Healthcare Services Costs and Customers Satisfaction - Term Paper Example

 Healthcare The collective acts of taking the necessary diagnostic, preventive and curative measures against illness, disease, mental and physical impairments and injury in humans are refered to as healthcare (Estella, Franks & Kravitz, 2007). Such measures may be conducted through administering of medicine, surgery, or alterations in patients’ lifestyles. Typically, healthcare services are delivered through healthcare systems that comprise of physicians, nurses, midwives, dentists and hospitals by providing public health, tertiary care, secondary care and primary care. The quality of these services forms one of the most significant contributory factors towards customer satisfaction, legal compliance and healthcare costs. When a country attains an optimum level of balance between the quality of healthcare and the satisfaction of patients and meets legal and regulatory obligations, its economy gains significantly. Further, general life expectancy and wellbeing are also boosted. However, poor quality of healthcare is equally detrimental to the development of a country (Estella, Franks & Kravitz, 2007). This paper will explain the relationship between quality and customer satisfaction, legal compliance and healthcare costs. In nations like the United States, healthcare represents big business as well as the highest spender of per capita. Its quality, therefore, must greatly be reflected in customer satisfaction because it will be the determinant between profit and loss (Karen & Ashish, 2012). This is mainly because satisfied customers (patients) will stick with particular healthcare providers and give recommendations. However, the relationship between quality healthcare and customer satisfaction is not always as straightforward as it may seem, because satisfied patients do not automatically become healthier persons. In this view, customer satisfaction can be considered more of a measure than a distinct phenomenon. This aspect further gives the relationship a more complex angle, because quality of service can also be viewed from the perspective of service providers. When the providers themselves are not satisfied, customers will not be satisfied (Mind, 2000). Customers seek healthcare services because they have needs, expectations and concerns. They get satisfied when these are identified and addressed appropriately and affordably without compromising the quality, which also translates into the providers earning profits. Customer satisfaction in healthcare is mainly associated with their inpatient stays and the degree of mortality risk. Quality of healthcare that results in customer satisfaction will be determined by the time spent on care, rate of readmission and the use of diagnostics. Therefore, the relationship between quality healthcare and customer satisfaction is one that cannot exactly separate two objectives; to promote the health of a country and to make profits for health institutions. In a well managed and professional healthcare system, the relationship does not necessarily affect the order in which these two objectives are listed (Fenton & Franks, 2012). In any way, satisfied customers keep appointments, follow instructions and pay compliments. On the other hand, customers unsatisfied with healthcare quality will change providers, complain and take legal actions. Any healthcare system is obliged to serve its patients ethically and offer quality services. Therefore, the relationship between quality healthcare and legal compliance can best be described as one in which legal compliance is the means by which a healthcare system will achieve its objectives (Mind, 2000). Then, because of the dual nature of the relationship between quality and compliance, quality healthcare is also the key means to ensuring legal compliance. The two features are mutually supportive, with their common mission being the provision of service to clients. On its part, legal compliance ensures that healthcare providers are accountable for the quality of service they offer. It encompasses aspects of quality assurance and risk management, which are representative of the processes through which services in healthcare are scrutinized and audited and also generate and enforce action plans aimed at benefiting patients. On the part of healthcare providers, when they are legally compliant, they avoid legal action with consequences such as penalties, fines or even closure (Fenton & Franks, 2012). When they are compliant, healthcare providers will be consistent in optimal results that meet customer expectations of quality since some regulations make certain clinical conditions global goals. Then, apart from the documented daily care, regulated processes can facilitate truthful, internal self-examination in their own overlapping ways. The resultant quality of service will demonstrate good faith endeavors to be legally compliant as well as meet reimbursement requirements (Karen & Ashish, 2012). Healthcare is among the most regulated industries, and providing quality healthcare is more concerned with achieving expected and reproducible results while compliance is more concerned with adhering to stipulated standards towards achieving those results. Therefore, they are inherently correlated and must work in conjunction with each other. Unavoidably, not all regulations favor healthcare providers, but that must not compromise the quality of healthcare. The relationship of healthcare quality and costs is one marred with complications. With healthcare accounting for 17.6 percent of the GDP in 2009, the United States easily has the costliest healthcare system in the world, raising questions as to whether customers are getting sufficient value and quality in return (Macready, 2013). When addressing the subject of healthcare improvement, cost and quality are inseparable twin pillars since better clinical results have the potential to contain costs while higher expenditures can also result in better service. Undeniably, those who afforded it got to use costly and advanced healthcare technology such as MRIs and CT scans more frequently. This resulted in an increase of life expectancy by an average of one year for an American adult between 1999 and 2009. However, that gain represented less than half of what the 34 other member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) had achieved within the same period. Still more disturbing, the US had dropped to position 19 among the 19 high-income nations in terms of preventing deaths caused by common health conditions which doctors are able to treat (Macready, 2013). The indicators of the direction of the relationship between healthcare quality and costs are greatly inconsistent, with most studies establishing that the association is small to moderate, whether the direction is negative or positive. However, it can safely be concluded that customers in the highest-spending health institutions receive care that is substantially better on a variety of specific metrics (Karen & Ashish, 2012). It can further be noted that such care is associated with lower rates of readmission, mortality and adverse cardiac events. References Estella, M., Franks, P., & Kravitz, R. (2007). Primary care visit length, quality, and satisfaction for standardized patients with depression. Journal of General Internal Medicine 22(12), 1641-1647. Fenton, J., & Franks, P. (2012). The cost of satisfaction: A national study of patient satisfaction, health care utilization, expenditures, and mortality. Archives of Internal Medicine 172(5), 405-411. Karen, E., & Ashish, K. (2012). The relationship between cost and quality: No free lunch. Journal of American Medical Association 307(10), 1082-1083. Mind, J. (2000). Nurses remote and threatening. Nursing Times 96(46), 5-8. Macready, N. (2013). Link between cost and quality of healthcare remains unclear. Annals of Internal Medicine 158(4), 27-34. Read More