Key Issues Affecting Health Care Administration - Research Paper Example

Key Issues Affecting Health Care Administration The changing state of health care system today has a dramatic effect on the way health care facilities such as hospitals, doctor’s offices, clinics, insurance companies and dispensaries, care for patients. Some of these key issues include the rise in the economy that has resulted in the high cost of insurance and medical coverage, legal issues that face doctors, lack of enough primary care doctors, and decrease in insurance reimbursement among others. The increase in the cost of health care has made many people who are currently living without any health insurances at all unable to access quality health care. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to perform an in-depth analysis on the key issues impacting healthcare administration in the changing healthcare system. As stated by Andersen, Rice, and Kominski (2007), in most countries, economy shapes the interactions among employment, costs, health coverage and financial access to health care. In a system which is dominated by employment-based coverage, the impact of recession presents difficult analytical issues. For instance, the current recession in the United States, which began in 2007, has led to an increase in the unemployment rate. Consequently, this has led to a rise in the nonelderly population without health insurance. According to a report by The Health Research and Education (2008), for every 1.0 percent increase in the rate of unemployment, results in a 0.59 percent rise, in the number of nonelderly adults without insurance (Andersen et al, 2007). Thus, recession has led to loss of coverage for many people and their families who are insured through employment arrangements. The newly employed workers have also been unable to retain their coverage while others have failed to qualify for any coverage under COBRA or other public coverage programs due to lack of finances. Additionally, the rise in the economy has also forced the employers to control benefit costs of their employees, which has resulted in additional reductions, in insurance coverage. Lack of funds has also affected the expansion of public coverage programs such as state and local programs in America, Medicaid and CHIP, Indian Health Services, Veterans Health Administration and other community health centers that are funded by the federal government. Because of this, the capacity of public programs that offer insurance coverage has become limited; hence, only few people have been able to receive health coverage through these programs. According to Andersen et al (2007), studies have shown that only one in four unemployed people aged between 16 and 65 years who earned an income below 200 percent were given the health coverage through the public programs. Moreover, the pressure to expand public health coverage programs has not only resulted in the restriction of people who can receive health coverage through these programs, but also caused the reduction of benefits available to unemployed or low-income families. In addition, it has caused the displacement of public health workers and employees who administer the public health programs to the unemployed individuals. Therefore, it is clear that the high rise in the economy has highly contributed to an increase in the number of people without health coverage due to lack of finances. The recession that has occurred due to rise in the economy has also led to an increase the demand for care in communities that supply low cost care, which has resulted to an increase in the number of uninsured people in many communities seeking for health care. However, it has not been possible to provide health care to such uninsured people due to lack of federal funding that supports the public health care programs in the local communities. Additionally, health care spending has continued to increase over the years. For instance, in 1965, health care spending was six percent of gross domestic product (GDP), in America. Moreover, the spending increased to 16 percent in 2004 and is expected to increase to 22 percent by 2025. According to Andersen et al (2007), 80 percent of all healthcare spending in the United States is as a result of chronic illnesses that mainly include diabetes and obesity. The need for health care is further expected to continue increasing as the population increases. Cost of health care has also increased over the years. According to Andersen et al (2007), health care costs has doubled between 1999 and 2009 and left many families without an additional unable to carter for all their health problems. One crucial factor that has led to the high cost of health care is the incorporation of new technology into the health care system. These advances in medical technology have contributed to the increase in health care spending. However, how the new technology increases or reduces the health care spending depends on certain factors such as the cost of treating a patient, how many times the new technology is used among others. As a result, the overall cost of health care increases making it difficult for the low-paid individuals to afford quality health care. The new medical services have been possible by the technological advances i.e. increase in capabilities of medicine. This has enabled the health care providers to treat various illnesses in ways that were not possible before. However, these technological services are quite expensive; while some are relatively inexpensive but raise the total costs quickly as the increasing numbers of patients use them. Use of technological innovation can reduce costs at some extent, which it often does for many types of goods and services. Moreover, the nature of technological innovation in medicine and changes, in clinical medicine that followed them has highly increased the spending. However, determining