Health care professionals must have provide the best quality of care while dealing with patients. Quality of healthcare is “the degree to which health services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge. Managed care is a system of care delivery involving complex organizational arrangements between institutions and clinicians, explicit financial incentives, defined access to service, controls on the use of services, 3 coordination and integration of services. (McConnell, C, 2010) Cost balance is health professionals trying to balance the cost while improving the quality of care. Although these health professionals are for improving the quality and cost balance in healthcare, it is taking a strain on them with the rising cost of healthcare, …show more content…
Currently, an imbalance exists, leading to nonproductive tensions (Nolan, Bisognano, 2006).” Clinicians often see themselves defending patients and professional standards against the finance department. They see themselves as the protectors of quality. The finance professionals see themselves protecting the resources of the organization. The finance department usually provides supervisors with weekly or monthly cost reports of expenditures against the budget (McConnell, C, 2010). This is difficult for management because the clinicians see that they need new equipment to help the patients and the finance professionals see unnecessary spending that could be saved for something more important. Management must figure out how to decipher how to keep their clinicians happy and finance professionals happy. Management must figure out how to handle difficulty between staff members and ways to reduce the cost but keep the quality of care up especially with the budget the finance department have gave
This group is more focused on satisfaction, access and quality of care. Providers, or practitioners, are also key stakeholders within an organization. The term provider can encompasses not only physicians and surgeons, but also nurses, physical and occupational therapists, technicians, and other members of a clinical staff. Providers fall into two categories, primary, which includes hospitals and health departments and secondary, which includes educational institutions and pharmaceutical companies. Providers are focused on the best treatments for patients and are involved in delivering health services and products. The final element of the MCQ model is the employer who by far is the largest paying and purchasing stakeholder of an organization. The employers focus is primarily on their return on investment within an organization. Cost and quality is a focus for employers when choosing health benefits but are mindful that access is just as important. Within the Patient Healthcare model, MCQ explains the interactions between the four elements of employer, patient, provider and payer while the Iron Triangle focuses on the factors of cost, quality, and access. The Patient Healthcare model charges healthcare leaders with the task of balancing satisfaction with the stakeholder (employer, patient, provider, and payer) in relation to cost, quality and access. This may be very difficult since stakeholders may have competing priorities. Changes and variations made in how healthcare organizations operate may have profound effects on how stakeholders perceive the quality, access and cost. For instance, a patient may consider cost to be a top priority when seeking healthcare and at the same time the healthcare organization may consider raising costs and therefore devaluing access and quality. Patients who begin to incur high out-of-pocket costs may begin to perceive a financial
The purpose of financial measurement in healthcare is to provide the community with the services it needs, at a clinically acceptable level of quality, at a publicly responsive level of amenity, at the least possible cost. This is done by providing healthcare finance managers with accounting and finance information to help accomplish the purpose of the organization (Nowicki, 2015). When making accounting decisions about budgeting and inventory control, an understanding of economics, statistics, and operations research is needed. Major Financial Measures
The current health care landscape has been characterized by large scale consolidation and vertical integration of payers and providers. This has led to a handful of dominate players with substantial influence, and an increasing overlap in responsibilities between payers and providers. Although payers and providers have traditionally been on opposing sides, battling each other about quality of care versus cost-effective care, they are shifting to working together to achieve better value.
You are the CEO of a large multi-specialty group practice and have financial problems, as well as conflicts over compensation between your primary care and specialty care physicians. There have been substantial changes over the years regarding payment structures, case mix, and capital costs. Now, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) has added other potential changes into the mix and has raised the question as to whether your practice should become an ACO. Discuss what analyses you would undertake to evaluate the financial situation of and the conflicts within the group practice. Be able to justify the underlying rationale for the analyses and how you will use the results to address the financial concerns, the organizational conflicts and the potential changes facing the organization. This question response should explore organizational behaviors, financial and budgeting issues, personnel management and strategic planning.
Module two deals with external influences in healthcare administration and the conflicts that may cause lack of growth in the organization. External influences can range from society, stakeholders, staff, and patients. Health administrators should be in agreement with staff and physicians to maintain proper ethics and safety for everyone. Society has a big influence of healthcare organizations with spending their money towards health insurance, medication, treatment services and exams. As long the healthcare organization has a well reputation built on trust, then consumers will spend on that healthcare organization. The stakeholders that take part in external influences on ethics are the vendors, technology specialists, maintenance, insurance
For the last five years of my life I have worked in the healthcare industry. One of the biggest issues plaguing our nation today has been the ever rising cost of health care. If we don't get costs under control, we risk losing the entire system, as well as potentially crippling our economy. For the sake of our future, we must find a way to lower the cost of health care in this nation.
