HR assignment on: Health care sector
- Analyze three cost containment options for the health care sector.
Cost containment is one of the important factor that has to be kept in health care sector .The rationale behind this is to improve the quality of health care and devote the resources to another sector. Different hospitals around the world follow different types of cost containment strategies. While some go for robust diagnostics so that unnecessary differential diagnostics can be eliminated, some go for prevention strategies to decrease the prevalence of any condition. In this report we will focus upon three cost containment strategy maintained by the hospital authorities in common and discuss their advantages as well as disadvantages too.
Cost containment is defined as the over control of the operational costs leading to better management of the health care system and decreasing the burden upon the government as well as health department of the state. For example- The Australian health care system has to spend a lot upon the diabetes patient and this puts lots of pressure on the funding agencies. Cost containment strategies like educating the patient to lead a healthy life style is definitely going to decrease the cost, as patient education decreases the cost incurred both by the patient and the health department.
- Payment reform
This strategy includes maintenance of the cost incurred due tp the payment of salaries, payment by the government or the aged persons, for critical patients, payments for installation of different instruments etc. Many times hospitals go for unnecessary installations of features and accessories which were literally not required. Automation is one of the strategies which can give a new direction to this strategy. Automation such as automatic sensors at doors, automatic recording of visitors by deriving their fingerprint as well as their names from databases, using machines for floor cleaning etc. will definitely help in decreasing the cost of the hospital authorities. This decreases the man power and it leads to the decrease in cost incurred on the man power, Payment reforms such as increase in payment of registered nurses, has a sounding effect on the cost containment indirectly as they will take more interest in providing the health care and really can provide viable health care, reducing the time of the care and the cost incurred. The main advantage of this strategy is it leads to the decrease in cost; it leads to the decrease in time of evaluation and outcome of the process involved. This also gives the hospital authorities a first hand to go for some other new initiatives which will bring a revolution in the health care sector.
- New models of care delivery.
There are different forms of care delivery such as holistic care, therapeutic care, and palliative care. Every care model involves certain persons who deliver the care in a certain method. Every care delivered has to go through the certain procedures. Such as the enrolled nurses always has to wait for the permission of the registered nurses to carry out an evaluation procedure. At times, the process itself is much easy to be carried out by the enrolled nurses. It lengthens the process of delivery as well as the staying of patients in both wards and ICU chamber. This increases the cost of treatment as well as the burden upon the hospital authorities. So by defining the new model of delivery where the roles are much better defined and the responsibilities too, the cost containment can be done in a much better manner. Similarly, including patient education as compulsory in the treatment regimen also has deep impact upon the cost containment. The disease which has chance of reoccurrence can be prevented through this strategy. Such as with every visit of the patient, the hospital must have enough literature resources available with them to provide to the patients so that they can learn, about their disease, its general cause, its prevention strategies etf. The physician or doctors must educate the patient (outpatient) as well as the registered nurses must play an important role regarding this ( in patient). This decreases the time of stay of any patient, as well as spread the health awareness. It leads to the decrease in the number of patients who have to come to hospital setting number of times, they can reduce their frequency of visits as well as decreasing less burden upon the hospital authorities.
- Prevention and disease management
In this section, the old proverb prevention is better than cure holds good. This strategy has to be maintained by the health care department of the government, if they want to control the cost incurred due to health problems. Preventive strategy can be of many types, such as vaccination, immunization, organizing health camps, community health program, educating the patients, encouraging better healthy lifestyle and preventing the myths with clear acceptable concepts.
The cost incurred on the tobacco management in health care sector is billions of dollars all around the world due to increased risk of problems due to tobacco intake. So tobacco consumption has to be stopped before it takes the shape of a cancer or any disease where cost of treatment is extreme high. For this awareness through all media sectors is important, only by putting the symbol or slogan on the tobacco consumables is not enough. Strict rules and regulations must be employed on the selling and buying of tobacco. Restriction of age on consumption of tobacco has greater effect. This will lead to the decrease in demand as well as the supply of the tobacco thus leading to decrease in complications which caused due to the tobacco consumption. Similarly, better disease management at hospital setting also leads to the decrease in cost incurred on patients. Such as patients who are in ICU, generally develops bed sore due to prolonged bed ridden condition. This bed sore does not heal easily and adds more stress on the hospital resources both human and other medicinal resources. This is caused many times by the negligence of the nurses and doctors treating the patients. So by developing better disease management style that is by using water and air bed can decrease the chances of having the bed sores to a greater extent. This requires both training and participation of the doctors and nurses. It requires proper planning of the management of disease. Evidence based medications as well as management of disease can definitely help in reducing the costs incurred. Evidence based medications and management provides substantial interventions which were applied and both the short and l9ong term goals are achieved fully. So by proper adoption of disease management strategies, the cost incurred in the health care sector can be managed fully.
CRITIQUE
- Payment reform
Payment reform has its own advantage and disadvantage too. Such as increasing the number of automation no doubt will decrease the cost incurred on the human resources, but definitely will lead to the increase in the cost of maintenance. This adds extra burden on the health care sector as well as on any hospital setting. So the hospital authorities have to see proper supply chain channels from where they can get their required automation at reasonable costs without decreasing its quality and without affecting its performance.
- New models of care delivery.
New models of care delivery leads to the decrease in man power as well as the decrease in time of treatment, but at times it leads to complications due to the overburdening of the work stress upon the nurses. Any fault done by the enrolled nurses due to increase in the burden will lead to greater complications, which increases the time of stay of the patients. For example any wrong administration of medications just because the enrolled nurse knows the rationale behind the medication does not solve the issue, it has been reported it leads to greater complications. So the new delivery of care must be designed in such a way that it leads to the proper definition of scope of practice as well as the responsibilities which can lead to both decrease in time and money incurred by the hospital setting.
- Prevention and Management of disease
Prevention and management of disease itself this strategy has disadvantages, but the way in which it is implicated or applied to the real scenarios can cause some problem. Such as distri8uting the literatures to the patients definitely will solve the problem, but in that case there must be some health care professionals who have qualifications as per the recommendations. So that they can give proper care to the patients as well as they must have knowledge of te different cultures. Otherwise this will lead to the breaching of the medical and ethical guidelines. So the prevention program requires enough qualified individuals as well as well-trained individuals to carry out the process.
Cost containment process is an important strategy as this helps in saving unnecessary costs incurred and channeling this saved costs in other useful resources, such as developing new program to control different other disease.
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