What Is Preventive Care? Instead of waiting for a condition to arise in the human body, people should practice preventive care to maintain ideal health and prevent illnesses from occurring in the first place. Preventive care includes such things as immunizations and vaccines, routine physicals, regular medical checkups and periodic colonoscopies. Treating the early stages of a disease often is just a matter of prescription medication. However, once the disease progresses, it can be difficult and at times, impossible to help patients overcome the effects of it. Important Benefits of Preventative Care The secret to providing the right treatment for potentially serious, health conditions is early diagnosis. Normally, the sooner patients …show more content…
start a treatment plan for a health condition, the better their chances are for a complete recovery. Symptoms or signs of a serious condition can be present in the body even when people feel perfectly healthy.
The primary ways to detect these early-warning symptoms or signs include blood tests, X-rays, and other medical screenings. When there is family history of certain condition such as colon cancer, it is additionally important for people to get early screenings to maintain proper health. Today's technology helps routine screening measures be extremely accurate compared to past years. A new MRI, for instance, diagnoses heart disease in patients as far ahead as 10 years before they will be at risk of suffering a heart attack. Medical professionals are trained better today on what to be on the lookout for with routine screening tests and procedures. Shorter Life Expectancies and Greater Cost Volume does not always mean value. Even though Americans spend in excess of $3 trillion on health care yearly, they still have a higher, infant-mortality and diabetes rates, and shorter life expectancies than their global neighbors do presently. Why is this? Our behaviors that we shape with our social and physical environments often are detrimental to our well-being and health. Prevention outweighs cure every time when we factor in this information. Discouraging Chronic
Diseases Chronic diseases cause millions to die each year across the world, and these diseases expect to increase in the near future. As long-term, health conditions, chronic diseases are not contagious and can be for the most part, prevented from happening to people. The global plan of attack on these chronic diseases should include teaching people the ideal diet and physical activity that is necessary for ideal health. Altering the diet to include more foods that are low in sugar and fat is an important step in lowering people's risk of chronic diseases. A healthy diet consists of lots of whole grain foods, and fresh vegetables and fruits. Changes in lifestyle and behavior can offer an effective method for the entire global society to combat chronic disease. Taking a Prevention-Centric Approach Practicing prevention not only slows the progression of chronic diseases, but also reduces the risk of contracting these diseases. In addition, people will improve their overall health and lower their spending on healthcare. The workplace also reaps certain advantages by people practicing a prevention-first approach. After all, an unhealthy workforces lead to higher costs due to loss of productivity since workers are out sick. Americans require an prevention-centric, integrated to their health care and overall health if they wish to live more productive, longer and healthier lives. Improving the system will not be easy to do, and it will take considerable time. However, the goals of improved health care and overall health, and reduced health costs are ones all of us should embrace for the sake of the health of everyone in this country.
On a global scale, the United States is a relatively wealthy country of advanced industrialization. Unfortunately, the healthcare system is among the costliest, spending close to 18% of gross domestic product (GDP) towards funding healthcare (2011). No universal healthcare coverage is currently available. United States healthcare is currently funded through private, federal, state, and local sources. Coverage is provided privately and through the government and military. Nearly 85% of the U.S. population is covered to some extent, leaving a population of close to 48 million without any type of health insurance. Cost is the primary reason for lack of insurance and individuals foregoing medical care and use of prescription medications.
The United States is projected to spend nearly 20 percent of the Gross Domestic Product on healthcare by 2020.According to a Mckinsey study $447 billion of the 1.7 trillion the U.S. spent on healthcare in 2003 was in excess of what it should have spent based on its wealth. A 1 % increase in the rate of health-spending results in an increase of about $2 trillion in spending on health over the next 10 years.
2.3 Explain how the health and social care practitioner own values, beliefs and experiences can influence delivery of care.
