Hospitals Healthcare Sector Investigation

The hospital sector is critical to delivering healthcare services to citizens and thereby to a nation's well-being. The industry aspires to provide high-quality healthcare that meets the needs of the American people. The several changes that have been implemented, such as universal medical care and medical, have contributed to its growth. As a result, the poor, elderly, and disabled will receive medical treatment despite their financial constraints. To achieve optimal patient outcomes, this sector coordinates programs aimed at providing patient protection. The implementation of new technology to help in the delivery of satisfactory and high-quality patient care has assisted in the development of new technologies to aid in the provision of proper health (Morrissey et al., 2015). Also, the sector’s dimensions concern with provision of efficiency, quality, and accountability. However, hospitals faces fundamental challenges such as inadequate qualifies personnel, high medical costs and lack of resources. Strategies to address this problem have been put in place and the US government has laid down legislative measures in efforts to address the sectorial challenges. Nonetheless, healthcare providers have to practice high ethical code of conduct and be competent in healthcare delivery to meet the objectives set.

Historical Development and Current Role in Healthcare Delivery

The history of the current hospital sector started in the 1920s. During the time, many doctors and hospitals learned of diseases and became helpful in the treatment processes. However, the charges were higher than what people could afford. This further worsened with the introduction of the Great Depression. However, the “administrator of Baylor Hospital in Dallas” built a system that evolved into a Blue Cross (The Blues) (Elgart & Gaffney, 2009). Primarily, this was a nonprofit health care that did serve the local communities. This organization kept the hospital's premiums reasonably low. Same premium was charged by the Blues irrespective of sex, age, and the economic conditions of the person. Harry Truman proposed a national healthcare scheme but the opposition states that the Blues was capable to handle the problem. The hospital care delivery costs rose in the 1970s and the 1980s and this was due to the improving medical technology in the health-care system. Historically, the decisions that were made during the First World War greatly had an impact on the current hospital's sector. During the time, a robust history was developed of private insurance and this depicted to be for people with good employment in the 1950s. Private insurance was given to executives as a package in their employment and insurance became more available. However, the high cots led to the initiation of a Medicare which was a program created to ensure that many people get access to the hospital care.

On the prospects of the universal healthcare system, there was a need to eliminate the health problems that had plagued the hospital sector. Notably, as the healthcare got more technologically sophisticated in the 1990s and surgeries became widely available expanding the sector yet they were expensive (Elgart & Gaffney, 2009). Notably, the US health providers depicted to have a superior level in technical care with proliferation in technology. Evidently, many reforms in the hospital care have been subject to political debates since the 20th century and they have remained to be critical in care delivery to the modern world.

Hospital sector plays a vital role in meeting the healthcare needs of people that comprise of curative and preventive services. The Hospital sector provides a wide range of diagnostic and acute care services as well as supporting the public needs. It offers an access to healthcare services and cares for all patients that seek emergency care. In respect to this, hospitals denote to have an integral function in carrying out treatment activities as well as management of patients that are brought to the hospital. The sector offer patient supportive measures relating to direct patient care such as dietary diagnosis, nursing and laboratory services. Again, the hospital's administrative service showcase to have a significant role in healthcare delivery through providing services in accounting, transport, billing, and maintenance of health acre. It also administers personal development programs, policies, and standards that govern the healthcare delivery (Morrissey et al., 2015. Additionally, it gives proposition to matters that relate to administration, police, and enforcement in healthcare delivery. A more crucial role of hospitals attest to the rapid changes occurring in hospitals across the nation. Here, a hospital has to make sure that it keeps pace with advancement in technology and employ them for new patient care delivery. In view of this, hospitals also involved training of staff to impact them with new skills and unique care processes. Clinical services offered by this sector attest to a growing need for quality and efficiency in healthcare delivery.

Political Influence

Undoubtedly, the hospitals sector faces a lot of influence from politics and positively impact on care delivery. Molina and Pedro-Gómez (2012) note that the US government plays a key role in in this sector. In their article, three governmental levels facilitate in the delivery of care of various communities. This includes the local, state and federal governments. The federal government has an essential role of providing a range of regulatory and funding mechanism like Medicaid and Medicare (Molina & Pedro-Gómez, 2012). These were mainly established to give an accessibility to health services to the elderly people above 65 years and also the poor people. The programs have evolved and currently include the disabled people. The federal government has also established programs for the veterans, military individuals as well as their dependents. The laws and policies set by the federal government ensure that there is availability of emergency services irrespective of the capability for someone to pay. Again, it has involved in the determination of a national healthcare budget and formulated healthcare standard that guide its provision. It gives funding to this sector in order to ensure that there is availability of monetary resources.

