Healthcare organizations have faced many challenges that remain unaddressed despite the promising innovations of changing healthcare service delivery. The challenges faced by healthcare workers include transitioning from volume-based healthcare to value-based healthcare, increasing costs and expenses, provider shortages (Alemian, 2016), and internet-connected medical device security. The highlighted four issues are closely related, and if advancement reaches its full potential, it will be eliminated.
Providing patients with high-quality care has been the focus, and still, it is as the industry shifts toward value-based healthcare, quality care becomes essential due to its direct effect on income (Shi & Singh, 2015). If the value of care provided by a healthcare organization fails to meet fixed standards, they will bear penalties from insurance companies such as Medicare and Medicaid. Some healthcare organizations, such as hospitals, rely on the revenue received from insurance providers like Medicare and Medicaid and patient payments. When these payments are reduced, these organizations suffer financial complications that can lead to layoffs or closures. This then adds to the challenge of rising costs, and it can only be reduced by having the government fully fund some healthcare services.
Healthcare organizations and managers face the current challenge of rising expenses from numerous costs spent on drugs, medical devices, and hospital care. Healthcare care inflation has been greater than the consumer price index every year since 2005, except in 2008 (Patton, 2015). With healthcare costs only rising, organizations cannot suffer penalties from insurance companies when quality care is not given. This means a provider at an organization could deliver healthcare services or treatment to a patient, incur the costs to deliver that care, and then not be reimbursed if certain criteria were not met. Another challenge is using relational databases to store and access patient information, which is inefficient in managing patients’ unstructured data like clinical notes and transcripts.
Lastly, provider shortages are an ongoing issue for many healthcare organizations and managers. Organizations strive to hire the most talented healthcare professionals. However, with the increased aging elderly population, there will be an increase in demand for health care and services. This demand cannot be met with the ever-increasing provider shortage.
Offering pension plans will increase the recruitment of high-talent providers, and provide quality care, decreasing costs (Alemian, 2016). Transitioning to non-relational databases using traditional electronic health records will effectively capture patients’ data. Health providers I work with complain about not having pension plans and would be motivated by pension plans to enter the healthcare industry.
References
Alemian, D. (2016). Top challenges facing healthcare organizations in 2017.
Patton, M. (2015). U.S. Healthcare costs rise faster than inflation. Web.
Shi & Singh. (2015). Delivering health care in America: A systems approach. (6th ed.) Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett Thi