Introduction
One of the core fields that should keep on improving and having new developments after a short set period time it’s the healthcare sector. Not just in us but in any country looking forward to growth both economically and in reducing the death rates in the country. This is because human beings in their everyday activities are always exposed to risks such as injuries, illness and more of both physical and mental impairments. Healthcare can be successfully achieved if improvements on prevention, diagnosis and treatment of any health risks are well taken care of. Healthcare is not only health professional’s responsibility but also is a responsibility to everyone in US.
US healthcare systems
When referring to healthcare systems it refers to group of organized people, resources and institutions that deliver healthcare services and make sure they meet expected health needs in a given or targeted population. Healthcare in the United States is provided by recognizably different organizations, and the facilities mostly used are in the most cases owned by the well-known private sectors. This makes it easier to access since they are located at many different places and are availed to all regardless of the different social and financial classes. The government in support of the non-governmental organizations has taken the heed in ensuring much has been spend in the healthcare sector which has made US the most well performing nation when healthcare is put into consideration (Squires and Anderson, 2015).
Though in the US there are no national health services (NHS) but the US governments provides funds to two types of health plan which covers the poor, children, the elderly and those that are disabled these plans are both Medicare and Medicaid. Then for those that are employed it’s well defined that their medication should be well taken care of by their employees. Both the Medicare and Medicaid services have been of great help to many since they offer extra coverage such as taking care of hearing problems, vision issues and many other health and wellness services that are offered to the subjects (Betancourt et al, 2016).
US health sector spends as twice of cost as other developed countries. This is due to the high administrative costs incurred by its healthcare systems, drug costs that are high thought to be unreasonable, practice of defensive medicine has also contributed greatly to the US raised medication prices, the US medical professionals also tend to use expensive mix treatments, involved wages and the well started work rules and then branding which places the rule that there is no anything which is known and declared to be legitimate price of anything in the field of healthcare. All these factors have been contributed by the fact that the US government does not play the major role in negotiating over the drugs prices with the drug makers and taking care over the medical equipment as well and the hospital costs (Thota et al, 2018).
The quality assurance of health care systems includes activities and well placed programs that are purposed to assure or improve the standard levels of healthcare either in a defined medical plan or program. The notion involves evaluation or examining the quality of healthcare set how well and fast the problems are indicated and the shortcomings faced when in process of delivering care; looking for alternatives so as to overcome the shortcomings and continuously monitoring the activities to make sure the corrective alternatives are put in place appropriately or accordingly. For the private organizations they make sure the deliver quality health care and release sensible responses and offer the best services to employer as well as great mapping to ensure connectivity with everyone involved. This is ensured via public reporting of performance of hospitals, health providers and the organizations (Squires and Anderson, 2015).
In the U.S., ownership and control of the health care system is mostly in private hands, though federal has ownership of some and the state, county, and city governments also own certain facilities. This makes the non-profit institutions own approximately the greater percentage though there are those private profit making facilities and the governmental facilities too. Apart from the government and private owned health care facilities there are also free clinics and though they provide limited medical services they really are considerate of those who lack health insurance which is valued as much because they are social safety net. They range their services as from the more acute care which involves injuries to long term care such as counselling (Thota et al, 2018).
The healthcare spending in US it too affects its economy, Increased health care costs have made the public sector federal, state and municipal governments face rising costs more rapidly than revenues, placing high check-up on all distinct health care expenditure, especially health care. Also companies with rising health care spending may cut other expenses, reduce increment of wages, deduct health insurance placed benefits, or ask employees to pay much higher share of the costs involved. As the most involved costs are shifted to consumers, they end up determining the value of health care services which then is more easily weighed against other purchases. Employers also view rising health care costs as an added benefit and important to elevation of their profitability broader economic trends. Therefore, employers from large institutions to average institutions their spending has double increase in health care spending, which results to more profits. Growth in health care spending generally has led employers to reduce, eliminate, or change the same outcomes (Betancourt et al, 2016).
