Healthcare Challenges in the United States

The Greatest Challenge to US Healthcare
The role is played by the government
The role played by the government in healthcare is a divisive issue. Many healthcare organizations executives do support the idea of extending healthcare coverage to the uninsured, however, who this is implemented is the cause of concern. There are numerous changes that are taking place in the healthcare industry and the government needs to catch up quickly. Policy development is the role of government and there is a need to ensure that there are timely and applicable policies in place to govern the provision of healthcare services to the masses. As it stands, healthcare is moving from fee-for-service to value outcomes and there should be policies in place to support this advanced move. Providers have been moving towards value-driven care and the government policies should be able to mirror this movement. While not all providers will be willing to adopt this strategy, with government intervention it would be possible to enforce this move. The government is involved in all spheres of healthcare and this is done by the development and implementation of policies that ensure that healthcare is accessible to all individuals irrespective (Zhang, Qiu, Tsai, Hassan, & Alamri, 2017).
The government is also involved in the financing of healthcare. Financing is in the form of offering subsidies to those who are not able to pay for healthcare services. This will ensure that even those who do not have insurance coverage or Medicaid will be able to access healthcare services when they need them. Financing should not only be seen in terms of subsidies, but also in terms of other services that are linked to healthcare. Sewerage systems, pest control, and water purification are directly linked to healthcare. If there is an issue with either of the three it will result in the breakout of a disease. Therefore, disease prevention methods should be in place and there should be systems to ensure that the outbreak of diseases is prevented. Facilitation and not hindrance should be the role of the government (Adler-Milstein et al., 2015). Facilitation is terms of ensuring that water is treated before it gets to consumers. There should also be good pest control strategies that will ensure that pests are kept at bay and they are not allowed to breed. This will guarantee that people will be healthy and there will not require healthcare services. Sewerage systems should also be well directed and treated. This is directly linked to government and facilitation of these will be beneficial to healthcare.
Legislation should not be used to create bipartisan complications. All legislation should be conducted in consultation with the healthcare executives to ensure that the legislation passed will not drive a wedge between service provision and the patients. Legislation should be aimed at offering coverage to the uninsured and by working together with the private insurance companies it is possible to increase coverage. A case in point has been Massachusetts where legislation has allowed for the increase in the number of the uninsured to insured. Creating structures for expanding both private and public insurance should be the main goal of government legislation. This will expand the coverage population and it will drive down the costs of healthcare. There have been critics who have argued that government legislation will increase the costs of healthcare tremendously, however, this has not been the case in Massachusetts. With an increase in the number of the insured, healthcare costs have only risen marginally.
Current Trends in Healthcare
Technology has played a vital role in the delivery of healthcare. However, with advances in technology, there are numerous challenges that come up. For example, privacy issues have been on the rise with the implementation of healthcare management systems. Patient data can easily be shared with other providers and therein lies the problem. Transmission of this data should be safeguarded to ensure that it cannot be intercepted while it is being transmitted. Access to the patient records should also be safeguarded to ensure that only authorized individuals have access to the data. Even those who have been authorized to access the data, there should be roles assigned to each individual to ensure that they only access what pertains to their particular role or work. Advances in information technology are in themselves challenging to the healthcare industry. Healthcare organizations are struggling to implement systems that will ensure there is an improvement in the delivery of care and this takes up a huge chunk of finances. While the end goal is awesome, it might have an impact on the care provided to the patients while the systems are being implemented.
While biotechnology offers tremendous advantages to the healthcare systems and provision of healthcare services. It also offers challenges to healthcare. Modification of humans could alter the meaning of humanity. With increased advances in biotechnology, there is the potential that it becomes easy to create a virus or even develop pathogens that are destructive. Therefore, care should be taken to ensure that biotechnology is not used for the wrong purposes. This would only be possible by the development of policies that govern the usage of biotechnology. While scientists have been researching and experimenting with viruses with an aim to predict and prevent any adverse mutations. It becomes easy for the virus to be released accidentally. Research is always well documented and this makes it easy for others with ill intentions to access the publications and they can use them to make dangerous modifications of organisms. Engineering of pathogens means that it is possible for them to be made even more dangerous than the naturally occurring pathogens.
