Increasing costs of insurance are leaving some people out in the cold. I am one of the many people that fit into the mold of being “uninsured”. I cannot afford the price it costs to have the protective umbrella around me. Health care is emerging as one of the biggest issues to be brought to the table. Many families are paying an average of $3,000.00 a month for a family of 4. To be caught without it is unthinkable for families (Ferguson, 2011). Such high costs vastly increase the amount that families must earn to meet their needs. Many believe that the United States has the best health care system in the world. The best treatments, the best medical technology, the best pharmaceuticals, but this is like a cruel joke to the uninsured who include …show more content…
First, it can improve standards of care. Data collected by the Electronic Health Records provides the best treatment methods; leading to a healthier population (Ferguson, 2001). It is tangent to the over-all goal of knowing the best way to handle treatment for each individual patient. Second, it will bring increased patient participation and collaboration. Our health spending is in a large part due to our chronic health issues. Chronic diseases brought on by poor lifestyle choices are difficult to handle, but IT provides a better way for organizations to develop new disease management solutions to address the issue. Data retrieved from EHR’s could also be beneficial in figuring out ways to curtail costs associated with chronic illness. The third way is the healthcare industry is continuously changing, and that results in an overpowering amount of information to distill and absorb. Also, the coming wave of electronic clinical data provides us an opportunity to replace old-fashioned, volume-based, fee for service business model with one fixated on the quality of the product. And last, but certainly not least, health IT should be used as a tool to include the patient in his or her own care. We need to become better educated as patients. Also, standing up and questioning services, quality, and price to make this break …show more content…
You better believe it. We all need to keep up with the Jones’. The benefits of IT can accumulate in a number of areas. Poorly handwritten orders and documents and associated sickness and death will be a thing of the past. Nursing production will improve with less time spent filing and retaining charts and more time will be available for patient care (Ferguson, 2011). Physicians can reduce the risk of transcript error by entering documentation themselves. They can also increase their decisions with incomplete information or to physically go to the clinic or health center to access a chart. Health IT can also lead to an increase in the overall effectiveness in the provision of management, and accelerating hospital functions to reduce the length of hospital stays. The sharing of healthcare information among providers will likely yield a substantial benefit for overall healthcare effectiveness as well. Some of the significant benefits of health IT use are decrease in treatment errors, better management of chronic conditions and improvements in preventative health screenings. To make the most of our investment, it is important to focus on the enhancement of construction of a secure data exchange with a secure server and interoperable health information network (Ferguson, 2011). The future is so bright. We must strive to continue to advance in technology. If we fall down, we lose our spot in the race against other countries. So, yes, investment
The healthcare industry is in the midst of a major change from paper based medical record keeping to electronic medical record keeping. As part of the American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act was passed (Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, 2014). HITECH is the U.S. Government’s first major contribution to the change from paper to electronic health information technology by setting meaningful use incentive program for Medicare and Medicaid providers that met certain requirements. Healthcare professionals that meet the meaningful use criteria will be awarded financially, and those that don’t meet the 2015 guideline will be penalized. We live in an electronic world of instant access to information and by adopting health information technology we give providers better and easier access to more information which in turn allows them to make a more informed diagnosis and treatment plan for the patient. The electronic health record (EHR) is part of the new information technology. According to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (2014.), EHR’s provide many benefits such as improvement in the quality of patient care; improvement in the coordination of patient care; more accurate diagnosis and better outcomes; a higher level of patient participation in their own care; and cost savings for the practice
Rising health insurance premiums have made healthcare unaffordable in the United States. Health insurance premiums in this country have undergone a steady rise over the past few years while incomes have remained the same. More than 50% of individuals with low incomes holding private insurance in the United States are unable to afford their healthcare costs (Collins, Gunja, Doty & Buetel, 2015). In addition, costs related to healthcare are equally unaffordable to 25% of working-age individuals who hold private health insurance policies (Collins et al., 2015). According to the Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research and Educational Trust (Kaiser/HRET) survey on employer health benefits, employer-sponsored health insurance plans have also had moderate rises in premiums in 2013 for both individuals and family coverage (Claxton et al., 2013). While
Electronic Medical Records & Access, this gives the ability to have past records of patients for long term and easily access from any place whereas paper based document and can be loss or not able to get it when it’s needed. Ensuring that the EHR is as adopted as other clinical applications can greatly impact the patient experience, including; patient registration, records management, and information infrastructure systems. As Roham et al points out, many healthcare providers are still in early staging of implementing an EHR and if not completely installed can have a negative impact on patient satisfaction metrics(2014, p. 134)11.
Care is changing universally. Healthcare workers have updated standards and practices for care today, and electronic health records (EHR) are one of these updates. EHR’s are an electronic version of a patient’s medical history. Since EHR have been implemented, it has saved patient’s lives, but also caused casualties. The question is are EHR’s helping to improve care? In this paper, the benefits of EHR’s are discussed in how they’ve improved patient-centered care and promoted health care.
