Relevance Of Economic Concepts In Healthcare Sector

Statistics analysis of the Healthcare sector

Describe about the Relevance of Economic Concepts in Healthcare Sector.

Cost and affordability are the two essential aspects that the health and social care sector of America needs to have a deep understanding of. These aspects are highly important for the proper delivery of health and social care service to the families of America. There are number of economic aspects which are important to be undertaken for research in order to understand the health and social care trends as well as the economic propensity of people towards healthcare services of America. The present analysis is undertaken in order to have a clear understanding of the relevance of economic concepts within the healthcare sector (Andersen et al., 2011).

As per the US Department of Health and Human services the mean Total premium For Employer Sponsored Insurance has increased over the years. The employees have shown clear inclination to indemnify the different kind of employment insurance one can get. The graph analysed from the given site clearly shows that employees have two different options to avail apart from insuring him or her. Over the years right from Y2K it has been seen that there have been gradual increase in employees doing family insurance. Significantly the graph for Employee plus one and single insurance has also increased consistently showing the awareness created among the people to insure themselves through the different health schemes run by the employers for instance the ESI scheme. The amount of money that an employee gets for health coverage has increased significantly not only for one single individual but also for the families as well as in the employee plus one scheme. Last calculated in the year 2013 the measure value for all the three schemes raised significantly with the family coverage going up to $160.29 and single scheme going up to $5571 which was around $5384 in 2012. It could be said that over the years for the individuals the measure of affordability for health related aspects increased that has added extra liabilities on the US companies to fulfill their promises regarding health (Swan, 2009).

The second Graphical representation showed the health care expenses per person with at least one health event in the recent past. It is important to mention that some of the key health events which take place in the country and are prevalent have been included like the Heart disease, normal birth, and back problems. It is important to say that the graph showed fluctuations in every single disease mentioned above. It is important to mention that their measured value has also fluctuated but normal birth problems have been the most crucial one and the next is heart disease. Hence it could be said that normal birth and heart disease are prevalent problems that the US health department should look after. The graph shows that the different prevalent diseases in US have consistently increased and hence the trend in the cost of treating these diseases has also increased. In the graph it is shown that the total measured value of all the prevalent problems like Heart disease, back problems and normal birth problems have increased $4,349, $2,019, $6,442 respectively in the 2012 which has marginally less in the 2011 and this clearly states that the trend in the cost of care treating these problems have increased (Drummond et al., 2015).

Conclusion and Recommendations

The third graph shows the concentration in the hospital market. It is important to mention that out of the statistical analysis by the US Department of Health and Human services it is clear that in highly contrite market the hospitals tend to charge more and it has gradually increased with the last calculated measured value being 2821 in 2012. Hence this stands to be another problem for the Health departments. The care system has developed and even the competition in providing delivery of healthcare services. Since the concentration of the hospitals has increased in certain markets hence their healthcare delivery system has also developed and this has added to the cost which has made the affordability of the services users have gone down which is a problem for the health system. One of the key factors in reducing cost of healthcare has been the enforcement of the burden on the business houses to raise their ESI liabilities which will help to provide the employees as well as their families effective healthcare services (Wang et al., 2011).

Delaying treatment for not being able to afford health services is one o the major problems that has been prevalent in the US with the highest being in the 2009-10 financial year. This means that people have clearly not been able to get treatment due to high charges of healthcare services. Even though it has come down in the later years around 2013 but it still needs to be taken care of as the measured value shows 9.1 in 2013. Cost of Healthcare have been continuously increasing over the years in United States which is a huge problem for the country as higher healthcare costs will lead to more and more people denied quality healthcare facilities. The graph has shown a rising trend which affects the healthcare costs of the country as years pass by. In the last calculations it showed around $7826 as the measured value of the healthcare cost in the year 2013 (Zimlichman et al., 2013). In the last few years the US government’s healthcare expenditure has shown an upward trend as mentioned above. The burden of healthcare cost has significantly risen which is clearly visible from the graph given in the website. It has increased significantly over the years for which the US government has had to invest huge amount of money so that people can get effective treatment. With the cost of healthcare rising the affordability of people in terms of getting healthcare treatment has also gone up where it had been tried to manage through the ESI policies where employees are inclined to get themselves as well as their families enrolled which has risen the cost of healthcare not only for the government but also for the business houses as it becomes an essential allowance that they have to provide to their employees (Gulliford & Morgan, 2013).

References

Conclusion and Recommendations

The present analysis is a clear picture of the status of the healthcare sector in USA and the major problems that it faces now is the increase in healthcare costs and problems for the individuals to get treatments due to high healthcare charges and these will have to be mitigated effectively. To control the healthcare costs it is extremely important to focus on the insurance based solutions of healthcare. It is important to come up with suitable reforms to revamp the healthcare system and emphasise on the increase in insurance based solutions which will act to be effective for both the problems for instance it will help to reduce the overall cost of healthcare as well as it will also help people to get effective treatment without any delay (Zimlichman et al., 2013).  Health promotion and disease prevention practices will help to reduce the healthcare cost of the country. It is also important to educate services users about the ill-effects of the overuse of the healthcare services and its impact which will help to reduce the healthcare costs significantly. Making changes over the flow of patients so that they do not have to face problems unnecessarily flowing through the health care system. Also for reducing the delay over healthcare services it should be made sure that all the health care services which are supplied to the patients should be synchronized considering the patients demand. Among all the most vital way of reducing the health care delay would be by introducing ancillary services including proper housekeeping and transportation which supplies direct patient care.

References

Andersen, R. M., Rice, T. H., & Kominski, G. F. (2011). Changing the US health care system: Key issues in health services policy and management. John Wiley & Sons.

Swan, M. (2009). Emerging patient-driven health care models: an examination of health social networks, consumer personalized medicine and quantified self-tracking. International journal of environmental research and public health, 6(2), 492-525.

Drummond, M. F., Sculpher, M. J., Claxton, K., Stoddart, G. L., & Torrance, G. W. (2015). Methods for the economic evaluation of health care programmes. Oxford university press.

Wang, Y. C., McPherson, K., Marsh, T., Gortmaker, S. L., & Brown, M. (2011). Health and economic burden of the projected obesity trends in the USA and the UK. The Lancet, 378(9793), 815-825.

Zimlichman, E., Henderson, D., Tamir, O., Franz, C., Song, P., Yamin, C. K., … & Bates, D. W. (2013). Health care–associated infections: a meta-analysis of costs and financial impact on the US health care system. JAMA internal medicine, 173(22), 2039-2046.

Gulliford, M., & Morgan, M. (Eds.). (2013). Access to health care. Routledge.