Smartphones have made it easy for people to access healthcare information. By using mobile healthcare, it is now easy for patients to access quality treatment and advice from a doctor at the comfort of their home. The challenge with this is that the delivery of the data might be easily compromised. In case the patient has an infected device, they can easily transmit the virus to the healthcare providers systems and this might result in the loss of data or breach of privacy. The validity of the information being delivered could also be compromised. Patients might not be certain they have installed or they are using an approved system for interacting with the doctor. This would lead to information that is not correct and it might aggravate the situation. The data that is delivered to the healthcare provider should also be verifiable and the devices used to gather the data must be trustworthy. This is hard because patients will use different devices and they will report the measurements as given by their particular device, which might be off or incorrect. Therefore, there should be standardized devices that can be verified and trusted for usage in the gathering of patient data.
Storage of data in the cloud offers other challenges to healthcare. This is because the data can be hacked easily when stored in the cloud. While it might be hard to physically access the information storage servers, hackers have devised different methodologies that they can use to access the data. Considering that most of the services are shared, this means that one server could be used by different companies or individuals and there is a risk that one can access the information if they understand the storage mechanisms implemented in the servers.
The Impact of Various Stakeholders and Influencers
Healthcare stakeholders are charged with the creation of policies and systems that will ensure the proper delivery of care to the patients. While their main objective is delivery of care, they are also required to ensure that they reduce the operating costs of their institution. Cost cutting has been one of the challenges that many healthcare institutions have had to contend with. Reducing the operating costs means that some services have to be cut or reduced and this has a direct impact on healthcare delivery (Bai & Anderson, 2015). Stakeholders who are only concerned with reducing the costs of the organization lose sight of what is needed and this means that some essential services might be cut. For example, staffing levels in most healthcare organizations have been on the decline and this is mainly due to the cost-cutting measures implemented. Nurses are the most affected yet they are the ones who are directly charged with caring for the patients. Reduced numbers of nursing staff result in the few nurses having to work long shifts and this impacts their morale. Overworked nurses are more likely to make mistakes when compared to nurses who are well rested.
Staffing is not the only restriction that might impact the delivery of healthcare. There are also organizational policies that are limiting to the employees or restrictive and punitive. Stakeholders should ensure that their employees have the leeway to make decisions based on their current challenges and requirements. With overly restrictive policies it becomes hard for the employees to think for themselves and they mostly opt to follow guidelines instead of them using their critical thinking skills in the performance of their work. Support should also be offered to workers in order for them to be able to deliver on their services (Bai & Anderson, 2015). There should not be implementation or changes taking place without proper consultation with the employees. This will ensure that the proposed change is accepted and embraced by all. Influencers also have a huge potential to create challenges in healthcare. Influencers could be donors who support the organization and they would like to have their ideas implemented even though they might not be potential benefits. Implementing suggestions without proper analysis will result in wastages as the facilities might remain unused. Therefore, influencers should be limited in their ability to direct the usage of funds.
Countrywide healthcare policies could also be impacted by influencers if they are well connected. People who have power like insurance companies have the potential to adversely influence the healthcare industry by them pushing for legislation that is only beneficial to their companies. Insurance companies have fought hard to ensure that healthcare in the US remains a free market without any government influence. This has negatively impacted the delivery of care in that few have had access to healthcare services, Also, with too much influence from the private insurance company’s healthcare remains a fee-for-service instead of it being value-based. This is because insurance companies benefit more out of this model as costs will remain high and fewer people will be willing to seek treatment. However, a value-based model hurts the insurance companies in that patients will get the quality of care irrespective of their health insurance status. This, in essence, would mean that few people would be buying medical insurance. The government has done a lot to ensure that even the poor have access to medical insurance by subsidizing the costs of healthcare. This has resulted in the government-backed healthcare insurance enrolling more people and reducing the reliance on private medical insurance.
