There is an rising demand in Australia for health workers. This shortage is caused by a number of factors relating to supply versus demand (Duckett, 2005). The population is ageing, a combination of lifestyle and environmental factors are increasing the burden of disease and causing a greater strain on the health workforce. The types of diseases associated with these factors are contributing to a requirement for particular skill mixes within the workforce. Due to an international shortage of health care professionals, Australia is competing worldwide to increase its own workforce.
Judging on the past of health care and the major developments that have been made in the last 150 years, the economics of it all have also changed dramatically. The demand for health care is nowhere near meeting the supply, struggling with retaining employees and offering efficient care all over the world. The health care economy is the most grossing industry in the United States, with a gross domestic product of 3.5 trillion dollars. With results like that, elasticity in health care seems somewhat unheard of. The need for health care is dire, yet the prices just increase.
The prices of these technology advances have increased from a couple of hundred thousands of dollars to multi-million dollar pieces of equipments. In this rough economy, it is challenging to keep up with these types of technologies. It puts a financial strain on the healthcare institution, but many times they have proved to be worth the cost. So I believe as healthcare administrators, we must find a balance for the need, use, and maintenance of technology used in the healthcare
Economists estimate about 2 trillion will be spent on medical care in 2007. That is about $6,830 per person, which amounts to 16 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Clemmitt, Marcia (2006, April 7) Rising health cost (vol.16, Issue 13). Recent reports from (Clemmit,2006) recognize the fact that rising health care costs have made health insurance too expensive for many employers to offer and health care itself too costly for tens of millions of Americans.
The cost to providers from medical malpractice is higher medical malpractice insurance. The monetary damage from lawsuits and additional cost due to negligence and wrongful death by a medical provider's errors are making the healthcare system struggle economically. The cost of the healthcare continues to rise each year and medical errors do not help towards decreasing the cost of medicine. Therefore, governmental agencies are enforcing
Compared with other developed nations, America lags behind in the provision of quality and affordable healthcare to its citizens. This research paper will discuss some of the challenges facing the industry and solutions that can be applied to rectify them. Rising costs of medical care Healthcare is the leading socio-economic challenge affecting Americans. The ever increasing cost of medical care and insurance in affecting the American way of life in many aspects. Having problems paying for primary healthcare is no longer the preserve of the poor or the unemployed, but is affecting even those with medical insurance (Shea, 2005).
Health behavior such as overconsumption of food, lack of exercise, smoking, and stress accounts for approximately 40-50 percent of morbidity and mortality. [6] Thus, a reliance solely on the consumer-driven model is not likely to solve the problem, since it would do little to address the key factors that underlie the rise in health care spending. Indeed, missing from the list of solutions for slow-ing health spending growth are public health and preventive interventions at the population level that target the rise in treated disease prevalence. [7] Moreover, given the important role that medical innovations have assumed in expanding treatment, options for discouraging the diffusion of high-cost/low-benefit technologies also need exploration. To date, U.S. cost containment policy has focused too narrowly on demand-side interventions such as changing the design of insurance benefits and increasing cost sharing.
There have been several reasons that have been attributed to the rising cost health care. One of the reasons that are attributed to the high cost is the inefficiency in the department of health, which is riddled with excessive administration cost, frauds as well as waste. Whenever efficiency occurs in any field of expertise, there is always presence of people pulling strings for things to work on their advantage. The inefficiency lead to staff unjustly increasing the administrative cost and big rewards are paid for minor chaos done, this directly open doors for fraudulent individuals who are always ready to pounce an any opportunity. Secondly, there is the low Medicare as well as low Medicare reimbursement rates, the low Medicare and reimbursement rates have in one way or another contributed to hiking level of health care in the United States.
It has also been established that people without insurance receive little care, get sick more often and thus die quicker (Gilfords et al, 2005). This will be prevented. It will also reduce the current healthcare costs thereby reducing the instances of medical travels abroad (Karrupan & Karrupan, 2011). However, expanding this access is very costly in terms of funding. Sustaining an expanded healthcare program is
However, because thousands of new drugs have been developed recently, because the health care environment is increasingly complex, and because the patients are older and often sicker, there is increasing risk for medication errors in hospitals. They occur most frequently at the prescribing and administration stages. Medication errors occur in all health care systems; and often result in serious patient harm or deaths are the focus because this is an issue for most hospitals. Serious errors harm patients and expose health professionals to civil liability and sometimes-criminal prosecution (NHS Jan 2004, p.9). The statistics of medication error consistently increases in health care sector.