However, our system is based on money. The more money you have to spend, the better medical services you will receive. ?According to the Bureau of Labor education at the university of main (2003), America spends more money oh health care than any other nation, "$4,178 per capita on health care in 1998?, compared to the average of $1,783. (BLE., 2003, p.23). Still an estimated "42.5 million Americans are living without health insurance", which prevents them from receiving medical treatment. (Climan, Scharff, 2003, p.33). The numbers of un-insured Americans continue to rise. Tim Middleton (2002) states, ?insurance premiums grow at a rate greater than wages,? when you have a low-income job. (¶ 9). With our current economy recession, taxes are rising and small business employers are unable to purchase health plans for their employees. Employees are realizing that they are unable to gain insurance from their jobs and beginning to speak out about the high price of health care.
In order to make ones’ health care coverage more affordable, the nation needs to address the continually increasing medical care costs. Approximately more than one-sixth of the United States economy is devoted to health care spending, such as: soaring prices for medical services, costly prescription drugs, newly advanced medical technology, and even unhealthy lifestyles. Our system is spending approximately $2.7 trillion annually on health care. According to experts, it is estimated that approximately 20%-30% of that spending (approx. $800 billion a year) appears to go towards wasteful, redundant, or even inefficient care.
The U.S. expends far more on healthcare than any other country in the world, yet we get fewer benefits, less than ideal health outcomes, and a lot of dissatisfaction manifested by unequal access, the significant numbers of uninsured and underinsured Americans, uneven quality, and unconstrained wastes. The financing of healthcare is also complicated, as there is no single payer system and payment schemes vary across payors and providers.
...atment option your doctor suggests, careful monitoring and follow-up visits are required to successfully combat the symptoms.
If you notice any of these signs of colon cancer, such as blood in your stool, make an appointment with your doctor. Talk to your doctor about when you should begin screening for colon cancer. Guidelines generally recommend colon cancer screenings begin at age 50. Many doctors recommend more frequent or earlier screening if you have other risk factors, such as a family history of the disease.
People are getting less healthcare, but still paying more. When we offer incentives for procedures, the doctors will do the procedure, even if it is unnecessary. These extra tests and procedures do not help the patients. According to Escape Fire, 30% of medical care spending (around $750 billion) is wasted and does not better patients’ health. Compared to other developed countries who spend about $3,000 per patient annually on healthcare, America spends about $7,000.
Rising medical costs are a worldwide problem, but nowhere are they higher than in the U.S. Although Americans with good health insurance coverage may get the best medical treatment in the world, the health of the average American, as measured by life expectancy and infant mortality, is below the average of other major industrial countries. Inefficiency, fraud and the expense of malpractice suits are often blamed for high U.S. costs, but the major reason is overinvestment in technology and personnel.
As you consider treatment options that are available it’s important to keep in mind the following:
...ue to numerous medical errors. With the amount of medical errors that currently do occur which is a current health care issue it cost the health care billions of dollar each year to fix the mistakes that were made.
Health care has always been an interesting topic all over the world. Voltaire once said, “The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.” It may seem like health care that nothing gets accomplished in different health care systems, but ultimately many trying to cures diseases and improve health care systems.
There are numerous public health problems that can be addressed in my Southside of Chicago community. Among the several public health problems facing my Southside of Chicago community there are two that are more urgent. Health education or one might say lack thereof is a problem that needs to be addressed. My community is plagued with many of the residents suffering from high blood pressure, diabetes, and the killer virus known as HIV. In most cases these conditions can be prevented with healthier lifestyles and access to nutritious organic foods. In addition, environmental health is another urgent problem my community is facing. Access to clean, safe water and air is supposed to be a fundamental human right aimed at a healthy environment. Yet, my community consists a waste contaminated beach, numerous deteriorated building that are still occupied, and a countless number of restaurant and stores supplying our residents with services that are endangering their health.
As of 2013 data, the US per capita government expenditure was $4307 while total per capita expenditure on health spending was $9146, which is 17.1 percent of the GDP (2013) for the total expenditure on health. The annual rate of growth in per capita government spending on healthcare has been roughly 5.1 percent over the past thirty years (WHO, 2015). This rate of spending on health care growing faster than the economy for many years creates challenges ...