Education, Workforce Availability, and Human Capital Issues
The rate at which medical innovation is increasing there is a need to ensure that the workforce is well educated. Education plays a vital role in healthcare because without education it would be difficult to develop new treatments and technologies. With a well-educated workforce, one will be certain that people are well aware in terms of healthcare. This will positively impact the provision of services. The ability to rapidly learn, unlearn and relearn new knowledge is vital. Staying updated with the requisite skills will ensure that one is able to offer the best service to their patients. Care is rapidly changing and there are new developments being made. Therefore, nurses and doctors should continuously be educated in order for them to be in a position to care and deliver quality service at all times. advancing and changing the delivery of care requires in-depth research that is only possible with education. Education plays a crucial role and it had a direct impact on healthcare. Educated professionals are able to adapt to changes and they can easily propose changes that will be beneficial to the healthcare organization. Lower education has also been associated with poor health. This is because the lack of education means that one is not fully aware of the need to care for them self. There are also diseases that are associated with poor health knowledge. In order to improve on healthcare, there is a need to ensure that the masses are well educated and they fully understand the impact of healthcare.
Workforce availability is essential in the delivery of healthcare. Without enough employees, it is hard to deliver quality care to patients. The few employees available are strained too much and this causes them grief when performing their work (Grover, Orlowski, & Erikson, 2016). There should be proper patient to nursing ratios implemented to ensure that a nurse is not overworked. Overworked nurses tend to make errors when they are working as they are focusing on too many things without paying close attention to what they are doing. This results in medication errors, patient care deterioration, rush provision of services, and a general drop in morale. Healthcare deteriorates when there are not enough employees to offer services to patients. Overstretched employees will be highly unlikely to go over and above their call of duty, and they are most likely to only do what is required. In organizations that have enough or more employees, quality of care offered in increased and there is a general positive morale.
Human capital is directly liked to workforce availability. Provision of a conducive work environment is vital for good outcomes in healthcare (Grover et al., 2016). A negative work environment will result in negative outcomes and employees will be unwilling to perform or report to work. There is already a nursing shortage in the US and compounding this with the aging of the current nurses means that there should be measures in place to encourage and retain more nurses within the profession. However, this is not being addressed. The shortage of staff is mainly related to the long hours that they have to work and the impact it has on their profession. The lack of human capital in the healthcare organizations means that the few available have to work longer periods and they end up being demoralized. Organizations should aim to attract and train talent in order for them to improve their delivery of care (Hart & Mareno, 2014). Specialization could also be impacting healthcare in that more and more employees are opting for specialized services instead of general care.
Key Factors Driving or Limiting the Further Growth of Healthcare
One of the key factors that are driving the growth of healthcare is the increasing demand for medical services. This is mainly due to the aging population. An aging population requires more medical services because their bodies are no longer as strong as they were before. This increase is also due to the large baby-boom population, which shows that more people are remaining active later on in life. Consumers are also demanding greater access to their health information. According to Zuchowski et al. (2015) greater access means that consumers are able to move with their information from one practitioner to another and they do not have to worry about losing the information since it is securely stored in the cloud. Healthcare information portability is beneficial to the patient as they do not have to undergo similar tests when they visit another provider. This reduces their medical expenditure. Treatment can be fast-tracked since patient information is shared across multiple devices and the patient has their own records. This demand by patients to have access to their patient records will lead to an increased adoption of cloud-based Electronic Health Records (EHR). EHRs are agile, flexible, and adaptable for both providers and consumers of healthcare (Adler-Milstein et al., 2015). This makes them easier to transmit from one provider to another without the fear of some file being lost.
Wearables are also driving the growth of healthcare. There has been a surge in the number of wearable devices that are entering the marketplace. These wearables are aimed at offering monitoring solutions for various things like heart rate, blood sugar, and activities. This is beneficial to the healthcare industry in that people will now be more aware of their health and this will promote control of health. Awareness is vital as one can be able to detect when something is amiss and the will seek for further treatment of diagnosis early. Early diagnosis has always been associated with better health outcomes. Smart wearables offer the opportunity for remote healthcare. In remote areas, patients would be required to monitor their vital signs and report them using their smartphones. This would be beneficial to the patient and provider. The patient would be able to get treatment even when they are not able to physically access the hospital building. Providers also benefit as they are able to offer solutions remotely.
