Review Of Current Healthcare Issues Assignment Discussion

Review Of Current Healthcare Issues Assignment Discussion

The selected national healthcare issue is high cost of care. Mullangi et al. (2019) indicated that significant rise in healthcare costs and reduced access to insurance coverage remains among the top pertinent challenges to the healthcare system in the United Kingdom. Ganguli et al. (2017) noted that a majority of the under-insured and uninsured people are confronted with many challenges related to the growth in health costs and lack of access to financing and coverage by key programs including Medicaid and Medicare. Barer and Bryan (2017) observed that the high cost of healthcare services may be attributed to a myriad of factors including an expanding aging population, development of new treatments, strict regulatory environment, change in demand and supply of healthcare services. Other factors include increased healthcare spending and lifestyle choices that have led to augmented rates of morbidity and comorbidities, and the lack of comprehensive policies aimed at promoting access to affordable health insurance Review Of Current Healthcare Issues Assignment Discussion.

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At the national level, numerous interventions such as Medicare services sought to increase the number of insured individuals with the intention of enhancing their capacity to consume healthcare services. At the organizational level, addressing the high cost of healthcare requires a healthcare organization to apply clear cost measurement processes to determine the total costs of treating their patient populations (Mullangi et al., 2019). Some of the key steps included in the cost measurement process include selecting the medical condition, defining the care delivery value chain, developing clear process maps of each activity in patient care delivery, obtaining time estimates for each process, estimating the costs of supplying patient care resources, making estimation of the capacity of each resource and conducting a calculation of the capacity cost rate, and calculating the total cost of patient care (National Academies of Sciences, 2018)Review Of Current Healthcare Issues Assignment Discussion. Adopting proper payment models can enable healthcare organizations to identify factors behind high costs of patient care, and put in place mechanisms aimed at providing quality care at affordable costs.

References

Barer, M. L., & Bryan, S. (2017). Health services research spending and healthcare system impact comment on “Public spending on health service and policy research in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States: A modest proposal”. International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 7(3), 278-281. https://doi.org/10.15171/ijhpm.2017.92

Ganguli, I., Thompson, R. W., & Ferris, T. G. (2017). What can five high cost patients teach us about healthcare spending? Healthcare, 5(4), 204-213. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hjdsi.2016.12.004

Mullangi, S., Press, M. J., & Ryan, A. M. (2019). A delicate balance: Accountability for very high-cost patients in new payment models. Healthcare, 7(4), 100366. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hjdsi.2019.100366 Review Of Current Healthcare Issues Assignment Discussion

National Academies of Sciences, (2018). Health-Care Utilization as a Proxy in Disability Determination. Washington (DC): National Academies Press. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK500097/

The national healthcare issue previously selected in module 1 was the high cost of healthcare. According to Kielb et al. (2017), limited medical insurance coverage in any country hinders the citizens from accessing quality and safe medical care. Thus, the high cost of healthcare services in the United States and the lack of medical insurance coverage among Americans, particularly those with low-income levels, is a significant factor preventing citizens from accessing quality healthcare services. Lack of quality and timely healthcare services, especially among individuals with chronic illnesses, increases disease burden and morbidity and mortality rates (Kruk et al., 2018)Review Of Current Healthcare Issues Assignment Discussion.

This national healthcare issue is associated with two competing needs. The United States federal government should expand health insurance coverage in the U.S to enhance access to quality and timely healthcare services in the country. Increasing medical insurance coverage impacts access to healthcare services positively (Shrank et al., 2021). For this reason, by expanding health insurance coverage in the U.S, the government will enhance access to quality medical care services in all states, which will reduce the high disease burden and morbidity and mortality rates across all the states. On the contrary, expanding health insurance coverage in the U.S will contradict the government’s goal to lower the percentage of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) spent on the United States healthcare system. According to Maddox et al. (2019)Review Of Current Healthcare Issues Assignment Discussion, approximately 18% of total U.S. GDP is spent on healthcare services. This considerable amount makes the Unites States healthcare system the most expensive globally. Due to this trend, the U.S government should focus on reducing the amount allocated to the country’s healthcare system and funds diverted to other sectors of the U.S economy.

References

Kielb, E, S., Rhyan, C, N, & Lee, J, A. (2017). Comparing health care financial burden with an alternative measure of unaffordability. Inquiry; 54:46958017732960.

Kruk, M. E., Gage, A. D., Joseph, N. T., Danaei, G., García-Saisó, S., & Salomon, J. A. (2018). Mortality due to low-quality health systems in the universal health coverage era: a systematic analysis of amenable deaths in 137 countries. The Lancet, 392(10160), 2203-2212. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736 (18)31668-4

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Maddox, K. E. J., Bauchner, H., & Fontanarosa, P. B. (2019). US health policy—2020 and beyond: introducing a new JAMA series. JAMA, 321(17), 1670-1672. Doi:10.1001/jama.2019.3451

Shrank, W. H., DeParle, N. A., Gottlieb, S., Jain, S. H., Orszag, P., Powers, B. W., & Wilensky, G. R. (2021). Health Costs and Financing: Challenges and Strategies for a New Administration: Commentary recommends health cost, financing, and other priorities for a new US administration. Health Affairs, 40(2), 235-242. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.01560 Review Of Current Healthcare Issues Assignment Discussion