The state level of the government is vitally responsible for funding, and enacting regulatory mechanisms which are also important in the provision of healthcare programs. It also helps in implementing the objects of the federal government. The local level has a role of implementing programs that are dictated by both the state and the federal governments. Federal regulatory state agencies like the “Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for pharmaceutical controls, the CDC for public health and the “Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)” help in providing healthcare to the needy, elderly and disabled people (Rey-Rocha & López-Navarro, 2014). Moreover, the government ensures that the rights of the patients are protected. For example, regulations like HIPAA protects patient information and the Newborns’ and Mothers’ Health Protection Act (NMHPA) inhibits early discharge of mothers and children from a hospital. Also, the Women’s Health and Cancer Rights Act (WHCRA) prohibits women discrimination that have cancer (Mortensen, 2015). The government focuses on increasing access to healthcare while at the same time offer improved quality care for various groups including children, mothers, elderly, poor and even disabled.

Quality, Safety and Competition

Hospital sector is the overarching umbrella of patient quality and hence impact on patient care. Quality in hospitals is a critical factor in ensuring that healthcare providers offer satisfactory services to people. This requires corporation from both the patient and the provider in a supportive environment. The quality of healthcare that impacts on patient delivery depends on the various factors. Patient quality is a key component in ensuring that the desired patient outcomes are realized. It captures the productivity of the health practitioner and the adherence of the hospital practices along with patient experience. It is vital to understand that the socio-demographic aspects affects the interaction between the patient and the provider. Easy accessibility to affordable medical services is profoundly to patient quality. Furthermore, the financial status of a patient affects the patient quality and thus patient care. When the patient cannot be able to afford his or her treatment expenses, this affects the medical treatment and the recovery process (Rey-Rocha & López-Navarro, 2014). Again, the patient quality depends on the education of the client and attitude along with the knowledge and the technical skills of the provider. Motivation to deliver high-quality services for patient care and the availability of resources influences care delivery.

Patient safety has emerged to be an important factor in healthcare and profoundly impacts on the patient care. This refers to the prevention of patients from encountering harm and adverse effects in a hospital. Here more focus is directed at the system of care delivery in prevention of errors, learn to from the recurring ones as well building a culture that promotes safety. This has to include all the professionals, patients, and organizations. The practice of patient safety emphasis on reducing the adverse events that experienced across a range of medical care condition and in diagnosis. Patient safety requires an appropriate use of “prophylaxis in prevention of venous thromboembolism in patients at risk” (Mortensen, 2015). There is also the use of perioperative beta-blockers that inhibits perioperative mortality and morbidity. Sterile barriers used in placement of central intravenous catheters help in avoiding infections. Antibiotic prophylaxis should be appropriately used to the surgical patients to inhibit postoperative infections. Also, the providers have to ask the patients to recollect what is learned during the informed consent to confirm if they understood the concepts that will avoid patient harm. Subglottic secretions prevent ventilator-associated pneumonia.

Russell states that the use of “pressure-relieving bedding materials prevents pressure ulcers”, and “antibiotic-impregnated central venous catheters prevent catheter-related infections” and thus proper patient care (Russell, 2015). Patient safety practices like the utilization of bar coding, simulators as well as computerized physician order entry are termed to be viable strategies in the prevention of patient safety errors as well as improving the healthcare processes. Origins of patient safety challenges arise from the communication failures and errors between the practitioners and the patient proxy. Also, poor management including the failure of tracing, improper delegation, wrong usage of resources and also refers influence patient safety. Poor clinical performance before, during and after intervention influences the patient safety. The cause of problems relating to patient safety arises from latent failure, active and organizational failure along with technical failure (Relman, 2012). Standardizing a Patient Safety Taxonomy is a framework that devotes at preventing and mitigating activities that are likely to hamper patient safety.

The increased completion in the hospital sector has proven to be a great advantage to the patient care. Numerous studies indicate that completion has a significant impact on the health care costs. It also aids in patient satisfaction. Competition has the ability to increase the value for customers as well as quality process improvements that culminate to a reduction in the healthcare costs. Key elements in competition include quality, price, support for products and services along with convenience. Equally, competition has proven to be an innovation and technology that provide mechanisms for reducing health care costs. More importantly, cit typically removes inefficiencies that could otherwise yield high delivery costs. Russell (2015) notes that competition in healthcare “improves health and satisfaction of a population within the constraints of existing technology, resources, and consumer circumstances.” It has made physicians in hospitals to make high-quality decisions concerning care of patients. Skills in the provision of this care have also improved for patient satisfaction. This has been a multidimensional concept and focuses on the technical competence, efficiency of care and clients perception of the outcome. Additionally, continuity of care, availability of resources, convenience and information have impacted on the competition in the hospital sector. Russell further asserts that patient satisfaction is an important factor in patient care and derives a lot of contribution from the level of competition in the industry (Russell, 2015).

