Nothing is perfect, not even our health care system these days. A lack of synchronization between doctors, hospitals, patients, and the government has generated so many inefficiencies. Several years ago, I was treated in the hospital for sinusitis. I was trapped in a hospital bed for weeks and was not able to do my daily routines. I remember vividly how we were given a ton of paperwork to fill in for the hospital and the insurance companies. At that moment, I did not understand why such paperworks are needed when easy technology could be used. I believe many of the hospital staff also wanted to replace the old paperwork system with digital documents instead. The bigger problem will be for patients who does not have any family or guardians to …show more content…
I also followed a lot of news, attended several seminars about hospitals, medicine, and health care. They gave me insight about what life as doctors and a medical school student would be like. Insights on how the future development of healthcare and challenges as a doctor that we will be facing in the future. Many information do change my perspective on viewing healthcare. I felt moved to pursue in this field, and I never got tired on learning new things about health-related …show more content…
I heard a conversation at a seminar that was held by the Austin Forum. At that time, one of the officials in the Dell Medical School, Maninder Kahlon, PhD, was explaining the following example. One of the cancer drugs came in one-size-fits-all vials, so the whole body of the cancer patient, whether big or small, will get the same drug. The doctors can adjust the dosage, sometimes used one-third or one-fourth of these drugs and discarding the rest. This continues to happen every year and the waste is expected to reach a value of $1 billion dollars a year, but nobody is doing anything about it. The doctors weren’t concerned enough about the drugs. The patients never knew whether the drugs that they purchased were discarded. Even if they knew, they would not really care because their bills are paid by an insurance company and the government. The distributor, they never got complains and continues to receive a large profit. The result of all this is the increase of budget expenditures in health care. Surprisingly, the government initially saw this favorable because it has administered a good health to its citizens. However the facts said the opposite, according to data, American people are not getting healthier. This waste of money leads to inefficiency. This is where the health care reforms need to be renewed. We cannot fix only one side of the problem because it will not satisfy all parties. The
When you take the socialistic perspective towards implementing this system in Canada, you can see the advantages it brings to improving health care. If the government plays a larger role in funding the development of electronic health records for private and smaller organizations the benefits will immediately result in better quality of health care. As shown in a study done by the University of California in San Francisco that focused on expensive costs that make it difficult for smaller practices to incorporate electronic health records, “need policies designed to provide incentives and support services to help practices improve the quality of their care by using EHRs.” (Miller, West, Brown, Sim & Ganchoff, 2005) In this article they explain that electronic health records improve quality of health care, but the costs are too expensive for small practices to incorporate them.
Minimizing or completely ridding the United States healthcare system of the administrative waste is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to waste in healthcare spending. The good news is that this is a problem that more and more people are becoming aware of, so forward-thinking practitioners and health advocates are already proposing solutions. Once the changes begin to gain some traction and savings start to show, we will likely see greater patient satisfaction and lower insurance premiums, which will create a trickle-down effect benefiting anyone who does business in the healthcare industry, from the patient to the insurance companies.
For the last five years of my life I have worked in the healthcare industry. One of the biggest issues plaguing our nation today has been the ever rising cost of health care. If we don't get costs under control, we risk losing the entire system, as well as potentially crippling our economy. For the sake of our future, we must find a way to lower the cost of health care in this nation.
...ecause it gave me an opportunity to hear the perspective of other health care professionals that are not in the same field as me. I also got to learn what role each health care professional could contribute to the Triple Aim goal. Also, this experience would make it easier for me to work with other professionals during my course of study and after I graduate because I have been a little exposure to what it is going to be like discussing and trying to figure out ways we can contribute to the Triple Aim goal together as a team.
The facts bear out the conclusion that the way healthcare in this country is distributed is flawed. It causes us to lose money, productivity, and unjustly leaves too many people struggling for what Thomas Jefferson realized was fundamental. Among industrialized countries, America holds the unique position of not having any form of universal health care. This should lead Americans to ask why the health of its citizens is “less equal” than the health of a European.
