I think hospitals should some type of in hospital insurance for uninsured persons or hospitals could assess patients in getting the right connection to get insurance before they leave the hospital. What lesson learned can help future medical/legal
Competition should lead to lower costs and better quality of services, but, unfortunately, the US spends more money per capita than any other advanced country and has poor outcomes for many health indicators. Further, the US has poorer outcomes for many health indicators than other countries. In the United States in 2012, the cost of healthcare per person averaged about $9000 per year. In 2012, data from CMS stated that the total spending on healthcare in 2012 was $2.8 trillion (1). Despite competition in the health care field, two of the very prominent reasons for high costs are high administrative costs, the use of costly new technologies and drugs, and unhealthy behavior on (some, not all) of the patients’ behalves.
[Cost] Cost could potentially be the biggest factor of the iron triangle and perhaps the side of the model that leaves administrators most puzzled. With new technology being released quarterly, drug prices soaring, a new aging population that can't be supported by the current workforce, Medicare cutting reimbursement payments and leaning towards insolvency, and the price per service continues to rise it seems as if cutting costs down may seem impossible. Not only have hospitals and clinics began looking for more cost-efficient ways to provide care or, unfortunately which programs to cut, the political arena has been evaluating this as well. Since Obamacare has not lived up to its true potential and glory an alternative method must be identified before the nation's model of healthcare implodes from high costs.
In 2010, the aggregate shortfall of government funding for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries was estimated at $28 billion dollars. Currently, Medicare and Medicaid in combined do not cover the complete cost of care for program recipients but their beneficiaries account for about half the care provided by hospitals . In the chart it shows the uncompensated care and payment shortfalls from Medicare and Medicaid in billions of dollars, 2010 Similarly, between 2000 and 2010, the cost of uncompensated care grew by 82 percent, from $21.6 to $39.3 billion. In the below chart it shows the cost-based uncompensated care in billions of dollars, 1990 – 2010 .EMTALA’s
The authors of this journal discuss the healthcare systems cutbacks and its impact on the population. Every few years the Ontario government and the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) negotiate their contract called The Physician Services Agreement (PSA) The contract details how much physicians can bill for their services, as well as where health care funding should be invested in or where a cut back could be. In March of 2014, the contract had expired, which has led to negotiations for over the year. Over that year negotiations for the new PSA contract had many conflicts mostly due to the government’s goal try to end the province's deficit by 2017-2018.
What is the projected demand for workers in the health care field over the next 20 years? The demand for primary care services has stimulated the training of nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and certified nurse midwives who can deliver basic primary care to patients without access to primary care physicians. How does the aging of the population, health insurance reimbursement, and consumer demand impact the practice patterns of health care clinicians? A physician shortage is expected by 2020, primarily driven by the demand for physician services.
Nevertheless the most sobering cause to the health care disaster during Katrina is that the system itself is broken with millions uninsured and poor planning all the way up the federal government. With them stating the only way to truly prevent this from happening again “is reform the health system, making it accessible, affordable, and quality-oriented for
In the film Escape Fire the Fight to Rescue American Healthcare, there were many insightful examples of why our Unites States healthcare revolves around paying more and getting less. The system is designed to treat diseases rather than preventing them and promoting wellness. In our healthcare industry, there are many different contributors that provide and make up our system. These intermediaries include suppliers, manufacturers, consumers, patients, providers, policy and regulations. All these members have a key role in the functionality of the health care industry; however, each role has its positives and negatives.
Dear healthcare staff: The hospital is currently under financial difficulty and as a hospital administrator, I would like to explain to you how the Medicare (DRG) works. First, Medicare is a federal-sponsored health insurance program for individuals who are older than 65 years. Medicare also covers people with major debilitating conditions, such as End Stage Renal disease without any limit to household income. In order to qualify for Medicare, a person has to be a US citizen or with at least 5 years of permanent residence in the United States. Medicare is divided into four parts, namely: Medicare part A, B, C and D. The Medicare part A covers the inpatient cost of the hospital and skilled nursing facilities; Medicare part B focuses on outpatient
Relaxation of restrictions on Medicaid eligibly continued into the administration of George W. Bush which significantly expand the number of community health centers (Kaiser, n/d). The changes in the late 1990's and 2000's were good for hospital spending. Wu et al. (2014) found a rapid rise in growth of hospital spending between 2001 and 2009 which was mostly driven by higher payment. While spending increased, overall, hospitals continued to contract slightly.
A hospital’s primary goal should be to provide quality medical care to the patients so that they can be as healthy as possible. A possible way to be able to measure the quality of care a hospital is giving would be to look at their readmission numbers. If a patient is readmitted into a hospital in a short period of time after being discharged, then it is very likely that the hospital did not fully address the patients’ health needs during the initial stay. In an effort to improve the quality of service that hospitals are giving, the Medicare 30-day readmission rule was established to help by incentivizing hospitals to provide better quality care for its patients or be financially penalized.
When hospitals first appeared these facilities were only for the ill and the poor, these institutions were used to store human beings to keep them away from the rest of the population especially during times of epidemics of typhoid and cholera. The middle class never came to these facilities to receive their health care they had the luxury of staying in the comfort of their own homes. Not until the early 1900s when the standards of medical practice took a scientific approach to caring for patients did the ideal change of a hospital taking care of all patients not just the poor ones (Williams & Torrens, 2008). Acute care is one of the levels of care within a hospital this is when a patient is treated for an illness, trauma or disease for a short period of time which could have resulted from injuries or needing to recover after surgery. This type of care in general is administered to the patient in a facility by a wide variety of clinical personnel using pharmaceuticals,
The focus of health care is around patient care and from a health organization’s standpoint the challenge is how to provide the best possible care for the lowest cost. An example of the warranty approach suggested by the Prometheus Payment Model is a patient’s orthodontic treatment. When a patient get braces he/she is required to make so many appointments with the provider to monitor progress, but rather than paying for each individual visit there would be one charge for the entire period of care. If at the end of treatment the expected outcome is not achieved then the orthodontists would take care of it. The financial challenges for health institutions will only continue to grow more complicated but without the government and other payers backing down on their refusal to pay for re-admissions and re-do services it is up to the institution to come up with a plan to avoid these payment refusals.
Previously, majority of healthcare systems were driven by other goals such as ensuring enhanced care access, containing the costs of healthcare delivery, and promoting patient convenience/customer service in a bid to improve the efficiency and quality of healthcare. However, the financial collapse had far-reaching consequences for the healthcare systems as it
There are many individuals who depend on medication or require surgery to live out the rest of their lives in peace or at all, who are unable to do so because of the expensive cost of healthcare. Unnecessary deaths and worsening conditions due to the inability to afford overpriced medical care as well as denying treatment if the previous is recognized. A study showed that in a year 1 in 4 Americans, being 80,775,000 people, deny treatment due to the fact that they couldn’t afford their care, and over 45,000 people die annually due to the same cause. Even with insurance, many are unable to afford factors of their care as it does not cover everything, and most have to deal with deductibles of over $1,000. This has been happening for over a decade and though widely known is getting limited mainstream coverage and causing others to turn to other solutions.
