Hospitals And The Health Care System

As the healthcare system prepares to select a outsource company as its vendor for this project, what types of information should it give to and gather from each vendor under consideration?

Universal Healthcare sounds appealing, but it actually lowers the quality and quantity of healthcare services that are rendered to patients, thus downgrading the healthcare system as a whole.  Not having to pay, with everyone having coverage leads to longer wait times for medical service and many people overusing health care services. Implementation of Universal Healthcare in the United States would lead to a detrimental crippling of the nation’s health system. For those countries that have implemented Universal Healthcare or a system similar to it, all or most aspects of the coverage such as cost and care is generally provided by and tightly controlled by the government, a public-sector committee, or employer-based programs, with most of the funding essentially coming from tax revenues or budget cuts in other areas of spending. This paper will conclude with comparing the US healthcare system to others and how the US has one of the most advanced systems in the world.

For a long period of time, hospitals have basically been established as nonprofit and for-profit facilities with several similarities and differences between these categories. Notably, these categories have minimal differences though it's difficult to predict their quality based on their structures. The healthcare field has also been characterized by several trends in the past three decades in attempts to improve the delivery of services and patient outcomes. In relation to the provision of long-term care, hospitals and nursing homes have different roles that enable them to achieve this objective. The hospital sector in the United States has experienced several changes that have contributed to its current state of long-term care policy.

In the past several years, there have been several changes in economic policy at federal and state levels. The two economic policies that present to be the most precedent for healthcare leaders with concern to facility reimbursement are the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the switch from volume to value reimbursement. First, there is the ACA policy, which have affected healthcare facilities and their reimbursement methods. In fact, ever since this policy was implemented, provider reimbursement has started to decrease in terms of fee-for-service payments (The Common-Wealth Fund, 2015). In other words, the intention of this policy was to provide budget relief to the government payers as well as giving providers an incentive to provider patients with great quality of care.

In a world of budget cut and layoffs, medical corporations face new and different challenges in addition to helping and healing patients. I used to work as a medical biller in a physician’s office for five years and I experienced how difficult for the health care providers to get reimbursed. The government and the insurance companies have been limiting the budget towards the health care services. This action also affects the hospitals greatly because Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and some policymakers have requested the hospitals to reduce the

In the past, providers would experience an increase in the services that were provided to the beneficiaries each year. Now, the ACA has reduced the increase to the providers in which the providers will not experience the increase each year, but the increase will be based on productivity (Cassidy, 2010). Furthermore, special provisions have been enforced for rural hospitals. Many rural hospitals suffer because they lack Medicare patients. Therefore, the ACA has given a small payment boost to help rural hospitals stay in business (Cassidy, 2010).

The MPHFP enables certain rural hospitals to be licensed as Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) that receive cost-based reimbursement from Medicare in return for limiting their services (Rural Assistance Center- CAH Frequently Asked Questions, 2012). Under costbased reimbursement, health care providers receive reimbursement based on actual costs incurred which is a more generous reimbursement method than allowed by the prospective payment system (Gapenski L, 2009). However, only those providers that fall under the following categories are eligible to become CAHs: currently participating Medicare hospitals; hospitals that ceased operation after November 29, 1989; or health clinics or centers (as defined by the State) that previously operated as a hospital before being downsized to a health clinic or center (Department of Health and Human Services, 2013). A Medicare participating hospital that wishes to convert to a CAH, has to meet certain criteria including (Department of Health and Human Services, 2013):        Be located in a state that has established a State rural health plan for the State Flex Program; Be located in a rural area or be treated as rural under a special provision that allows qualified hospital providers in urban areas to be treated as rural for purposes of

Medicare has changed the way it pays hospitals for services delivered to clients with Medicare. Instead of only paying for the amount of services the hospital offers, Medicare also pays hospitals for providing top quality health care services. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a federal agency that runs the Medicare program, is altering the way Medicare compensates for hospital care by giving rewards to those hospitals that delivers higher quality and higher value service to clients (Medicare.gov, n.d.). At the beginning of October 1, 2012, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) permits Medicare by reducing payments to acute care hospitals with surplus readmissions that are paid under CMS 's inpatient potential payment system (Medicare.gov, n.d.). Medicare has information regarding how the hospital 's quality care affects the disbursements it receives from Medicare. The Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) Program, created by the ACA,

This paper outlines the differences between the healthcare systems of the United States and the United Kingdom and expands on what that means for the health and wealth of the citizens of these countries. The U.S. and the U.K. are two different countries with two very different healthcare systems. The U.S. healthcare system is the Affordable Care Act, (ACA) and is the attempt by the U.S. to provide affordable healthcare coverage. he U.K. healthcare system is publicly financed and managed by the National Health Service, (NHS). The U.S. healthcare system is largely private sector whereas the healthcare in the U.K. is public. “The U.S. spends more on health care than any other country in the nation while the U.K. is a country that spends

Hospitals are experiencing a financial impact with being reimbursed for the medical services provided to the patients. This can contribute to the patient having hospital acquired or related illnesses because of poor and inadequate quality of care rendered by the staff. Medicare and Medicaid are raising the bar with reimbursing the hospital for the medical services. They are basing the reimbursing for medical services upon the quality of care, patient satisfaction with services, mortality and readmission to the hospital rate (Carpenter, Short, Williams, Yandell, & Bowers, 2015, p. 255). As the level of quality of care is rendered to the patient, the medical staff objective becomes fostering patient centered care. This will increase patient satisfaction

Safety net hospitals have played an important role in the United States health care system. They provide a significant amount of care to low-income, uninsured, and vulnerable populations. While treating these types of populations, they are still able to provide high cost services such as trauma and burn care. They often take on additional roles and responsibilities such as the training of medical and nursing students (Coughlin et al., 2014). These hospital systems are well known for their open door policy (Wynn et al., 2002). They will examine and treat all individuals, whether or not they can pay for any of their services. The hospitals are not distinguished from other providers by ownership. Some are publicly owned and operated by local or state governments, while others are non-profit. However, they are distinguished by their commitment to provide access to care for all individuals with limited or no access to health care due to their finical circumstances, insurance status or health condition (What is a Safety Net Hospital, 2015).

In this paper there will be a brief discussion of three forces that have affected the development of the U.S healthcare system. It will observe whether or not these forces will continue to have an effect on the U.S healthcare system over the next decade. This paper will also include an additional force, which may be lead to believe to have an impact on the health care system of the nation. And lastly this paper will evaluate the importance of technology in healthcare.

In the article, The Case of the Unhealthy Hospital, written by Anthony R. Kovner, a through description of a struggling hospital, Blake Memorial Hospital, is given. This paper is a SWOT analysis, and addresses the strengths and weaknesses within the hospital, as well as opportunities and threats outside of the hospital and in the surrounding community.

Given the fact that the United states of America and Canada are linked together sharing a border which is open basically to and from both sides, their health care systems are highly different from each other and how the services are financed, organized and given to the citizens.

An hospital is an institution for health care and patient treatment provided by specialized and experienced staff and equipment and often but it is not always providing for longer-term patient stays.