Health care planners could be more effective and efficient if they used the concept of the natural history of disease and the levels of prevention to design services that intervene at the weakest link in the chain of progression of specific disease
US Healthcare System
The US healthcare system has experienced a lot of changes in terms of medical care methods and treatment protocols and financing. In terms of treatment, the US health system has been positively impacted by technologies such as electronic health records among other healthcare technologies (Sultz & Young, 2017). These technologies have allowed healthcare professionals to provide quality and safe care. In terms of financing, the US health system has experienced huge reimbursement changes.
Some of the policies that have changed US health financing include Medicare, Medicaid, and Affordable Care programs (Sultz & Young, 2017). The purpose of this assignment is to explain characteristics of the medical care culture that have encouraged US care professionals to focus on high-technology solutions to preventable problems, how the “bottom line” focus has changed the nature of the US health care system, and why universal health care is resisted in the US.
Question 1
Certain characteristics are common in a medical culture which encourages healthcare professionals to use high-technology solutions to preventable problems. The characteristics become visible during patient examination and provision of other care services concerning the technologies. It is vital to identify the players in healthcare culture to accurately determine their characteristics and motives. In the US healthcare culture, two main players are the patients and healthcare professionals (doctors, nurses, and other specialists) (Sultz & Young, 2017).
Other players include the hospital system and third-party payers (private and government insurance plans). One of the medical care cultures that encourage the latter approach is instant gratification. According to Sultz and Young (2017), most healthcare planers focus on high-technology solutions to preventable problems because of the medical culture of instant gratification.
Instant gratification means instant cure (Deo et al., 2020). Most patients in the US need an instant cure for acute illness, chronic disease, and pain which cannot be provided by the former. High-technology solutions can provide instant care while the former cannot. When high technologies are used, the patient is cured almost instantly.
The second characteristic is work satisfaction. Sultz and Young (2017) noted that work satisfaction is highly associated with the use of high technology to provide cures and promote disease prevention. The main objective of healthcare professionals is to provide patient care using standardized interventions.
Healthcare professionals prefer to use high technology to attain healthcare goals because it prevents them from fewer difficulties as compared to the conventional approach which relies on identifying the history of the illness to create a treatment protocol (Harerimana et al., 2019). In other words, healthcare professionals use high technology to help their patients because it achieves their care goals faster than conventional methods and thus improves their satisfaction.
The last characteristic is improved coordination of responsibilities and communication. Healthcare professionals prefer care methods that allow them to effectively coordinate and communicate when providing care to their patients. High-technology methods provide them with the opportunity to coordinate and effectively communicate making it a preferred method of care provision among the players in the US care system.
Sultz and Young (2017) noted that US care providers have recently shown interest in Electrotonic Health Records as a tool to be used in providing care. The authors argued that the tool has helped healthcare providers easily and effectively coordinate and communicate with patients and other stakeholders to provide care.
EHR technology provided healthcare professionals with a single platform where they can access patient data and communicate with peers, making the high-technology care provision method the preferred approach.
Question 2
All healthcare organizations across the US strive to be financially solvent in the process of providing quality and safe care to their patients and this has greatly affected the nation’s healthcare system. One of the ways the “bottom line” focus has changed the healthcare system in the US is increasing the cost of care services. Dieleman et al. (2020) noted that Americans are paying more for their care today than in the last decade due to healthcare organizations’ focus on the bottom line.
Healthcare organizations are forced to increase the cost of care services to be able to pay for their human workforce and procure necessary products needed for care providers such as drug