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Study on accountable care organizations
Relationship between technology and healthcare
Relationship between technology and healthcare
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Medical Technology and the Healthcare Expenditure Medical technology encompasses a wide range of health care products that are used to diagnose, monitor, and treat diseases (Chandra & Skinner, 2012). Medical technology may include medical devices, vaccinations, pharmaceuticals, information technology, biotech, and healthcare services. Such technologies are intended to improve the quality of health care; while also containing cost, through earlier diagnosis, less invasive treatment options, reductions in hospital stays, and rehabilitation times. One of the leading theories is that medical technology is growing faster than expected and wit its advancement, it has become a major contributor of health care expenditure in America. Funding …show more content…
Hospitals, clinics, and healthcare providers in general rely heavily on technology to diagnose and treat patients. Many patients have become “spoiled” and do not physicians can adequately treat or diagnose them unless test and procedures are performed. Consequently, physicians order numerous tests to keep the trust of patients and to keep them satisfied. This allows institutions to easily keep the prices of medical technology, high because patients are so dependent on technology. “According to the Institute of Medicine, approximately $800 million dollars is spent on care that does not make the patient better” (Snell, 2013, para. …show more content…
Technology is defined as wasteful when considered unsafe and ineffective. This cost containment strategy will help save money without diminishing the quality of care. One of the most recent changes in health care within the last five years is the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obama Care. The main goal of the ACA is to make healthcare affordable for all citizens by changing many of the rules set my insurance companies (Snell, 2013). A major issue that contributes to the rising cost of healthcare is the lack of communication among healthcare providers leading to unnecessary repetition of expensive treatments. The ACA has planned to solve this buy establishing the Accountable Care Organization (ACO’s). This will be a group of healthcare providers working together to ensure effective treatment, while limiting the amount of unnecessary tools and test. The goal is to send patients to providers in the same network, with the hope of saving money. Another way the ACA plans to lower cost is by bundling payment systems. The system will provide patients a single payment that will cover all expenses, public and private. This will be extremely beneficial for patients who have chronic illnesses such as, hypertension and diabetes (Snell,
Connecting and teaming up with other community interested parties allows the organization to support the financial and quality goals, and coordinate care across the board giving more efficient and quality care (McKesson, 2018). This could help bring occupancy and admission levels up along with maximizing technology’s value by connecting the dots to help reduce complexities and cost. As regulatory, financial, clinical and consumer pressures influence healthcare organizations to produce and provide more effective and efficient care, healthcare technology becomes even more
Healthcare in the U.S. has recently been affected by implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010. The intent is to create a healthca...
Woo, A., Ranji, U., & Salganicoff, A. (2008). Reducing medical errors with technology. Retrieved March, 2012, from http://kaiseredu.org
American health expenditure totaled 17.7% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or $ 8,507.6 per capita in 2011 (OECD, 2013). American health care cost depends on the market including several providers (profit, non-profit, and government owned facilities) and payers (private for profit, non-profit insurance companies, the government, self insured and self payers). Health expenditures can separate into different categories, such as, in-patient care, out-patient care, pharmaceuticals, public health and administration, etc. The hospital market in the United States is uncoordinated, duplicating specialized care without enough volume in most of them to make procedures affordable (Govindarajan & Ramamurti, 2013). American healthcare is expensive for the following reasons. First, administrative costs are high due to poor management between the providers and the newly implemented Electronic Health Record (EHR), which could decrease wasteful services. It can also help if patients want to go to another hospital where they could easily have another physician. The EHR will slash the redundancy of these investigations. If 80% of the U.S. population used the EHR by 2019, around $21billion could be saved. President Obama said that in order to save dollars and lives, all Americans must have EHRs by 2014 (Barton, 2010).
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.
