Health Care Economical Tasks
The rules of economics hold for just about any sector in our lives. This includes the application of the three economic tasks to ensure better management of the health care sector and provision of improved health care in a country.
The three economic tasks, description, examination and evaluation provide a comprehensive roadmap for analyzing any situation that arises in the health care sector, and how to tackle the issue. The three economic task work in tandem to help policy makers, health care providers and other stakeholders to devise the most appropriate health care system.
The Three Economic Tasks
The first task, namely description, is concerned with understanding the problem. The problem at hand is clearly
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Possible solutions are listed and the best course of action is decided upon.
How the Economic Tasks Impact Health Care
Health care on a government level deals with analyzing the current and future need of health care by the population. Once the analysis is done, the policy makers devise a plan and allocate an appropriate portion of the national budget to support and execute this plan.
The three economic tasks work together to provide the think tank behind the planning and execution of health care with the required tools to effectively manage the resources and funding.
Without support from economics and these three tasks, scarce resources might be misused and wasted. This way, not only will the population receive substandard health care services, but also the resources that could have been put to better use elsewhere would be wasted.
Applying the Economic Tasks to Health Care
Consider a scenario, where there is a breakout of a highly contagious disease in an area. The situation demands a comprehensive action plan to counter and limit the spread of the disease. Here, the three economic tasks are used to understand the complexity, urgency and scale of the breakout, and what sort of treatment is required for
Many sources identify the Triple Aim as a derivation of the Iron Triangle’s evolution. The Iron Triangle addresses the ambiguous quality of services, the accessible nature of healthcare delivery, and the affordability of the care. In complete opposition, Triple Aim seeks to optimize performance by improving the patient experience, improving the health of a population, and reducing per capita health care costs. Furthermore, the Triple Aim framework supports the reduction of waste and increase in operational efficiency through the usage of integrators that oversee the three components. The topics addressed in each triangle’s vertices do not have a one-for-one correlation and hence further reveal the differentiation among the ideas. However, both the Iron Triangle and Triple Aim have continued to remain common knowledge among educators and healthcare policy makers and have contributed to health policy changes over the
With these types of organizations they have different methods of payments and reimbursements. They have guidelines through the government that they will have to abide by. The government sponsored payers are Medicaid and Medicare. The majority of patients that are treated are on Medicare or Medicaid. With patients not insured each type of organization handles reimbursement differently. For- Profit hospitals it is bad debt, which is when charges of patient are written off. With not –for –profit organizations it is considered charity care. This type of care has to be documented and reported on tax status.
There are several basic approaches that can be utilized when conducting economic evaluations for any new health care intervention; which can include medications that are designed for the treatment and prevention of disease and how to relate the effectiveness with the overall monetary value of the new treatment. The economic tools that can be employed to perform such an analysis can be broken down into four basic parts that consist of cost-minimization analysis (CMA), cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA), cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and cost-utility analysis (CUA). These four categories will contain the major financial analytical techniques employed when evaluating medical treatments and interventions along with other types termed cost-consequence
Health care is one of the most debated issues in the United States today and it 's necessary to understand the basics of this problem. Approximately 50 million people living in the United
2. The twin problems of the health care industry as viewed by society are cost and access. First of all, the cost of getting health care is very high and it is getting higher each day. This has been mostly caused by the combination of high cost and an increase in quantity of services provided to the communities. The other problem involves access to health care. American enjoy limited or no access to health care. Many efforts have been done to reform this, but still but still many people are left without access to the care. These two problems are related due to the fact that if the health care industry gets to high off course people no longer will be able to have any access to it. The higher prices are, the lower access people have to it.
It is said that, “the most powerful force for controlling medical spending is the cost conscious consumer”; however, there are other factors (determinants of health) other than medical care spending that can affect the health of an individual and ultimately the health of a population. Some of these other factors (determinants of health) include lifestyle choices, environmental factors, family history (genetics), where one work and live, one’s income and developments in technology.
