How Does Technology-Driven Competition Lead To Duplication Of Services?

1.) Medical technology encompasses more than just sophisticated equipment. Discuss.

• It includes life-saving procedures, such as bone marrow and organ transplants, as well as curative procedures, such as hip replacements.

10.) How does technology-driven competition lead to greater levels of technology diffusion? How does technological diffusion, in lead to greater competition? How does technology-driven competition lead to duplication of services?

• Competition for insurance money causes facilities to increase their technology to attract the insured. Once one facility has increased its technology other facilities need to increase their technology to remain competitive.

13.) Provide a brief overview of how technology influences the quality

of medical care and quality of life.
• Quality of care: treatments that previously did not exit, improved diagnosis and treatment, greater effectiveness, less invasive procedures, safer procedures, better outcomes, quick recovery, increased life expectancy, decreased morbidity and disability
Quality of life: Enables people with chronic conditions and disabilities to live normal lives, prosthetic devices for speech, hearing, vision and movement; greater independence and control in hands of patients.

14.) Discuss the relationship between technological innovation and health care expenditures.
• Technological innovations have been the single most important factor in medical cost inflation over the second half of the 20th century. They have accounted for about one-half of the total rise in real health care spending during the past several decades.

15.) What impact has technology had on access to medical care?
• Geography is an important factor in access to technology. If a technology is not physically available to a patient population, access is limited. Mobile equipment, GPS and Telemedicine have increased access to technology.

17.) Why is it important to achieve a balance between clinical efficacy and economic worth (cost effectiveness) of medical treatments?
• American consumers want all available medical resources possible no matter how little health benefit is received in relation to costs; sometimes physicians cannot perform important procedures because the patient does not have enough health coverage. The better the health insurance coverage a better life span of people. Policy makers will likely respond to the public outcry over health care coverage meaning the cost-effectiveness analysis is likely to play a large role in the approval process for drugs/devices and regulatory initiatives to contain future cost having a demand on the economic worth of individual technologies.