Health Care Finance, Essay Example

Managing comparative data is a document used to store available healthcare information so that it can be used to report more data, whether for patient safety, quality dimension, or patient satisfaction initiatives. As the data is compared, the public organizations and the general public use it for benchmarking and analysis (Jackson, 1993).

The managing comparative data in healthy for example, can be used to present certain present on admission values affect compensation; on the other hand, they also drive patients safety coverage and risk adjusted line of attack. Trough comparative management, the healthcare administration may use the data to affect life or to provide health insurance coverage. Employers may decide the most appropriate coverage options for employees based on reported data. Since the managing comparative data is important for future references, the health organizations must make sure that they assemble and account quality healthcare data (Jackson, 1993).

This practice in conclusion provides setting on the different types and uses of overtly available health care statistics and the factors that resolve if the data meets the needs of the management team. It is very essential to make sure that the managing comparative data can effectively address the requirements of the project or study the significant issues include the totality of the data, the data designs, data privacy, size of the file, the accessibility of the data, convenience, the date series, as well as the cost of the data.

In conclusion, the managing comparative data has been used to demonstrate the health system in many countries. For example, the US healthcare system is the most costly in the world; however comparative analysis shows that the United States performs poorly relative to other countries on the most dimensions of performance.  It is therefore a clear indication that the management comparative data can be used to demonstrate some important information on healthcare.

Financial management status

The basic skills in financial management standing start in the critical areas of hard cash management as well as secretarial which in all cases should be done in harmony to certain financial controls to ensure that there is truthfulness in secretarial process.

For our case in healthcare financial status, our aim is to provide both accounting and finance in sequence which will support the healthcare managers to achieve the organizations ultimate goals. There are no licensure necessities to be an enthusiastic healthcare fiscal manager. The facilities authorizing organizations, for instance the joint commission, in no case provides the necessities for the healthcare fiscal managers but, in its place, clasp the organizations chief executive officers (CEO) which carries out the function of financial management (Jackson, 1993).

In conclusion, the healthcare financial status provides accounting information and as well as fiscal techniques that permit the managers to carry out administration functions effectively and the administration connective processes; it, consequently, helps to achieve the organizational objectives. In accumulation to this important indirect value, the healthcare financial position has a straight value in the presentation of the management functions and management connective processes (Jackson, 1993).

Electronic health records adoption

The NCHS, which is a wing of the center for disease control and prevention, has been evaluating EHR approval ever since the year 2008 as fraction of its National Ambulatory medical care survey agenda. The EHR is capable to trace and store patient’s history as well as demographic in sequence; accumulate problem lists, physician clinical notes, the patient prescription lists and allergy lists; order instruction electronically; and view labs and descriptions  (Jackson, 1993).

The adoption level for complete fractional EHRs in its initial use and the past research indicates that the physicians should adopt a basic system with fewer functions to ensure the precise use of EHR for prospect adoptions. With the use of electronic health record a adoption, the management is able to identify the correlation between the office size, number of exam rooms and average daily patient volume with the likelihood of EHR adoption.

Allocating resources

This is the process of distributing resources which is usually monetary among opposing groups of people or programs. When we converse of allocating of finances for healthcare, three separate levels should be voted for in the process of choice making. The first level should be allocating resources to healthcare versus other social amenities. Secondly, is allocating resources within the healthcare sector itself.  Lastly, allocating resources among individual patients to make sure that each and every patient is attended effectively.

For example, when a community is given a gift of $10 million from a wealthy donor like Bill gates to spend on healthcare, housing and sports, managing financial status, the funds can be distributed among the three fields or devoted to a single field such as healthcare depending on the weight of the sector (Jackson, 1993).

The main reason for allocating resources is because of rising demands for healthcare and the increasing costs to provide those services. The allocation of very limited medical interventions like organs and vaccines is a quite constant ethical challenge. There are some principles which should be put into considerations: treating people equally, favoring the most affected, and maximizing the total payback, and gratifying as well as promoting the social usefulness.

In heath care, just like somewhere else, scarcity is the main determinant of allocation. Though it depends with the situations, the scarcity of numerous specific interventions includes those of beds in concentrated care units, vaccines during epidemic influenza, and organ such as kidneys are widely given the primary priority. For some interventions, the demand exceeds supply. Some interventions may lead to some greater than before supply which may necessitate the redirection of some important resources, with such a case, the allocation decisions would still be necessary (Katosh & Traugott , 1982).

Generally, there are no value free medical criteria for allocation. Though biomedical facts determine that a person’s post transplant prognosis or the dose of the vaccine that could confer a community, responding to these facts requires ethical, value based judgments. The eight principles should therefore be considered to make the decision making easy and in the right direction which can result into saving lives since the health care sector is very sensitive.