In the health care industry today, it would be challenging to live in a world without technology. Technology has become a major part of
ABSTRACT Technology affects society in every aspect in today’s world. There is not one single industry that has not been affected by technology, but no other industry is more affected than the field of medicine and healthcare. Modern technology has changed the structure and organization of the medical field. With rising health care cost the amount of uninsured people keeps rising higher and higher. With new technology the prices will only continue to rise. There are currently approximately 46 million people without health care coverage and that number continues to climb with rising health care cost. Employers are either no longer able to pay for employee insurance because of the 54 percent cost increase, or they are having to change policies
One of the policies that ACA made to improve healthcare quality is to provide free preventive screening, immunization, and wellness visit. Since this policy took place, 76 million Americans now receive free preventive care. Moreover, under this policy doctors will get paid more so they can take more proactive approach to patient care and making sure patients are healthy, rather than only treating them when they are sick. Also by making the healthcare recorders electronic that increased the quality of healthcare. Creating EHRs decreased healthcare errors, decreased the amount of time spent on documenting and increased space capacity. Moreover, by creating EHRs this gave the healthcare providers extra time to spend with their
price, quality, convenience, and superior products or services); however, competition can also be based on new technology and innovation. A key role of competition in health care is the potential to provide a mechanism for reducing health care costs. Competition generally eliminates inefficiencies that would otherwise yield high production costs, which are ultimately transferred to patients via high health service and delivery costs” (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov). “Competition in health care markets benefits consumers because it helps contain costs, improve quality, and encourage innovation” (https://www.ftc.gov). Competition compels companies to deliver increasing value to customers. The fundamental driver of this continuous quality improvement and cost reduction is innovation. Without incentives to sustain innovation in health care, short-term cost savings will soon be overwhelmed by the desire to widen access, the growing health needs of an aging population, and the unwillingness of Americans to settle for anything less than the best treatments available. The United States can achieve universal access and lower costs without sacrificing quality, but only by allowing competition to work at all levels of the health care system. Prices remain high even when there is excess capacity. Technologies remain expensive even when they are widely used. Hospitals and physicians remain in business even when they charge
With the information technology side of things, this plays a huge part in how healthcare functions today. This is because with all the advancements in technology that is being made, this allows for the healthcare professionals to spend less time on the things that the technology can do for them, but comes at a cost. Which, this then leads into the finances aspect of healthcare systems. Healthcare as everyone knows has become very costly, and for some unaffordable. That cost rises when new technology is added to improve the hospital’s performance. This is a cause and effect cycle because the equipment that the hospitals need to provide patients with the quality of care they expect, comes at a cost. Due to the costs rising because of the new equipment, the cost of healthcare as a whole rises for the patients. These patients are essentially paying the rise for the new equipment and better healthcare. After having information technology and finance relate to the structure of healthcare delivery system, this brings in risk management and the issues that come along with. Risk management is the process of making and carrying out decisions that will help prevent adverse consequences and minimize the negative effects of accidental losses on an organizations (Carroll, 2001). With the costs rising for the new equipment to offer better healthcare, this essentially ensures the patients that there will be less accidental losses or mistakes that are going to be made. So not only is the patient receiving better quality of care from the technology the hospitals have, but they are expecting that the physicians and nurses provide the same level of care they deserve. This comes with complications because if the physicians and nurses are not exceeding the quality that the patients expect of them or they make any mistakes, this is where medical malpractice suits come into the
Health care is one of the most lucrative businesses in the United States. It is also one of the areas where modern technology has had the most impact. Health care companies make huge investments in technology each year. To justify these investments, it is important to make sure that the monies spent result in highly efficient and effective policies, improve patient safety, and increases the quality and value of health care services.
These fiscal policies support the government to improve on healthcare systems and reduce the high and ever-rising costs of healthcare (Bloomrosen et al, 2011).The current investment in technological innovations within this sector such as the Health Information Technology (HIT) and Electronic Health Records (EHRs) ensures a cost effective approach to funding healthcare through initiatives such as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) (Bloomrosen et al, 2011).With the EHRs legislation in place, healthcare providers have the capacity of prescribing medicine in a cost-effective approach (Orszag, 2008). Consequently, HIT ensures efficient provision of healthcare for the providers and hence reduces the expenses that come with healthcare delivery. Moreover, inadequate healthcare for consumers meant extra costs in terms of compensation for the damages and errors experienced.
The majority Americans expect better quality health care seeing how expensive it is in the US. Since the nation spends so much on health care, the people expect better results and outcomes from doctors but this isn’t the case. Doctors that require more money in order to be treated do not have better patient outcomes. A study found that higher spending doctors do not have lower death rates or less readmissions after being discharged (Tsugawa 3). This study shows that even though people think that their outcomes are affected by the sizable amount of money they pay to be treated by these doctors, they get the same, if not worse, care if they were to pay for the less expensive doctors. Better, more costly medical equipment patients pay extra for do not attest to better patient outcomes. Advanced, more expensive medical equipment has not led to better patient outcome for citizens in the US. The US has one of the most unfavorable health statistics in the world, despite the advanced medical technology (Kangas 25). The exorbitant equipment that patients long to receive treatment from don’t convey better outcomes compared to the less expensive, older equipment, even though the high price makes people falsely assume otherwise.Patient outcomes are not positively affected by higher spending doctors more costly doctors. Doctors and physicians in hospitals are all
The United States leads the world in healthcare industry. The world leader in healthcare services and innovator in cutting edge, diagnostics and treatments. US hospitals to create a platform for biomedical innovation and different academic and medical centers provide sophisticated advanced care. Highly skilled workforce that includes physicians, nurses and technician who leads the world in production of medical technologies and is one of the world’s largest consumers support the US healthcare industry. The US healthcare industry is further subdivided into different subsections like academic medical centers, nursing and residential care facilities, In-patient care, and Ambulatory care. The medical device companies of the United States are highly regarded globally for their innovation and expertise for high technology product. They are more focused into research and development, which in result have been able to hold a competitive advantage in several industries that medical technology relies. The US health care system accounts for more than 2.5 trillion in annual expenditure. Despite such a large investment in healthcare industry the burden created by escalating cost is not sustainable. The health care landscape is shifting to address issues that require a tighter budget in an increasing uncertain healthcare environment. Hospitals and healthcare facilities are evolving to establish clinically integrated models with a more coordinated view of the patient across the system.
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is reshaping the health care system in the United States at an accelerating rate. In earlier times US Healthcare system was more focused on intervention of diseases, but now it is moving more towards preventive approach and I see Health IT as the most important tool that can lead this change. I strongly believe that my professional goals, range and depth of my experience and knowledge is an asset and my enthusiasm for the field makes me an ideal candidate for the Master of Professional Studies in Technology Management (Health Information Technology) program at Georgetown University.