The United States (U.S.) has a health care system that is much different than any other health care system in the world (Nies & McEwen, 2015). It is frequently recognized as one with most recent technological inventions, but at the same time is often criticized for being overly expensive (Nies & McEwen, 2015). In 2010, President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) (U. S. Department of Health & Human Services, n.d.) This plan was implemented in an attempt to make preventative care more affordable and accessible for all uninsured Americans (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, n.d.). Under the law, the new Patient’s Bill of Rights gives consumers the power to be in charge of their health care choices. (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, n.d.).
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.
Despite the established health care facilities in the United States, most citizens do not have access to proper medical care. We must appreciate from the very onset that a healthy and strong nation must have a proper health care system. Such a health system should be available and affordable to all. The cost of health services is high. In fact, the ...
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.
The healthcare reform debate has been politicized in the United States for many years where there have been deliberate efforts by various stakeholders to ensure that they push for the reforms that are in line with the cost-benefit aspects that they have already envisioned. In this paper, I will attempt to prove that the reforms that have been witnessed in the healthcare in the recent years have not been effective and helpful to the society as a whole. When President Obama came into office, he promised to oversee great reforms in the healthcare which is his government he face much priority in the social policy aspects. The congress managed to pass the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
Advances in technology have influences our society at home, work and in our health care. It all started with online banking, atm cards, and availability of children’s grades online, and buying tickets for social outings. There was nothing electronic about going the doctor’s office. Health care cost has been rising and medical errors resulting in loss of life cried for change. As technologies advanced, the process to reduce medical errors and protect important health care information was evolving. In January 2004, President Bush announced in the State of the Union address the plan to launch an electronic health record (EHR) within the next ten years (American Healthtech, 2012).
Healthcare is a dynamic, ever-changing environment. The complex circumstances around daily conversations that encompass life-threatening decisions are critical. In order to deliver high quality care, individuals must be able to communicate effectively. In the perfect world of communication, everyone receives the exact same information and is able to respond the exact same way. Unfortunately, communication breakdown is a prevalent issue among hospitals. On any given day of the hospital arena, multiple interactions take place. Some of the dialogue is planned, and some is not. While hospital departments are living in different silos within the same organization, the cultures may vary among the employees. Hospital leadership fosters the importance of collaboration within the organization and depends on the employees to ultimately drive the process. In order to overcome communication barriers in the workplace, conversations must occur. Engaging in daily face-to-face meetings with employees increases positive work culture, morale and overall productivity.
Also, these studies question those who are effected; in this case, those who are most effected, is everyone. Doctors and nurses spend the most time working within these systems, but the information that is put into these systems effects every individual in America, because it is their information. Because nurses are often considered “both coordinators and providers of patient care” and they “attend to the whole patient,” their opinion is highly regarded (Otieno, Toyama, Asonuma, Kanai-Pak, & Naitoh, 2007, p. 210). It is clear that the use of these new systems is much debated, and many people have their own, individualized opinion. This information suggests that when there is a problem in the medical field, those who address it attempt to gather opinions from everyone who is involved before proceeding. It has been proven by multiple studies that this system of record keeping does in fact have potential to significantly improve patient health through efficiency, and it is because of this that the majority of hospitals have already completed, or begun the transfer from paperless to electronic (Otieno, Toyama, Asonuma, Kanai-Pak, & Naitoh,
They were not tolerating to change and didn't comprehend that their records being electronic would take into account doctors and offices to recover their records to assist technique endorsements and takes into consideration us to get the required data if patients somehow happened to be conceded and not able to talk and furnish us with the required data to give phenomenal patient care. “Electronic patient records may bring both benefits and risks. In relation to the storage and sharing of sensitive personal health data, for example, there is a trade-off between making data accessible and protecting privacy, public trust in Internet-based information is low; and there are ethical and legal implications of potential security breaches in Internet-accessible record systems”. (Bratan, Stramer & Greenhalgh,
What will US healthcare look like in 2050? According to Getzen (2013), trends in better health will lead to greater need for long-term care and chronic care for the aging population while correspondingly trending toward less acute illnesses (p. 438). Personalized prognostic healthcare will lead to healthier longer lives (Lawrence, 2010). Physicians will become leaders of teams within healthcare organizations rather than the independent practitioners we are familiar with today (Getzen, 2013, p. 438). Thus, the concept of the primary care physician will become a thing of the past (Lawrence, 2010).