Analyzing a Current Health Care Problem or Issue

Analyzing a Current Health Care Problem or Issue

The healthcare cost issue covers several areas, such as insufficient care availability, financial hardships for individuals and healthcare systems, and uneven access to healthcare. This subject can be discussed using the Socratic Method of Problem Solving. First, the problem’s magnitude must be identified to get a full map of the incidence among various demographic groups and geographical regions (Ho et al., 2023). Identifying the foundation causes of cost prevalence is vital by looking at the economics of both demand and supply in the market and the vast areas of inefficiencies within the healthcare system, including bureaucracy and excess Medicare. Moreover, the framing problem is about attempting to ascertain which subgroups of society are usually affected by such healthcare costs consistently and whether they adversely affect public health and societal well-being (Ho et al., 2023). The possible causes of this problem include complex healthcare systems that tend to face tangled care delivery systems, poor resource utilization, the progression of medical technology and innovations of pharmaceuticals, shifts in demography, such as old age population, and increased chronic illnesses.

Identifying Scholarly Information

According to Knifton and Inglis (2020), the key factors that impact a person’s mental health include the social, environmental, and economic places. Poverty, from a very early age and deprivation, contributes a lot to the development of the social and behavioral structure and the mental problems of adults. Notably, 23% of men and 26% of women in Scotland’s most underprivileged districts reported levels of mental discomfort indicative of a possible psychiatric disease, compared to 12% and 16% of men and women living in the least deprived areas, respectively. From this data, it is justifiable that the scarcity of wealth poses barriers to access to medical facilities, nutrition, and living conditions with the consequent undesired effect on the health of the concerned person. The article was published within the time frame required, March 2020. The article clearly shows the relationship between health and wealth and patient-centeredness, a significant factor in this case study.

Further, Sun and Chen’s (2022) research study combines three US national surveys from the RAND American Life Panel to investigate the relationship between financial competence and health outcomes in the general US population four years later. According to Sun and Chen (2022), the theory of fundamental causes defines access to health as related to money, power, privilege, social support, and networks. These assist individuals in avoiding risks that have the potential to affect numerous disease outcomes across time due to multiple risk variables and continue to affect diverse outcomes when a person’s risk profile changes. Sun and Chen’s article was published in March 2020 and is thus current as required. The article demonstrates the relationship between health and wealth regarding patient-centeredness, a crucial element in this case study.

Wong et al.’s (2019) article examines the financial barriers to medical care for the poor and sick in the Administrative Region of China. According to Wong et al. (2019), the first wave of the “Trends and Implications of Poverty and Social Disadvantages in Hong Kong” survey included cross-sectional data from 2,233 participants aged 18 or older. In the survey, a stunning 8.4% did not seek medical care because they could not afford it in the past 12 months (Wong et al., 2019, p. 5-6). According to the authors, those denied medical care due to financial constraints are likelier to become sick. The article is scholarly: the authors are from the Department of Public Health and Primary Care in the Administrative Region of China, and it was published in March 2020.

Analyzing the Healthcare Problem or Issue

The escalating healthcare expenditure is specifically getting set up in the healthcare system. In some countries, health care is a web of discourse between people, doctors, services, pharmaceutics, and governmental authorities; this may display the complex picture of the rise in healthcare costs in different forms. Healthcare professionals are exposed to a lot of pressure, and there is a need to deliver quality care while operating within limited financial resources and managing administrative requirements and reimbursement problems (Kunzler et al., 2020).

The increased health care costs are significant because they check the affairs of individuals and families and the entire society’s well-being. As a member of society, I truly realize that the ability to easily access affordable health care is a basic necessity for overall welfare and any injustices that may be committed. Loved ones and even healthcare professionals face this issue or bottleneck in the form of the impossibility of affording required medical care because of healthcare expenses, making it crystal clear that it is time to tackle this problem (Fazal et al., 2022).

Several social categories of people associate with the issue of growing healthcare costs. Notwithstanding, a patient with a varied socioeconomic status might face finance-related discrimination in accessing healthcare facilities, leading to variations in health outcomes (Cygańska et al., 2023). Vulnerable populations like older people and the ones withdrawing back conditions, as well as those from the tougher communities, are the most affected when it comes to the impact of the increasing healthcare costs.

Taking the pharmaceutical industry as an example, companies in this industry are a target of a lot of criticism because people feel that their drugs are exaggeratedly expensive, leading to public demands for regulation. Patients may have to self-limit medications or delay needed treatments because of the issue of healthcare costs, worsening their overall health. Moreover, the need for more financial resources in the healthcare industry makes it difficult to create policies that impose control of costs while keeping the level of quality high and balancing the interests of various stakeholders (Ammar Badwy, 2023).

Potential Solutions for the Health Care Problem or Issue

A solution will be implemented based on the complex approach between institutions like government, hospitals, pharmacies, consumers, and insurance companies to achieve this. Setting out prices on drugs, hospitals, and the billing system’s needs would enable individuals to compare the price of care from different providers easily. In addition, capitalizing on healthcare infrastructure development and information technology usage, for instance, electronic health records and telemedicine, can result in streamlined processes and improve patient care coordination, eventually being a factor that leads to cost reduction (Yu et al., 2023).