Third party payers, which include insurance companies and the government, influence the distribution of services through their impact to both the demand and he supply for the services and the supply of the services. The ultimate impacts of the proposals regarding the access, prices and the degree of healthcare services received would depend on a number of factors that influence the demand as well as the supply of the for the health care services, such as the number of individuals who have had access to insurance as well as the scope of their coverage. However, the factors that influence the supply and the demand of these health care services are not limited to the above. Other influential factors include those that are in themselves influence the supply of those services. The criterion of setting and fixing the prices, as well as those for paying for the services would always affect the supply of the health care services. It affects this by influencing the decisions made by the providers concerning the number of patients that are to be served as well as the treatments that are to be given to these patients are rather the treatment that the patients are to receive (Jackson, 1993).

It is crucial to put in to consideration the incentives that the doctors as well as the hospitals encounter while making the decision, this is of the prime role taken by the doctors and the hospitals in the provision of health care, regardless of whether the proposal would change the incentives. Generally those rates of payment would as well affect the number of doctors in the same way it affect the number of hospitals.

One crucial factor affecting the number of doctors undergoing training is the subsidies that Medicare provides for the programs of residency. These subsidies have been estimated to be exceeding USSSDDDD 70,000 per resident per year. The federal government had also initiated giving matching grants to the medical schools before the creation of Medicare.  This was meant to build r expand their capacities. Such policies, combined with the rise in demand for doctors caused by provision of near-universal coverage by Medicare to the elderly. This resulted in the doubling of the number of trained graduates from the medical school. It has also led to the increase in the number of residency slots.

Health care facilities are varied both in size and scope. They range from small medical clinics to the large hospitals or complexes. Hospitals retain a primary duty in delivering care, however, changes in the in medical practice allows more services to be done on an outpatient basis and have hence have shortened the times of recovery from surgeries. This in turn has reduced the need to have lengthy hospitalizations and a large capacity for inpatient. The share of revenue accounted for by the care of inpatient has fallen 77% in the year 1999 to 62% in 2008. Out of the above developments, the total number of medical hospitals in the United States of America dropped from 6659 in 1999 to 5774 in 2008, a 13% decline, and this has remained at around the same level since that time. Similarly, the capacity of the existing hospitals declined by 20 percent during the same period, this is based on the number of beds (Katosh & Traugott , 1982).

Health insurance plans pay the doctors, hospitals as well as other health care providers in various ways. The common modes include fee-for-service payment, bundle payment for the defined medical episodes, as well as “capitated” payment, which is a fixed figure for all services that are received y the a patient over a specified period of time. Some health plans including the staff-model health maintenance organizations, are the owners of the hospitals that serve their enrollees and employ physicians as salaried workers. The financial incentives vary from among different providers; hence a choice of health plan payment method exerts a significant impact on the use of medical care and spending per employee.

The tensions between providing health services for those citizens and individuals who are unable to pay and humanitarian mission to care for the indigent affects the quality as well as the quantity and the prices of all healthcares in the country. The health sector is determined to providing quality and quantity health service to the public. However the issue of offering health to the economically challenged individuals in the society has been a point of contention in the health sector.

Humanitarian services offered to the indigent public has led to the decline in the quality of the health services provided to the public. It has even led to inadequate health standards extending beyond public hygiene and sanitation in the various health service provision facilities. The operation costs for the facilities are strained as the resources for the running of these institutions are affected due to lack of income from their operations due to the patients not paying for the services rendered. The quantity is similarly reduced as few health facilities are able of operating on humanitarian grounds. The number of healthcare facilities would significantly decline if all the services were given on humanitarian basis to those unable to pay for the same Yin (2003).

The pricing is as well affected since the hospitals would have to the prices of medical services for those who can afford so as to compensate for the losses incurred in the giving of humanitarian services as well those given to those who are unable to gather for the services.

The enactment of health policies could be transformative to the act of provision of medical care and the delivery of healthcare. For instance the US president Truman H, S, in the year 1946, signed the Hospital Survey and Construction Act  which was also known as Hill-Burdon. This provided federal grants and guaranteed loans meant to improve hospitals systems. This would result in the vastly increase in the availability of medical services all over the nation (Katosh & Traugott, 1982). The other US statesman in the year 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson, on July 30 signed the Act into a law. The amendments to the Social Security Act authorized the coming up with a Medicare as well as the Medicaid insurance which provided accessibility and affordability to the healthcare services for a great number of disabled, poor and older Americans.

Public poly on health matters greatly influences the delivery of the healthcare services and the regulations of the same services which have far reaching consequences on the quality of the services, their quantity, scope and the sections of the populace to which these services reach (Katosh & Traugott , 1982).

Reference

Yin (2003). Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E.Stokes. 1960. The American Health Care Finance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Jackson, Robert A.( 1993). “Health Care Mobilization in the 1986 Midterm Budget.” Journal of Heath Care 55: 1081–99.

Katosh, John P., and Michael W. Traugott (1982). “Costs and Values in the Calculus of Health Care.” American Journal of Health Science 26: 361.