I take the term to mean having multiple decision makers make a set of health care decisions that would be made better through unified decision making. Individual decision makers responsible for only one fragment of a relevant set of health care decisions may fail to understand the full picture, may lack the power to take all the appropriate actions given what they know, or may even have affirmative incentives to shift costs onto others. All these forms of fragmentation can lead to bad health care decisions. Fragmentation can occur along many dimensions. Looking at the narrowest dimension, we might be concerned about fragmentation in treating particular illnesses, such as the lack of coordination among the various professionals involved in treating …show more content…
Given that we are talking about medicine, it makes sense to begin by asking: are there sound medical or scientific reasons for the current fragmentation of U.S. health care. The fact that other nations have far more integrated health care systems and hospitals dominated by salaried doctors, and achieve similar or better health results at lower cost, belies any claim that medicine or science inherently requires U.S. levels of disintegration. This same fact seems inconsistent with the claim that the sociology of the medical profession inherently requires such fragmentation. Further, Institute of Medicine studies of the U.S. system have condemned fragmentation because it leads to more medical errors, meaning that, if anything, sound medicine and science cuts in the opposite direction and is being overwhelmed by other causes. This much may seem obvious, but it has an important implication. If medical or scientific reasons are not driving current health care fragmentation, it is unlikely that fragmentation is going to be cured by studies that show how it leads to medical errors, by analyses demonstrating medically optimal team methods, or by new information technologies that help hospitals and physicians coordinate better. Those may help at the margins, but to really tackle fragmentation we are going to have to address the underlying structural cause that has been driving U.S. health care to levels of disintegration that are medically
The U.S. health care system is way more complex than what meets the eye. A major difference between the health care system in the U.S. and other nations, is that the U.S. does not have universal health care. Lack of a universal health care opens up the doors for competition amongst insurance, physicians, technology, hospitals and outpatient services.
Sultz, H.A. & Young, K.M. (2010). Health Care USA: Understanding its Organization And Delivery (7th ed.). Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Some hospitals have merged with other healthcare organizations in hopes of providing a more integrated delivery system. However, delivery in many organizations is still quite fragmented leaving many US citizens dissatisfied. According to a 2011 survey conducted by the Commonwealth Fund;
In The Hills of Zion by H.L. Mencken, various stylistic devices and rhetorical strategies are used such as similes and imagery. Mencken uses similes in order to show how religion made the people of the hills fully convinced in their religious rituals. This can be seen when Mencken and a woman went to a religious gathering in which the priest spoke and ”Words spouted from his lips like bullets from a machine-gun”, and a woman “bent backward until she was like half a loop” in addition to “bouncing all over the place, like a chicken with its head cut off.” Such figurative language is used by Mencken in order to display how religion made the people of the hill appear unusual as well as fully convinced in their religion. Furthermore, various
In America health care as always been a big controversy, because since the beginning they have always tried to find the perfect health care system that works for everyone. As one can imagine it is pretty hard to find a single health care plan to work for over 300 million people. The States has defiantly tried its several different ways of coming up with one system to work, but it seems that over time new and better ideas come along. It all started with domestic medicine where as one would go to his immediate family for help if he/she got some sort of sickness, and would only go to a medicine man or something if it was life threatening. Then
A highly effective healthcare system is highly dependent upon the ability of all people to receive reliable care that meets all needs. In addition to this, the quality of the healthcare system should be backed by the best scientific knowledge available. However, a closer introspection into the structure of healthcare in the nation reveals that there is big gap with regards to the overall performance of healthcare. In comparisons to
Yet, our healthcare remain broken and threatens the financial well-being of America in the near future. At the conception of America’s healthcare system, the biggest issues concerning the management of American’s health were the methods of treatment, knowledge sharing among physicians and therapist, the lack of resources at the state and local level, and the true role of the Federal government. (Greg, 2010) The same issues haunt America’s healthcare system unto today. With healthcare cost growing more out of control, the question concerning how to best management America’s health has become increasingly relevant.
It’s common knowledge that there are problems with United States health care system. First and foremost, the prior fragmented United States healthcare system did not
While the United States delivers some of the best medical care in the world, there are major inefficiencies in our healthcare system. We have high rates of medical errors, millions without health insurance coverage, and lower utilization of advanced health information technology than most western European nations. It seems every time you turn on the evening news, you hear something about the healthcare system in American and how it is in shambles. Without question, one of the biggest challenges facing American citizens is our dysfunctional healthcare system.
Healthcare in the United States is facing numerous issues within the current and future turbulent times. I believe that two major issues are the disparity of provision of healthcare to varying societal groups as well as the projected shortfall of healthcare providers to adequately service the population in general.
The fields of medicine and business are two fields that are derived from different ends of the motive spectrum in terms of cognition (how we think) and economics (how we think about our money). At least they should be. I believe that the underlying issue with the United States healthcare system is that there tends to be a large amount of overlay in these two opposite forms of cognition. Clearly illustrated by Dr. Steven Nissen when he says that, “When medicine became a business, we lost our moral compass.” Medicine was never meant to become a trillion dollar business. This might strike you to be quite a jarring
The United States is not acquiring 20 or even 30 percent better health care or outcomes than other countries do. While there are points of greatness, particularly at some of America’s prominent academic health foundations and in unified health care strategies, the quality is unequal. And quality is a problem that affects us all, whether rich or poor. Practically no matter how we calculate it, whether by life expectancy or by survival for particular diseases like asthma, heart disease or cancers; by the rate of medical errors; or merely by gratification with health care
Everyone has their own views on what they think the United States healthcare system should consist of. Consequently, the healthcare system has been flawed for many years and does not plan to change anytime soon. According to Luft (2006), “rapid and wide-reaching technological innovation, the ready access to care for the insured, and clinical and patient autonomy” (p.1). These are some of the strengths the US healthcare system are proficient in providing. In contrast, the weaknesses of the healthcare system outweigh the system’s strengths. Luft (2006) examined and acknowledged the following:
What makes someone a good candidate for president? Someone that can “Make America great again” which brings me to my candidate, Trump. Donald Trump is more of a businessman than a presidential candidate, but we could use the business aspect in running our country today. The amount of debt we are in is a major problem and I believe Trump can help by producing jobs and make a plan for even after his presidency. Throughout this paper, I will inform readers on Trumps background and what he believes in. Also, I will inform readers on a few things he wants to do for our country to “Make America great again.” Another is the history of Trump and how he has switched from Republican to Democratic parties multiple times. Finally, about some of the major arguments on why he should not become president.
The first characteristic of the US health care system is that there is no central governing agency which allows for little integration and coordination. While the government has a great influence on the health care system, the system is mostly controlled through private hands. The system is financed publically and privately creating a variety of payments and delivery unlike centrally controlled healthcare systems in other developed countries. The US system is more complex and less manageable than centrally controlled health care systems, which makes it more expensive. The second characteristic of the US health care system is that it is technology driven and focuses on acute care. With more usage of high technology,