Future Challenges and Issues

Forecasting future challenges that are likely to affect the hospital sector is important in order to find amicable solutions. Some of the enacted reforms will prove to be a detrimental in the functioning if the sector to enable proper healthcare delivery. The increasing number of elderly and uninsured people will remain to be a pressing issue to the sector. In future, people who are above “75 years will grow from 17 million to around 19 million” (Relman, 2012). This is going to lead to increase in the government expenditure in the long term. The state's budget will rise and more expenditure will be seen in Medicaid and Medicare. This will lead to an increased financial pressure to the government. The advancement in technology proves to transform the entire hospital industry, and the will prove to be overwhelming for the providers to handle. Undoubtedly, new technologies are associated with improved patient care. However, it requires constant training and a lot of resources have to be invested in these technologies. Notably, the proliferation of new technologies in this sector is exploding at an alarming rate, and this highlights opportunities and negative concerns. For example, there will be an increased data demand that the administrators and physician will face challenges in complying with this. This is because data management will require sophisticated skills that will not be readily available.

Besides, the hospital will remain to be plagued with incomplete coverage, rising costs, and stagnant quality delivery. Increasing costs will hamper quality care. There is likely to be shortages of the care professionals. There will be few new medical practitioners available to replace those that will retire in future. This will significantly lead to major shortage problems and hence decline the quality and efficiency in the sector.

The universal health care reform attempt to provide extensive health coverage in the US and make it universal. However, this will make the future care delivery to be a problem as the nation has it does not fully universalized the health care system. The system, for example, does not accommodate the illegal immigrants due to the limited resources, public concerns and legal issues in the healthcare sector. This factor will lead to an ethical challenge in future of selecting between the universal provision of healthcare and provision to its citizens and the legally documented immigrants. If the illegal immigrant remain uncovered by this reform, the pose a challenge of spreading epidemic diseases that will still have a greater impact on the nation. They will be left untreated from the communicable diseases and the nation will require more funds in controlling this predicament. This will also result into increased expenditures for the government and hence strain the budget.

Recommendations

There is a high need to address the problem of increasing costs that is likely to affect the sector in future and hinder adequate care delivery. This can be achieved through investment in Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER). This will promise great improvement on the value of healthcare in the long term as ways of reducing cost will be identified. CER has to focus on comparing benefits and risk, along with costs in the various health care practices (Kumar et al., 2011). Strategies need to be developed that will target supportive measures and offer an improvement in healthcare delivery. Also, interventions that are targeted to specific patient population and clinical areas should be enacted to impact on patient outcome as well as aid in containing costs in wide approaches. Consequently, the quality and value will be enhanced through the appropriate management of diseases at low costs. Policies need to be integrated to ensure accountability and safety in healthcare. This will be achieved through instituting coordinated efforts and making decision support programs for both the providers and the patients. This has to evaluate efforts that incorporate the efficiency of delivery system that will show promising results. Changes in the delivery system have to be made in attempts to solve the problem with the universal healthcare. Expansive overage should be implemented to cover the illegal immigrants who pose greater risks in the hospital care.

Conclusion

Historically, the hospital sector has depicted to play a profound role in care delivery. The reforms in this sector have enabled the poor, elderly and the disable people to have access to healthcare at an affordable cost. The function of this sector in the creating a healthy nation cannot be overstated. It ensures that patients have access to both curative and preventive care services. The political influence also helps in fostering efficiency and affordable services. However, the US healthcare system faces critical challenges which plainly indicate the urgent need for initiating appropriate solutions to resolve the future problems. Attention has to focus on the people who are uninsured and face large out-of-pocket costs. Also, the possible shortfalls in the quality and efficiency of care have to be addressed. A move to reform the healthcare system will aid in improving the value, safety and quality while at the same time address the ever-escalating cost in the industry. These solutions have to improve the accessibility to the right healthcare and make it convininet.































References

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Mortensen, E. (2015). Editorial Commentary:The Mismatch Between Physicians' Expectations and Microbiologic Reality. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 61(9), 1411-1412. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cid/civ632

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Rey-Rocha, J., & López-Navarro, I. (2014). The fourth mission of hospitals and the role of researchers as innovation drivers in the public healthcare sector. Revista Española De Documentación Científica, 37(1), e028. http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/redc.2014.1.1062

Russell, D. (2015). Closing the gaps on efforts to improve healthcare quality at the end-of-life. Death Studies, 40(1), 68-70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2015.1081542