US Healthcare System: A Case Study

Name the four basic functional components of the US healthcare delivery system. What role does each play in the delivery of health care?

Internet applications in healthcare management have made major breakthroughs in the last decade. From e-mailing communications between doctors and their patients to having medicine prescriptions being renewed online. There has been certainly a number of the Internet of things innovated and thus far, the health care industry benefitting from it the most because of the simplicity and easy-to-use websites for health care services. There are a variety of applications that make daily tasks such as creating and putting patient records together, transferring medical records through secured databases to other facilities. Some factors of internet applications are for the improvement of patient care, decreasing costs, uniformity of future use, patient knowledge, increasing use of internet databases are all used in the healthcare industry. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information “e-health is said to be very broad and covers topics such as telemedicine, electronic records, recruitment, going paperless, procurement, healthcare score cards, audits, information systems etc.” (Svensson, 2002). These factors of e-health services play such a huge role in today’s healthcare industry, giving customers of health a sense of independence with their medical information in which a patient will not be able to access after office or normal business hours. Technology in the healthcare industry in the long run does bring many benefits and yet still has its downfalls.

The healthcare industry consists of many strengths and weaknesses during the improvement of patient safety, efficient operations, reduction of medical errors, and ensuring that they provide timely access to all patient information. This will have to still comply with all legal guidelines as they control costs and protect patient privacy. The adoption of advanced information technology is a popular strategy being used in the healthcare industry because it allows their weaknesses to be progressively diminished as they gain and use the opportunities necessary as an analytical tool. This would allow their capabilities to be further developed with the new technologies and processes used as they unify the adoption of IT standards. In order to stay competitive within the healthcare industry, then there must be specific actions and measures that must be taken to ensure a positive outcome. This includes external opportunities to increase the capability of the IT infrastructure in a national environment as the growth of industry standards are met in order to decrease the pressured threats of legal compliance through patient trust and the high cost of IT. The growing recognition of strategic leadership often leads to both improved financial stability and contact accessibility of the system. Some challenges that may occur within the healthcare system may cause issues in a hospital setting because of the centralized society of an organization. This is because of the different visions and

Healthcare information technology forms a pivotal part of today 's healthcare system. Improved quality of healthcare, patient safety, drastic reduction in medical errors and enhancement of care delivery is possible because of the induction of these solutions in the healthcare delivery environment. Today, healthcare IT solutions are enabling processes like planning, decision-making related to organizational development, strategic planning to drive growth, recruitment of competent personnel, managing employee benefits, payroll, intra-department communication, etc.

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.

Health information is a very important topic as it impacts patient care. It can be a wonderful addition to the ever-changing healthcare system. In addition, health information technology can be very useful in assisting medical personnel, however,

Healthcare systems in the United States are very complex. The United States healthcare system is made up of public and private components. Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, government run healthcare systems, and military coverage is reviewed. As of 2011, 15% of Americans are uninsured, 60% of insured are employer based, and 15% are covered by Medicare. Access to medical care still has its challenges especially for the uninsured or underinsured. Although the United States spends the most on healthcare and has access to the best technology and healthcare services for Americans, the quality of care is not significantly better than other countries. Financing and Resources are two of many internal factors and emerging medical technology are on of many external factor discussed, and their relationship to Access, healthcare expenditures, and quality. Improving quality of care delivery by increasing care coordination, reducing the growth of costs, and moving away from fee-for-service delivery toward rewarding quality and value is needed. The United States is going to need to work toward price regulation, decreasing healthcare expenditures, and improving quality of care and outcomes, so that all Americans in the future will have healthcare coverage.

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

With the rapid growth in technology, many healthcare organizations have embraced the use of healthcare information technologies. As such, the information technology department has various staffs that perform fundamental roles in the information technology-related activities. It ranges from activities of customizing a software to implementing and maintaining a network to ensure effective system backups. In addition, these healthcare information technologies bring about other

The American Healthcare System has been the topic lately in the news. This attention comes down to the executive order that President Trump has forwarded to the legislation. However, there is much debate going on about this executive order that has been issued. As stated in The New York Times, (Qiu,L) “Most people think of the term “bailout,” as a political pejorative,”(A17). This is currently one of the competing solutions to the “ObamaCare” or rather the Affordable Healthare Act, where a type of bailout has been placed into order as a solution to the deficit the AHA has had on the economy. Another solution is an executive order from President Trump to repeal and or replace the AHA, which in many views seems to be a desperate measure to

”The United States has a unique system of health care delivery. For the purposes of this discussion, “health care delivery” and “health services delivery” can have slightly different meaning, but in a broad sense, both terms refer to the major components of the system and the processes that enable people to receive health care. In a more restricted sense, the terms refer to the act of providing health care services to patients…,” (Major Characteristics, n.d.).

The American health care system is so dysfunctional, people pay a lot and most of the times, they don’t get enough of the service they require. Health care has always been a big issue both in the past and now, medicine is expensive but also, it is needed, but due to the way the health care system is set up, it made it hard for some individuals to afford it. According to Goldhill, “We need to reduce, rather than expand, the role of insurance”. The problem is that the health care system is put in the hands of the insurance companies and government, while people are being cut out from it and it is killing us. People need to have control over their own health care, therefore, a market base system is needed in the health care system for a better

The Federal government as well as the public understood the benefits of a healthy society they knew that understood that in order to conquer disease that it was necessary to understand it. In an effort to better understand and control disease it was imperative that hospitals and doctors the skills and technology to do so. In order to acquire top-notch physicians, scientist and technology the hospital and care facilities also needed the finances to be able to obtain such equipment and resources. The community and Federal Government understood that not all facilities would be able to produce the same positive health outcomes if critical equipment and resources were not available, nor would scientist be able to afford the latest and greatest

Over the years, computer technology and the internet has made a drastic change around the world for healthcare industry. The healthcare industry is continuing to give positive changes for patients and employees thanks to computer technology. It has made it easier and more productive for patients and employees. Now patients can feel more at ease during their doctor’s visit because of the benefits of technology.

The information technology is changing the world at deviate speed and evident in the healthcare system. The integration of new technologies within the system are emerging the change in nursing practice and improvement of patient safety. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview on the implemented in nursing practice strategies and contribution of information technology to the development of new healthcare system.