Review of Current Healthcare Issues: Increase in Health Care Cost
Review of Current Healthcare Issues
Increase in Health Care Cost
The rising cost of health care has hindered health care access for several persons who need it. Various factors are continually contributing to the rising cost of health care, and the health care consumer is suffering the brunt of these escalating costs. Both the insured and the uninsured are feeling the heat of these high costs of health care. The high cost also undermines quality and embraces volume; thus, the consumers do not get value for their money (Park, Gold, Bazemore&Liaw, 2018). The healthcare system in the US is highly liberal and complex. These aspects of the system have, to a major extent, contributed to the constantly rising cost of healthcare, which has detrimental effects on the people’s quality of life. The system’s complexity requires the healthcare consumer to pay more in administrative costs than it would be if the system was less complex. There are so many choices that and decisions that the consumer needs to make, and for each of these categorized choices, the consumer will be charged an additional fee for administration. Additionally, the system enjoys minimal government involvement. The cost of prescription drugs, routine procedures, screening, diagnostic and testing procedures, treatment and nursing care is highly determined by the providers and are rarely regulated by the government. As a result, the healthcare consumers are charged highly for each of these services. Health insurance providers also set high premiums to be able to cover the costs of care for their clients and this translates to higher deductions by employers and also higher co-payment amounts for cost-shared insurance.
The high cost of care impacts highly on the patients’ ability to access care. For instance, low-income earners may not afford the costly premiums to secure quality health insurance. They may also not be in a position to pay out-of their pockets for costly procedures. Home based health care cost is partly covered by insurance providers, local governments as well as out-of-pocket payments. High cost of healthcare limits the patient’s ability to pay for home care and may deny individuals who require these services access to them. To cater for the high cost of healthcare, the caregivers of such patients may opt to hire non-medical assistants to help their kin with daily living activities and have the nurse come in at scheduled times for the necessary clinical care. Ambulatory care may be the most accessible for the majority of patients (Palumbo, Rambur& Hart, 2017). However, this may be difficult for certain patients. Homecare services, including routine, palliative, and emergency services, cover such patients effectively. Therefore, it is important to define new ways of offering these services that will enhance the patients’ health outcomes at affordable costs.
Organizations are coming up with ways to deliver care services to their clients without hurting their employees. My organization has designed various packages of home care delivery which are pocket friendly and convenient. These are particularly friendly to the uninsured or for those whose insurance compensation allocated to homecare has elapsed. The patient needs to choose from a number of available options according to the extent of the patient’s needs. For each of the packages, the patient is able to access nursing and clinician services, and aid with daily living activities. Incorporation of palliative care into the home based care has also been used to widen the scope of care thus enhancing the value for money paid by the client. However, the mode of access, the living arrangements, the skills available and the duration of contact vary accordingly and so does the cost. Additionally, the organization has adopted telehealth services and customized the systems to cater for various other patient needs including therapeutic services such as speech therapy. These ways among others help the organization to continue offering services to its clients regardless of the high cost associated with healthcare services.
References
Palumbo, M., Rambur, B., & Hart, V. (2017). Is health care payment reform impacting nurses’ work settings, roles, and education preparation? Journal of Professional Nursing, 33(6), 400–404. doi:10.1016/j.profnurs.2016.11.005
Park, B., Gold, S. B., Bazemore, A., & Liaw, W. (2018). How evolving United States payment models influence primary care and its impact on the Quadruple Aim. Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, 31(4), 588–604. doi:10.3122/jabfm.2018.04.170388