sector has introduced various changes to address disease and health care management such as the Modernization Act of 2003, the Patient Protection Act and Affordable Act, which aim at improving health provision and most

The health care industry exist to provide preventative measures, diagnose health conditions, repair, and provide services to improve the quality of life. The cost of health care continues to rise each year. Health care fraud is a factor that continues to plague the health care industry. The affect health care fraud has on hospitals, is the increasing cost of medical services. The following research will examine and evaluate how organizational structure and governance, culture and the lack of focus on social responsibility affects on health care fraud. The following research will also include recommendations for prevention of health care fraud, recommendations for

The concept of health services marketing is centered on “the analysis, planning, implementation, and control of carefully formulated programs designed to promote voluntary exchanges of values with target markets with the purpose of achieving organizational objectives (Longest et al. 2000, p 358). The marketing department of any health care organization requires knowledge of the current and future needs and desires of the target market, which will allow strategic planners to determine services and products that can be offered. An assessment of the target markets

The healthcare system has seen significant change over the past decade. This is due to improved technology, healthcare reform, and the economic crisis (Hendren, 2010). With the changes that are occurring,

Using this viewpoint, health care leaders can see the importance of using social media to stay in tuned with what patients are saying. For a health care organization to succeed they must provide quality care and quality service. If the patient population is not satisfied they are likely to vocalize their opinions to friends and families through social media. Health care leaders can create blogs or chats where consumers can express their concerns as a means to fix issues the organization may be experiencing. The information generated from social media can then be used by health care leaders to improve the organization, with the hopes of making their organization a leader in their community.