Improving The Current State Of Healthcare

An organization such as the Pocahontas Memorial Hospital (PMH) is established to be a primary care source for a rural community, serving 5% of the state’s population (Pocahontas Memorial Hospital, 2013). PMH wishes to deliver compassionate care and promote healthy lifestyles through working collaboratively with other healthcare facilities, and delivering adequate patient education, while sustaining financial viability (Pocahontas Memorial Hospital, 2016). This organization would like to offer a comprehensive satellite health clinic within Pocahontas County, as the strategy to intervene existing weaknesses and threats to the health of the community of Pocahontas County.

Pocahontas Memorial Hospital is a rural county hospital located in Buckeye, West Virginia meant to be the first choice in integrated healthcare for the community they are serving (Pocahontas Memorial Hospital, 2014). Due to the limited amount of hospital beds and rural status of the community that it is serving, a market analysis is needed to determine the true needs of the community. Therefore, the market analysis will ensure that the small amount of money they have will go to the correct products, services, and ventures that are truly needed.

2011 Dubois County Health Needs Assessment (Memorial Hospital and Health Care Center & Dubois County Health Department, 2011) Retrieved from www.duboiscountyin.org/stories/2011dchealthassess.pdf

Nestled in Southern Indiana just west of Louisville, Kentucky and south of Indianapolis, Indiana is Dubois County, Indiana. Dubois County is comprised of the towns of Birdseye, Ferdinand, Holland, Huntingburg and Jasper. Of those towns, Jasper is the largest and is the county seat (Kelly School of Business, 2014). Over fifty-two percent of the population consists of adults ranging from 25-64 years of age (Kelly School of Business, 2014). The leading cause of mortality in this county is heart disease, cancer, suicide and injuries (Memorial Hospital and Health Care Center & Dubois County Health Department, 2011).

There are many challenges that are defining the future strategic direction of health care such as information technology advancements, access to health care, maintaining a skilled workforce, proposed health care reform and legislation, and rising costs. I will look at these challenges and how an organization may adapt its direction and strategies in accordance with these challenges.

Primary care is the backbone of many industrialized nations, but is the US one of them? Unfortunately, the answer is no. The US lags behind such developed nations in its accessibility of primary care by a huge difference. The United States healthcare system fails to ensure the timely preventative and primary care for its residents. The current estimates indicate that there is merely one physician for every 2,500 patients. Not only Medicare beneficiaries, but also privately insured adults struggle in accessing the right primary care physician at the right time. Moreover, maldistribution of physicians only exacerbates the problem, especially for those residing in health professional shortage areas (HPSA).15 Approximately, sixty-five million Americans live in designated primary care shortage areas.13 Such underserved population faces higher disease and death rates and health disparities that then result in higher rates of hospitalizations and emergency department visits—in other words, expensive medical bills.21 More governmental control on the geographic location of primary care physicians can be a first-step to fixing the shortage problem.

Pocahontas County is a rural area located in the southeast region of West Virginia, spanning 942 square miles. The scenic area serves as the site of the head waters for eight rivers: Cherry River, Cranberry River, Elk River, Ganley River, Greenbriar River, Tygart Valley River, Williams River, and Shaver Fork of the Cheat River and consists of 10 scattered small towns. As with other rural communities across the United States, Pocahontas Country suffers from a depressed local economy, substantial barriers to health care access, and difficulty in attracting health professionals. A market analysis of both the rural community and some options that may be used to attract health professionals to Pocahontas Memorial Hospital offers some proposed relief to the dampened healthcare outlook.

2. Here, the research shows that in many situations, healthcare professionals are urged to conduct unnecessary tests and procedures in order to rack up the bill for insurance claims to then

According to Joe Conason, "America 's current health care system wastes considerably more than a trillion dollars every year. We know that because countries such as France, Germany, Japan and Finland, with comparable standards of living to ours, spend roughly half what the United States spends annually on health care per citizen, while covering everyone and achieving better results." (Conason, 2009) The United States healthcare financial systems are severely flawed - affecting the overall cost control, services, and care made accessible to its clients. The rising costs in healthcare are reaching new highs, and with rising costs, there doesn 't seem to be much change in the quality of the care being given. Clients coming in and out of these

Peace Memorial Hospital is a 600-bed, independent, not-for-profit, general hospital located on the southern periphery of a major western city. It is one of six general hospitals in the city and twenty in the county. After doing much research, the Board of Directors has decided that they should open an ambulatory location in the downtown area, to be known as the Downtown Health Clinic (DHC). The clinic will have 4 major objectives: “1. To expand the hospital’s referral base, 2. To increase referrals of privately insured patients, 3. To establish a liaison with the business community by addressing employers’ specific health needs, and 4. To become self-supporting three years after opening” (Kerin

The mission of West Virginia Medical Professionals Health Care Program (WVMPHP) is to provide confidential mental health and/or substance abuse treatment for the healthcare professionals across West Virginia. Collaboration is key to advance growth, which leverages the strengths of all the organizations working together to achieve common goals. WVMPHP should conduct a SWOT analysis to identify their organizational strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. A SWOT analysis, should be utilized in conjunction with a strategic planning process to enable WVMPH a detailed assessment of their current financial resources. Having established strong collaborative partners across West Virginia, receiving national attention, and positive outcomes enhances the credibility of WVMPHP.

I have always been drawn to outreach opportunities that allow me the possibility of improving the quality of individuals ' lives while working towards the betterment of my community. My experiences have given me a greater understanding of the social and economic barriers that affect patients in both urban and rural underserved areas.

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

A SWOT-Analysis is a useful strategic tool for PMH to utilize when determining whether a rural satellite clinic will be a profitable market venture. A SWOT-Analysis is a diagram that considers organizations’ internal competencies (strengths and weaknesses) and external developments (opportunities and threats) affecting the institution (Van Wijngaarden, Scholten, & Van Wijk, 2012). Therefore a SWOT analysis for PMH’s satellite clinic project includes the following strengths: PMH current rural health clinic is successful and provides patients with increased access to outpatient health care services even after business hours and on weekends; offers a patient portal for customers to electronically access their health information; and gives patients access to rotating specialty care services (i.e. podiatry, nephrology, and surgery) (PMH, n.d.). Also, PMH has built strong relationships throughout Pocahontas County that increases public perceptions for their institution and acceptability for the developing of new business ventures (PMH, n.d.). Finally, PMH has an in-house billing center that assists patients with their health care payments and offers a Payment Assistance Program to those patients who have difficulty paying their bills (PMH, n.d.).

The current state of United States’ health care system is one of the most polarizing subjects of debate among scholars and other health care professionals across the globe. This can be attributed to the fact that at one extreme end, there are some who argue that that Americans have the best system of health care in the world (MePhee, 2013). Perhaps the availability of the state-of-the-art facilities and free medical technology that have become highly symbolic of the various industries in the United States have motivated the idea of the country’s health care system being unparalleled to others. However, there is a common belief that the fight for universal health care can only be successful if its current state of health care is described as a failure in the modern era as emphasized by MePhee (2013).