the impact of technological innovation on health care spending is quite difficult. Andersen et al (2007) argues that most of the development in healthcare spending in the past several years is as a result of changes in medical care due to advances in technology. Other factors that account for the rest of growth are the rising income and changes in medicals coverage that raised the demand for health care and raised the prices in the health care system. Another challenge facing the health care systems today is the shortage of doctors and nurses in health care facilities. Andersen et al (2007), claim that the high demand for healthcare workers and especially nurses is due to the high increase in population and the rise in health care facilities. Other factors that have led to shortage of nurses include lack of nursing educators and programs and aging of the current nurses in health facilities. Additionally, the number of students who currently enroll in nursing programs is quite low compared to the previous years; hence, the number is not enough to meet the expected demand. Therefore, this has led to a nationwide shortage of nurses. It is estimated that, by 2014, approximately 1.2 million nurses will be required to fill the new nursing positions that will arise due to increase in new healthcare facilities, in the United States. However, some nurses have claimed that the shortage of nurses is affecting their job satisfaction. A study by Andersen et al (2007) shows that more than 75 percent of all nurses in the U.S feel that the shortage of nurses is affecting the quality of their work and how they deliver care to patients. In addition, most nurses are currently complaining about being dissatisfied with their current jobs and are planning on leaving their jobs within a year, which will further compound the nursing shortage problem in the health care system. Additionally, the process of training and educating new doctors is quite lengthy. For instance, after spending about four years in college in order to get a medical degree, the prospective doctors are required to spend extra four years training in medical schools and then enroll residency programs that may take three to seven years to complete. However, the main factor, which has led to a low number of doctors, is the monetary fund that Medicare has set for residency program (Andersen et al, 2007). Additionally, many hospitals have come up with emergency coverage gaps due to lack of enough doctors. This has led to employment of doctors in contracts that have resulted in costs for the doctors than if they were employed by the hospital. The main purpose of capacity building function of the federal government is to ensure all local and state health facilities, as well as its agencies and tribal governments, have enough funds, people, equipment, research capacity, and organization in order to provide quality health in the society. However, over the years the public health infrastructure has not been funded by the federal government. Instead, they have aimed more at supporting research, construction personal health care facilities and biomedical research laboratories. Studies done by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) since 1988 have shown that there has been little done at both international and domestic level to strength public health infrastructure by the federal action. For this reason, the nation has been unable to monitor diseases and quality of personal health care by providing safe water, pharmaceutical products, food, and blood supplies to all people in the society. According to Andersen et al (2007), overcrowding in emergency rooms has also affected the health care system. As health care services demand rises, the number of emergency room visits increase, as well. For instance, the number of emergency room visits increased from 94 million to 115 million between 1997 and 2005. This continued to increase in both teaching and urban hospitals; thus, affecting the health care administration. Studies have shown that the mortality rates are affected by economic stress. This is because during such hard economic times people are likely to engage in substance abuse and alcohol and suffer from stress due to work related problems. Additionally, many cancer cases are likely to be reported. A survey by the American Heart Association (2009) found that about a third of participants in the survey exhibited several changes over the last six months, which could impact negative health consequences that included not taking medications, failing to take preventive care appointments among others (Andersen et al, 2007). In conclusion, transforming the healthcare system is a critical national priority. However, the transformation and the challenges required are immense and cannot be tackled by the health care industry and leaders alone. To make innovative solutions, all the health care workforce i.e. both leaders, clinicians, the government as well as the citizens should work together with focused goals and unity of purpose to create collaborative partnerships (Andersen et al, 2007). However, most of the problems affecting the health care system today are as a result of the increase in the economy, which has led to recession in many nations all over the world. This recession has affected the employer-sponsored coverage and forced many people to search for jobs that do not offer health benefits. However, although there is a shortage of nurses and doctors, studies have shown that doctors and nurses are staying longer in the workforce than it was previously predicted in order to establish new financial arrangements with the hospitals and ensure they have a stable income as the economy rises. References Andersen, R., Rice, T., and Kominski, G. (2007). Changing the U.S. health care system: key issues in health services policy. California: John Wiley & Sons. Read More