The spending on health care in United States it continuously increases over the years and always much higher than of any other developed country and it is expected to keep its upward growth trend in spending on medication because the health sector keeps on growing and making more advancements which ensures much more developed and promising medical care services. With more spending on the health care sector this assures more advanced facilities and skills as well hence leading to more clear and fast diagnosis and treatment hence curbing some of the attacks that have made recent increases of mortality rate. With more specification spending on health sector makes it easier to be able to realize fatal diseases at their early stages such as cancer and promotion of much more psychological care by introducing different government funded programs which can reduce the death rate of women mostly caused by suicide as lately observed(Squires and Anderson, 2015).
System efficiency and equity are other core factors considered by the US healthcare system. For instant when there is variations in the efficiency of health care delivery then it results to variations in outcomes. Indicated variations in how medical resources are well placed and used in the United States were and can always be accompanied by marked variations in outcomes. The interest of professional personnel to work in an area it is always determined by the result of the same area and the benefits it offers, a situation brought about by lack of enough doctors in the United States, especially for those who offer core care. The Affordable Care Act, which should always be considered in US, produces much more demand for services which the existing current situations can’t reach, more in economically depressed areas. Training additional physicians would require some years therefore it gives the government and all organizations reason to keep on making improvements for much better incomes (Thota et al, 2018)
Equity on the medical insurances it is one of the shortcomings for it is not well distributed amongst the people in US these means the coverage of health care insurance doesn’t cover all the population involved. Though the currently done census done indicated that 90% of the uninsured population can qualify for the offered Medicare and Medicaid health plans provided by the government and they have just chosen not to enroll .which makes it not governments mistake but people ignorance. There could be introduction of training programs on informing everyone on the importance of enrolling so as to make sure the whole country as one big family is safe and a lot of damages brought about by illness are put to an end before they grow any bigger or much more complicated. Also it is clearly indicated that those that are underinsured are the ones affected most like for instance when cancer is realized at its last stages because one could not secure a good medicine care because they are lower earners hence making many loose keeping on losing their life this indicates the low wage earners are very much disadvantaged (Betancourt et al, 2016).
Conclusion
Apart from the challenging parts of the healthcare system of United States it too has some of its strengths which can be related with the whole system. One of its greatest strengths as much as American health care system is involved it’s the unbreakable private sector cooperation, which brings around a ready access to all kinds of services involved in health sector for those with promising coverage and, continuously encourages the pushing on medical new ideas by product manufacturers. The continuous growth of medical technology in US has undoubtedly improved the health status for a great number of the American people and the employer-sponsored insurance has also taken greater part holding the sector availability to all in US health sector. Generally, employer-based insurance is much favorable, available and can adjust quickly to changing sequences of the agreed medical practice (Burwell, 2015).
Again for the whole system to work on well and improve the performance then the providers should get to know what really the people need and give their best services accordingly, this way the relationship between the people and the provider can be built on loyalty and trustworthy. The providers again they should ensure the give clear and easily understandable information that incase of instructions and prescriptions there are no confusion. The results offered should always reflect the cost used that the value of expenditure doesn’t surpass the amount of revenues and that way the system could be considered to be functioning under no losses which is not just healthcare system requirement but requirement to any developing business. And lastly the US healthcare system can focus on encouraging people to get the right medication at the right time for limitation of unwanted increase on death rates (Burwell, 2015).
References
Betancourt, J. R., Green, A. R., Carrillo, J. E., & Owusu Ananeh-Firempong, I. I. (2016). Defining cultural competence: a practical framework for addressing racial/ethnic disparities in health and health care. Public health reports.
Burwell, S. M. (2015). Setting value-based payment goals—HHS efforts to improve US health care. N Engl J Med, 372(10), 897-899.
Squires, D., & Anderson, C. (2015). US health care from a global perspective: spending, use of services, prices, and health in 13 countries. The Commonwealth Fund, 15, 1-16.
Thota, C., Sundarasekar, R., Manogaran, G., Varatharajan, R., & Priyan, M. K. (2018). Centralized fog computing security platform for IoT and cloud in healthcare system. In Exploring the convergence of big data and the internet of things (pp. 141-154). IGI Global.