The health care system in the United States encompasses so many individuals, businesses, and interest groups. Also, it can be difficult to pinpoint the most optimal approach to serve everyone’s unique needs and wants. This has led to a major health-care crisis in the society. As a matter of fact, the effect of the health-care crisis in the American society has been a longtime situation, and an effective policy response must focus on what is most enriching in the society: aiming to improve the overall quality of the system and positively impact the health status of all citizens, while subsequently minimizing costs.
This was my first class in health care economics and served as the foundation of what I learned throughout the semester. The class first began with a review of what health, health care and health insurance entail and their interdependency. Health is defined as one’s well-being. Health care becomes a means of maintain well-being and health insurance offers a solution to pay for the health care that one receives. The next part of the class focused on the determinants of health. This part of the class came to me as a surprise because I learned that health care only constitutes about 10% of one’s health. The remaining 90% are a result of environmental factors and personal habits
Health care policy targets the organization, financing, and delivery of health care services. The reason for targeting these areas is for the licensing of health care professionals and facilities, to make sure there is protection of patients’ private health information, and there are measures of quality care, mistakes, malpractice, and efforts to control of health care cost (Acuff, 2010). There are several stages that one must take when creating a policy (see figure 1). The figure below shows the critical steps in the policy process. First, the problem must be identified, once the problem is identified potential policy solutions must be formulated, then the policy is adopted, and then implemented. After the policy is in place, an evaluation of the policy has to take place (This Nation, 2013).
The economics of the healthcare world involves the science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, or the material welfare of patients. Healthcare economics have changed throughout the years due to the large amounts of medical attention that requires large costs. Healthcare has also evolved from being a large unorganized collection of interactions amongst patients and healthcare providers. This includes high inter-connected systems that involve the corporate operations of the organization. The economics of healthcare provides one essentially useful lens that helps patients understand costs and services.
Introduction Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is a form of economic analysis that compares the relative costs and outcomes/effects of two or more scenarios. The CEA is typically expressed as a ratio, where the denominator is a gain in health using a natural unit of measurement (years of life, cases of flu prevented, etc.). and the numerator is the cost associated with that health gain. Most clinical studies express gains in health in terms of disease-specific measures, such as number of heart attacks avoided or cases of influenza prevented. Although this is useful for particular treatments related to those health conditions, those measures do not allow for comparison across diseases.
Many characteristic of healthcare are known as the depressants of the competitive market. Initially, monopoly supply would be likely to occur in a non-perfectly competitive market. Moreover, a patient’s ability to make the right choices would be abated by the asymmetry of information between the patient and healthcare provider. In addition, price subsidies and public provision of healthcare are considered to be resulted by the presence of caring externalities. Lastly because of the uncertainty in demand and effectiveness of treatment will make questions difficult to answer, such as whether a intervention would be effective for a specific patient with a specific condition (Petrou and Wolstenholme, 2000).
Healthcare institutions in the United States are facing a cost crisis. According to the Harvard Business Review, “U.S. healthcare costs currently exceed 17% of GDP and continue to rise.” Aging populations and new, more expensive treatments are driving some costs up, but fundamental structural issues in the health care system are also causing difficulty. For instance, insurance companies and the government pay based on the services provided instead of the outcomes achieved. In the end, this means that the United States' healthcare system only makes money when the people are sick.
Health Care cost refers to how much the country spends on health care services. The following determine how much money is used for it. Pharmaceutical, medical equipment, medical supplies, public functions of health care and doctors are included in this group to determine cost. Today health care cost in the United States is rising due to many factors. On this paper a discussion will be place of the reasons why the cost has raised and this has caused a more difficult access to obtain healthcare and the quality of health care is being provided by doctors.
Healthcare is the maintenance and improvement of physical and mental health, especially through the provision of medical services and is also the topic I chose for this paper. A familiar and well known argument heard in health care and health care policies reform debate is that the government should have nothing to do and stay out of health care. That they should let the market allocate resources efficiently. It is further argued that government rules and regulations applied in health care markets interfere with proper resource allocation resulting in inefficiency. The argument further states that without government interference, the “invisible hand” of the market would allocate resources optimally leading to economic efficiency in health care.