With the rising number of uninsured Americans, health care has been a major issue in the United States. Due to “The Great Recession” and the growing number of Americans who found themselves unemployed, the number of uninsured Americans has rose from 46.6 million in 2005 to a record number of 50.7 million in 2010. Many of these uninsured again have lost their employee health insurance benefits or they made the decision to cut their health insurance just to cut back costs. The rising prices of health care have also been a concern over the last few years. With new medical technology and increasing prices of prescription drugs, it has become hard for one particular group to keep up. Our
We live in the United States, “The Land of the Brave and Home of the Free.” However, the United States is the only developed country that does not provide guaranteed insurance coverage for all citizens and they’re thereby doing not ensure access to health services (Government hub, n.d.). Meaning other countries offer health coverage without cost. This always disappointed me because America is the richest, and most unequal, country (Sherman, 2015). So why wouldn’t America provide American’s health care insurance (McAlearney, 2003, p. 20). Since the United States does not provide universal health care coverage, we will discuss briefly forms of insurance offered to Americans, the categories of insurance and how individuals qualify for coverage and Affordable Healthcare Act (Obama Care).
Electronic health records will be electronically accessible to vendors and clients. To protect confidential information a security code must be used to access information. The Institute of Medicine identified six goals for health care; medical care should do no harm, be valuable, patient-focused, relevant, fruitful, and unbiased. (National Academies, 2013). EHR can help increase patient-focused care; the patient will be able to view their records online and assist in guiding their care. When records are accessible online patients can see them and manage diseases, collaborate care with providers, and improve patient to provider communication (Ricciardi, Mostashari, Murphy, Daniel, & Siminerio, 2013). Patients that are well-informed about their care have better health outcomes compared to uninformed patients. Patients who are involved in their care are less likely to experience adverse effects, to be admitted to the hospital, and have a medication error from lack of collaboration with their provider (Ricciardi et al. 2013). For providers to receive funds under the meaningful use incentive to purchase electronic equipment, they must show medical decisions are patient driven. (Ricciardi et al. 2013).
Not only can EHRs improve an individual patient’s healthcare, this information can help improve and protect the public health. Information that is collected can be shared with public health care organizations to help improve research and monitoring for the prevention and control of
The United States’ high uninsured rate had negative consequences for uninsured Americans, who experienced greater financial insecurity, barriers to care, and odds of poor health and preventable death; for the health care system, which was burdened with billions of dollars in uncompensated care; and for the US economy, which suffered, for example, because workers were concerned about joining the ranks of the uninsured if they sought additional education or started a business.11- 16 Beyond these statistics were the countless, heartbreaking stories of Americans who struggled to access care because of a broken health insurance system. These included people like Natoma Canfield, who had overcome cancer once but had to discontinue her coverage due to rapidly escalating premiums and found herself facing a new cancer diagnosis
The cost of healthcare in America is out of control. As the medical costs continue to rise, many Americans, especially those considered low income, have decided to just live uninsured. Low income families are considered individuals, who make less than $15,521 a year and families of 4 members, who make $31,721 or less in a year (2). As of 2013, 10.8 million were listened as low income households in America, which is a 18.6% rise from the previous survey (2). Basically, these families can not afford to pay for private medical insurance. As a matter of fact, there are 70 million people covered under the federal Medicare and
Over two-thirds (68%) of the low- to middle-income uninsured are not confident that they can pay for the health care services they think they need (8). The impact of these workers lacking insurance also bleeds into their social and personal lives, as well as their mental health. Over a quarter (24%) of low and middle income uninsured adults said worry about medical costs affected their job performance, family relationships, or ability to sleep (7).
Though the cost of the healthcare system in the United States is the most expensive in the world, there is a large percentage of Americans that have no health insurance. Healthcare is the country’s largest economic division, larger than the national defense. Although, millions of people cannot afford to take care of their health needs. Insurance premiums have almost doubled in the last eight years, making health insurance for millions out of their grasp. Growing medical bills are continuously leaving families in debt.
The United States healthcare system is one of the most expensive systems in the world with 16% of its gross domestic product (GDP) assigned to it, it is expected that this spending may increase up 20% of the US GDP by 2016.1 Unfortunately, despite the large amount of money delegated to this system there are still widening gap in health disparities existing in the US, based on geographical areas, race/ethnic groups or class.2 Other factors such as genetics, social circumstances, environmental exposures, behavioral patterns, and lopsided access to opportunities encourage such disparities.1,3 The number of people that do not have access to healthcare in the US is alarming, for instance in 2005 about 40 million Americans did not receive healthcare services because of their inability to purchase health insurance policy and/or pay out of pocket.1
Access to preventive health care should not be definable as one of life’s luxuries, yet that is what is has come to be for the approximately “50 million Americans” who have no health insurance (Turka & Caplan, 2010). Clogged emergency rooms and “preventable deaths” are just two of the consequences associated with the lack of health insurance that would provide access to preventive care (Turka & Caplan, 2010). We as a nation are depriving our citizens of one of our most basic needs—being healthy.
As the relevant literature indicates, electronic health records will have man consequences not only for health care providers and their staffs but also for patients and their family members, insurance companies, IT developers, and others. Information on these consequences was gathered from peer-reviewed publications as well other reputable academic, medical, and media sources. In examining the information, it is evident that there are both advantages and disadvantages in the changes that have already taken place, and that there are many predictions of the effects of changes that have yet to occur. In carefully examining and weighing these