When one examines managed health care and the hospitals that provide the care, a degree of variation is found in the treatment and care of their patients. This variation can be between hospitals or even between physicians within a health care network. For managed care companies the variation may be beneficial. This may provide them with opportunities to save money when it comes to paying for their policy holder’s care, however this large variation may also be detrimental to the insurance company. This would fall into the category of management of utilization, if hospitals and managed care organizations can control treatment utilization, they can control premium costs for both themselves and their customers (Rodwin 1996). If health care organizations can implement prevention as a way to warrant good health with their consumers, insurance companies can also illuminate unnecessary health care. These are just a few examples of how the health care industry can help benefit their patients, but that does not mean every issue involving physician over utilization or quality of care is erased because there is a management mechanism set in place.
In order to make ones’ health care coverage more affordable, the nation needs to address the continually increasing medical care costs. Approximately more than one-sixth of the United States economy is devoted to health care spending, such as: soaring prices for medical services, costly prescription drugs, newly advanced medical technology, and even unhealthy lifestyles. Our system is spending approximately $2.7 trillion annually on health care. According to experts, it is estimated that approximately 20%-30% of that spending (approx. $800 billion a year) appears to go towards wasteful, redundant, or even inefficient care.
Despite the established health care facilities in the United States, most citizens do not have access to proper medical care. We must appreciate from the very onset that a healthy and strong nation must have a proper health care system. Such a health system should be available and affordable to all. The cost of health services is high. In fact, the ...
Patient-centered care is a broad topic that can be discussed on a daily basis within the healthcare world. Patient-centered care is when healthcare providers and facilities provide care that is respectful to the patient’s preferences, needs and values. It can also be described as physicians who practice patient-centered care can improve their patients’ clinical outcomes and satisfaction rates by improving the quality of the doctor-patient relationship, while at the same time decreasing the utilization of diagnostic testing, prescriptions, hospitalizations, and referrals (Rickett, 2013). Unfortunately, ideal patient-centered care is hard to come by, especially in all 50 states because there is a shortage of money and proper resources needed
...lthcare system is slowly shifting from volume to value based care for quality purposes. By allowing physicians to receive payments on value over volume, patients receive quality of care and overall healthcare costs are lowered. The patients’ healthcare experience will be measured in terms of quality instead of how many appointments a physician has. Also, Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements are prompting hospitals, physicians and other healthcare organizations to make the value shifts. In response to the evolving healthcare cost, ways to reduce health care cost will be examined. When we lead towards a patient centered system organized around what patients need, everyone has better outcomes. The patient is involved in their healthcare choices and more driven in the health care arena. A value based approach can help significantly in achieving patient-centered care.
In recent times, healthcare organization across the nation are facing unprecedented challenges as they strive to improve the overall quality of care provided to their patient’s population, while improving their organization’s financial performance. Furthermore, uncertainty of new reimbursement models, diminishing reimbursement, and complicated compliance regulations are playing the role of a catalyst for streamlining the Chargemaster process in majority of healthcare organizations.
Utilization management has several basic components. Identify one of those components and discuss how it is used to manage cost of medical services. What are the downsides to managing cost through utilization management, if any?
Reforming the health care delivery system to progress the quality and value of care is indispensable to addressing the ever-increasing costs, poor quality, and increasing numbers of Americans without health insurance coverage. What is more, reforms should improve access to the right care at the right time in the right setting. They should keep people healthy and prevent common, preventable impediments of illnesses to the greatest extent possible. Thoughtfully assembled reforms would support greater access to health-improving care, in contrast to the current system, which encourages more tests, procedures, and treatments that are either
In health care being cost effective is important because of the strict budget guidelines and the importance of providing good health care services. Cost effectiveness is utilizing resources to the best of their ability and creating a good health care outcome. There are many different ways to use cost effective techniques to bring change into a facility. The practice of using cost effective methods is important to know because it has a direct relationship to the evaluation of health services and outcomes.