Some of the factors that are limiting the growth of healthcare mostly revolve around funding. Not everyone is in a position to afford the healthcare they need or would want. The lack of funds means researchers are limited in the number of researches work they can conduct, which slows down the progress of healthcare. Without research, it would be difficult to determine if there is a need for change or increase efficiency in order to offer better services to patients. This limitation also affects the delivery of service. Fewer funds mean that organizations would have to contend with a minimal workforce. Without the requisite number of employees, it is hard to make any advances as the few who are available are limited in terms of free time. Therefore, they focus more on their work and less on making groundbreaking research. Funding also has an impact on education. Without funding, it would be hard for a person to advance their education and this would be limiting in terms of learning new technologies and advances being made in healthcare. This is quite limiting to healthcare as there is a need for the usage of new technologies.
Social Determinants of Health Impact
Social determinants of health refer to the economic and social conditions that influence the health of individuals. It would be unfair for one to blame a poor individual for having poor health yet they cannot be able to afford to provide for them self. Being poor means that a person does not get the nutrients that they need to fight off diseases and this makes them more susceptible to diseases. Also, poor individuals might not be living in sanitary conditions, which will directly impact their health. Social conditions might be related to the circle of friends that one has or their community. If the area is prone to outbreaks and if the lifestyle of the area is that or fast food joints, then there will be an increase in the number of obesity cases being reported. Lifestyles can also refer to the usage of alcohol and other drugs that might be influenced by the company one keeps. This has a direct effect on a person's health. If one does not take care of what they eat or drink then they are likely to affect their bodily function and this will result in their health been impacted negatively. Higher income households have been linked to better health. This is because they might have private insurance and they understand the need for taking care of their bodies. They also have healthy eating habits, which promote better health outcomes. Another social determinant of health is education. Low education levels have been associated with poor health, more stress, and lower self-confidence.
External Factors That Influence Healthcare
Resource availability can influence healthcare positively or negatively. A facility that has the appropriate and necessary resources is in a better position to offer quality care to its patients. diagnosis is also easily done by using the available equipment. Resources can also refer to the human workforce. Healthcare facilities should ensure that they have an adequate number of employees in order for them to offer quality care to patients at all time. With a limited workforce, it becomes hard for the employees to care for the patients. Medication is another resource that is beneficial to healthcare. The lack of medication results in patients not getting the treatment they need and this will adversely affect their health (Hart & Mareno, 2014). Therefore, there is a need to ensure that a healthcare facility is able to balance the needs of the patients. By ensuring that the facility has the required resources, one can rest assured that healthcare would be positively impacted. Properly staffing the hospital and not providing the required medications would not result in negative results as the staff would still be limited in the performance of their job (Zhang et al., 2017). A good strategy would be to find the perfect balance between the two and ensure that no limitation occurs in the provision of services.


References
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Bai, G., & Anderson, G. F. (2015). Extreme markup: the fifty US hospitals with the highest charge-to-cost ratios. Health Affairs, 34(6), 922-928.
Grover, A., Orlowski, J. M., & Erikson, C. E. (2016). The nation? s physician workforce and future challenges. The American journal of the medical sciences, 351(1), 11-19.
Hart, P. L., & Mareno, N. (2014). Cultural challenges and barriers through the voices of nurses. Journal of clinical nursing, 23(15-16), 2223-2233.
Zhang, Y., Qiu, M., Tsai, C.-W., Hassan, M. M., & Alamri, A. (2017). Health-CPS: Healthcare cyber-physical system assisted by cloud and big data. IEEE Systems Journal, 11(1), 88-95.
Zuchowski, J. L., Rose, D. E., Hamilton, A. B., Stockdale, S. E., Meredith, L. S., Yano, E. M., . . . Cordasco, K. M. (2015). Challenges in referral communication between VHA primary care and specialty care. Journal of general internal medicine, 30(3), 305-311.