The Pros And Cons Of The Western Medical System

The movie fire escape emphasizes that America has the most expensive health care system in the world but is not one of the best in regards to healthcare outcomes and life expectancy. It spends more than what the whole world all together spends on pharmaceutical industry. 75% of the 2.7 trillion dollars were spent on treating preventable diseases which indicate that US health care is more focused towards disease management than prevention. The movie makes a point that there are frequent readmissions and 80% of health care budget goes towards these 20% patients who are frequently readmitted to the hospital due to an existing chronic condition. Health care professionals are paid on the basis of number of procedures carried out on the patient rather than their health outcome. So the focus is not on curing the disease by eliminating the risk factors but merely managing the disease and looking for quick fixes. That is how patients want it too. They want to be cured right away with a pill or surgery but are not really interested in learning the long term solutions and preventative measures.

Health care systems are highly complex and require vast resources. Moreover, providing healthcare coverage to all citizens can be challenging for many countries. Different models and theories abound all over the world about how best to provide care and only the most developed countries have adequate resources to truly provide universal coverage to their citizens.

For the doctors to get their training, they would go to the College of Physicians.

Reducing the incidence of medical error by improving the accuracy and clarity of medical records.

By examining both the United States health care system and the British health care system, it will provide insight of which elements of each system are beneficiary and which elements of each system are disadvantages. Therefore, this paper will provide an overview of the pros and cons of each system to decide where improvements need to be made.

It is shocking to know that every year 98000 patients die from medical errors that can be prevented(Kohn, L. T., Corrigan, J. M., & Donaldson, M. S. (Eds.), 2000). Medical errors are not a new issue in our healthcare system; these have been around for a long time. Hospitals have been trying to improve quality care and patients safety by implementing different strategies to prevent and reduce medical errors for past thirty years. Medical errors are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer in America (Allen, 2013). In addition medical errors are costing our healthcare system an estimated $735 billion to $980 billion (Andel, Davidow, Hollander, & Moreno, 2012).

As countries transition from a subsistence economy to an industrialized economy, they begin to gain access to more resources that are essential for providing a long, healthy life for their citizens. The United States and the United Kingdom are both developed countries that have large populations. They both have excellent medical systems, however, they are structured slightly different. In An “Insider’s view of the American and UK Medical Systems” Jennifer S. Marsden, a family doctor from Alabama, addresses doctors to juxtapose the US and UK medical systems by incisively breaking down the few differences of the healthcare structure of both countries.

From the dawn of time healing has been influenced by many different issues, such as religion, politics of the time, different philosophies, and vested interest such as money. There had been conflicts between Eastern and Western medicine for a long time. Eastern medicine is viewed by many people in the West as having no validity and makes little sense to those who view the body in parts and pieces. Eastern medicine has long viewed the body as mind, body and spirit as one entity. To understand the ideas of each Eastern and Western medicine its history has to be taken into consideration

The rise of medicalization has been affected by many social factors, and has caused a winning-and-losing situation for those caught in the middle. In Peter Conrad’s article The Shifting Engines of Medicalization, he explains how medicalization was constructed by three certain factors: first, the authority within the medical profession; second, the activities of social movements and interest groups; and third, the rise in behavioral pediatrics in terms of medical control of childhood diseases, and directed organizational professional activities (Conrad, 2005, p. 4). There have been debates that some things should no longer be treated as an illness in the medical sphere. Conrad explains how the pharmaceutical industries are more aggressive in promoting their products to physicians and to the public, which is empowered by the consumers becoming increasingly active in their demand for medical services and treatments (2005, p. 5, 9). Companies are marketing diseases (creating “epidemics” and drug scares within a society) and then selling the drugs to treat those diseases (Conrad, 2005, p. 6). Society and these companies make it seem as though these disorders and diseases can happen to anyone at any time.

Everyone in America, is at risk for being diagnosed with a condition that they don't have, and being prescribed medications they do not need. Its, everyday advertisments on TV for clients who may have had a missed diagnosis, and experienced a side effect from a medication they where prescribed, physicians try to follow national standards of care to protect themselves from lawsuit or even losing their licenses.

Dr. Tieraona Low Dog, Fellowship Director, Arizona Center For Integrative Medicine explains how we want to expose clinicians to a broader way of seeing the patient a deeper understanding of healing and a larger toolbox from which to choose for therapies. She talks about how if patients were treated with different procedures such as acupuncture or holistic healing, we as consumers would not have to pay out so much on treatment. Procedures such as these would actually benefit us because we would not need to see doctors nearly as much as we do now, because we would not be “treating” the diseases with chemicals (pharmaceutical drugs) which have many side effects. Also, the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies would never let this happen because then they would be out of money because people would not have to see their doctors nearly as much in hence means that these “cattle runners” would not be making the money they are.

The third leading cause of death in America may surprise you. Hospitals and healthcare organizations dedicate their branding to reflect a place of hope, comfort, and healing when ones health is compromised. Sadly, medical errors do exists in the realm of healthcare. The National Center for Biotechnology Information defines medical error as “an act of omission or commission in planning or execution that contributes to or could contribute to an unintended result.” Medical errors may include incorrect record keeping, administering incorrect medication to a patient, misdiagnosis, failing to remove all surgical instruments and performing surgery on the incorrect site. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality identified eight factors that contribute to the cause of medical errors. These factors include “communication problems, inadequate information flow, human problems, patient-related issues, organizational transfer of knowledge, staffing patterns, technical failures and inadequate policies and procedures.”

Some people believe that modern medicines are a better choice for healing, rather than the holistic approach. Qiuping Gu, the author of Prescription Drug Use, explained in his studies, “Over the last 10 years, the percentage of Americans who took at least one prescription drug in the past month increased from 44% to 48%”(Gu). This statistic shows that Americans are increasingly relying on medicines to heal themselves. This is not to say that prescription medications are the only method of healing for all people. Citizens in support of prescription drugs say that the FDA regulates drugs,

In this paper, the USA healthcare system is being compared to the Canadian healthcare system. The U.S. health system has been described as the most competitive, heterogeneous, and inefficient, fragmented, and advanced system of care in the

Many patients (and providers) have become accustomed to the “quick fix” that pharmaceuticals create in covering symptoms. Healing at the root level often takes much more time. I point out we all will