Long-Term Care Industry: The Healthcare Industry

This article compares the magnitude of economies and 14 non-scale producing cost centers in hospital.

Hello Dr. Ullom, majority of the long term care facilities are under staffed. There is usually one registered nurse in charge to manage a 240 bed facility, with LPN's  and nursing assistance. I feel that these patients would benefit from having one RN to every six -eight patients with a nursing assistance. Not only would this benefit the patient but the nurse as well. Patient are placed in long term care facility with a certain problem, but ends up with additional condition such as UTI, MRSA, pressure ulcers, and etc. These issues are related to poor care they receive because of unstaffing. I'm not placing blame on the LPN or nursing assistance, but with a RN and low nurse to patient ratio, they will receive better care.

The challenges and impact of Baby Boomers on long-term care systems are going to modify the manner in which traditional health care, patient access, financial payments and treatment are delivered. Baby Boomers will have an extensive amount of care maintenance needs involving various rehabilitation conditions, acute and chronic illnesses, which will require a significant amount of thoroughly trained gerontologists, skilled nurses, nurse practitioners, social workers, community advocates, and family involvement. This article explores options sought to reduce the costs to society and Baby Boomers as innovative savings, tax credit options, and other alternative long-term care financing choices lessening the impact on the long-term care system.

Nonprofit hospitals have become a common characteristic of the hospital sector because they can be found across the country because of their presence in almost every corner, they never decline to provide treatment, and offer several community-based health programs. On the contrary, the for-profit health facilities are regarded as the corporate model of health care services as they seek to make profit first. They enjoy huge capital that enables them to develop state-of-the-art facilities and purchase the latest clinical technologies.

The healthcare system in America started as a predominantly volunteer system where patients were required to pay little to nothing for treatment. Since it began, the healthcare industry has seen tremendous changes that have transformed it into a business entity which has operations like financial management, strategic planning and functional specialties to keep the industry viable. The industry is one of the largest in the country employing 15 million people with a projected increase of jobs with 3 million jobs annually. As the healthcare industry continues growing, services and personnel are changing, and various dynamics are coming into play to accommodate changes (Smith, Saunders, Stuckhardt, & McGinnis, 2013).

Long-term care is vital in the United States health care system. As the population ages, more people will need assistance to recover from illness or injury, and others will need end of life care to ease their passing. People who use long-term care are all ages. From young to old, people can receive it if they cannot care for themselves because of a condition, an illness, or an injury that requires assistance for a period of 90 days or more. The concern people face when looking at long-term care is the funding. Medicaid will likely be drained of funds long before the country’s aging population is past its peak and while there are some options of insurance coverage, not everyone may afford them.

Imagine that you are a patient in an hospital in Ontario - you have undergone acute care and are now ready to enter a Long-term care (LTC) facility for additional care. Now imagine that you have entered a complex maze, like the Waterloo County County Corn Maze, only much trickier. Why?

Since most specialty procedures are inpatient services, EMC’s inpatient occupancy rate suffers. The occupancy rate for Emanuel Medical Center – fifty percent – is far below that of its competitors and industry benchmarks. To accompany this, EMC (on average) receives a lower reimbursement for in-patient Medicare services per patient seen in comparison to its competitors. A result such as this is correlated with directly to the fewer amount of specialty services that EMC offers. In order for Emanuel Medical Center to be able to compete with other hospitals in its service area, it is imperative that EMC evaluates what services they currently offer and are capable to offer in the future to add value to the hospital, increase its revenue stream, and expand its patient mix. Currently, Emanuel Medical Center has not succumbed to its increasing financial pressurealthough EMC has had a negative operating income for five straight years. A negative operating income places EMC at a disadvantage because it limits the hospitals ability to renovate its aging building or hire new specialists to offer revenue enhancing procedures. EMC’s competitors, on the other hand, have large sources of revenue due to their mergers with large healthcare networks such as Catholic Healthcare West. Another competitor, Kaiser Permanente Modesto Medical Center, has extremely large financial resources due to the fact

Acute care and long-term care are both continuum care, but there are many differences between these types of facilities. When people are severely injured or ill, they seek treatment at an acute care facility. “Acute care is medical care designed to treat and/or cure an acute condition, for example, a heart attack or stroke” (http://eldercarehelper.com, 2016). Acute care facilities usually release patients before the 30th day and treatment is provided by a physician. In long-term is provide for patients that need continuum care, but less intensive treatment. “Long-term care facilities offer medical care to patients who need…less intensive level then that provided at an acute care facilities” (Gartee, 2011). The patients usually stay longer

The continuum of institutional long-term care is for patients whose needs are not adequately met in a more community-based setting. It is for individuals who need more dependency. There are two ends of the continuum of institutional long-term care spectrum. On the one end there are the individuals that may only need basic personal or custodial care (Shi & Singh, 2015, p. 399). An example of personal and custodial care can include help with walking, bladder training, or just helping with bathing. On the other end there are the individuals that may need more round the clock care with nursing or specialized services along with the basic needs (Shi & Singh, 2015, p. 399).

For many people younger than 50, long-term care insurance seems like something to worry about for the future. Some young adults feel as though long term care insurance may not be a topic to discuss at their age because they are young and healthy. However, young adults should be thinking about long term care as early as possible. As we can see in healthcare news and headlines, long-term care cost is rising and factors can include your age, medical conditions, and overall need for care. According to, Rich Arzaga, founder and CEO of Cornerstone Wealth Management who states, “They'll ask about (long-term care) at the age of 55 or 60 when their parents are going through these issues. They don't have the fear of reality until they're over 55." Physical aging is unavoidable, but becoming wise and educated on long term care insurance at a young age can help many in the future.

Implication of this shift for hospitals is very important because hospitals inpatient have decreased. Hospitals are losing more money due to the growth of ambulatory care facilities. Ambulatory care facilities can affect hospital fiscal health by attracting many profitable services away from the hospitals. Consumers are saving more money because they can get good quality of care for less money and less hospital stay than hospitals. This can impact health care delivery system because they will be more competition between those ambulatory care facilities and hospitals.

Upon arriving at the long-term care facility and noticing that the toe tag on the decedent did not match the removal authorization, I would immediately inform; the decedents doctors, the decedents nurse, or whoever was in charge of the care of the decedents body at the facility. I would also call the funeral home and get instructions on what I should do next. Most likely, I would tell the facility to call the funeral home back after the body had been properly tagged. After the facility called me back, I would come back and transfer the body to the funeral home. I would follow the same procedures for transferring a body, but I would do everything I could to make sure that I was taking the correct body. It would be helpful in identifying the

Hospitals and health systems in the U.S. are experiencing a remarkable transformation in their business models directed from numerous influences that are projected to ultimately turn the industry around. Pressures include providers troubled with the quantity of services they are responsible for, to providers who concentrate on presenting high-cost services that give emphasis to sustaining healthy populations (Dunn & Becker, 2013).

The problem at Memorial Hospital is the focus on costs instead of health care. When a health care provider does not take the primary business as the core value of the operation and make strategic and tactical decisions based primary on costs, it decreases the consumers’ (patients) satisfaction in long run. As consumers reduce or stop purchasing goods and services from the hospital, hospital may make more cost oriented decisions and falls into a negative cycle. Eventually the hospital may face the fate of loosing business to competitors and the possibility of closing the door.