Failing to address the challenge of high healthcare spending may negatively impact individual lives, neighborhoods, and overall constellation. Therefore, the imperative is first to aggravate inequalities in healthcare provision and outcomes that bring dire consequences to already vulnerable people facing the usual healthcare barriers. Individual patients may postpone some critical health treatments or even give up on them for financial reasons (Yu et al., 2023). In addition, the escalating healthcare expenses slash into the public and private budgets that, in turn, dilute the funding that would be used to finance other essential needs like education, infrastructure, and the social system, among others.

Furthermore, failing to address the issue of the exponential increment of healthcare expenditure can have extreme effects on the individual, the community, and society. First, it fuels discrepancies in healthcare access and outcomes, which are forcibly visited upon the vulnerable group that may have existed with care challenges in the past. As a result, individuals might delay or completely forego medical treatments due to cost concerns, which, in the long run, will result in more severe health problems that require more healthcare utilization (Yu et al., 2023). The second reason healthcare systems in developed countries are being reshaped is the growing healthcare costs. Health expenditures, on national and private levels, are increasing and making impossible budgets for education, infrastructure, and social services.

Value-based care, which rewards the quality of patient care rather than the quantity of care provided, is one of the solutions to control the rising healthcare costs. The advantages of a value-based care model are steering toward preventive care and collaboration, better patient outcomes, and a decrease in unnecessary healthcare costs (Teisberg et al., 2019). On the other hand, drawbacks to this technology implementation are possible as well. Getting used to the value care models is a difficult task and involves infrastructural, technical, and provider training overhead that can be difficult for healthcare organizations.

Ethical Principles

An essential part of using value-based care to fight healthcare spending increases is undertaking comprehensive system-wide reforms by all healthcare stakeholders. This ranges from substantial infrastructure financing, infrastructure, including relatively large expenditures on electronic health records systems, to the implementation of internet-based open data exchange platforms. Moreover, healthcare companies require deepening the educational process and support to progress from fee-for-service reimbursements to payment-for outcomes models.

Following ethical behaviors, polishing itself on beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy, and justice rounds the process of implementing value-based care models. Beneficence is improving patient well-being by reducing healthcare outcomes inadequacies and improving the quality of care (Varkey, 2020). Nonmaleficence maintains that no patient, even if marginal, should be harmed in the introduction of new healthcare technologies. Autonomy allows patients to become physically involved in their healthcare, and they have to use their judgment to make informed decisions about their care. The essence of justice lies in providing health resources, among the fair and equitable distribution of healthcare, whose end goal is to ensure that those in a disadvantaged position do not suffer the consequences of the new model (Varkey, 2020).

This is illustrated by the impact of value-based care models in the literature based on the ethical arguments in question. A specific study of Washington Hospital looked into how providers’ experience with the value-based care initiatives influenced the results and the healthcare costs of patients. Noteworthy, readmissions of patients after discharge were reduced, and efficiency in chronic disease was recovered, coupled with savings in costs (Upadhyay et al., 2019). These investigations confirm that the value-based care framework could converge with the principles of beneficence, nonmaleficence, and autonomy, ensuring quality care, no harm to the patients, and justice in health.

References

Ammar Badwy. (2023, May 29). Blog: Pharmaceutical industry’s challenging reputation. Pharmaoffer. https://pharmaoffer.com/blog/unraveling-the-factors-behind-the-pharmaceutical-industrys-challenging-reputation/

Cygańska, M., Kludacz-Alessandri, M., & Pyke, C. (2023). Healthcare costs and health status: Insights from the SHARE survey. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(2), 1418. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20021418

Fazal, F., Saleem, T., Ur Rehman, M. E., Haider, T., Khalid, A. R., Tanveer, U., Mustafa, H., Tanveer, J., & Noor, A. (2022). The rising cost of healthcare and its contribution to the worsening disease burden in developing countries. Annals of Medicine and Surgery, 82, 104683. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amsu.2022.104683

Ho, Y.-R., Chen, B.-Y., & Li, C.-M. (2023). Thinking more wisely: Using the Socratic method to develop critical thinking skills amongst healthcare students. BMC Medical Education, 23(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-023-04134-2

Knifton, L., & Inglis, G. (2020). Poverty and mental health: policy, practice and research implications. BJPsych Bulletin, 44(5), 193–196. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjb.2020.78

Kunzler, A. M., Helmreich, I., Chmitorz, A., König, J., Binder, H., Wessa, M., & Lieb, K. (2020). Psychological interventions to foster resilience in healthcare professionals. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 7(7). https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.cd012527.pub2

Sun, S., & Chen, Y.-C. (2022). Is financial capability a determinant of health? Theory and evidence. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 43(4), 744–755. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-022-09869-6

Teisberg, E., Wallace, S., & O’Hara, S. (2019). Defining and implementing value-based health care. Academic Medicine, 95(5), 682–685. https://doi.org/10.1097/acm.0000000000003122

Upadhyay, S., Stephenson, A. L., & Smith, D. G. (2019). Readmission rates and their impact on hospital financial performance: A study of Washington hospitals. INQUIRY: The Journal of Health Care Organization, Provision, and Financing, 56(56), 004695801986038. https://doi.org/10.1177/0046958019860386

Varkey, B. (2020). Principles of clinical ethics and their application to practice. Medical Principles and Practice, 30(1), 17–28. https://doi.org/10.1159/000509119

Wong, S. Y., Chung, R. Y., Chan, D., Chung, G. K., Li, J., Mak, D., Lau, M., Tang, V., Gordon, D., & Wong, H. (2020). What are the financial barriers to medical care for the poor, the sick, and the disabled in the Special Administrative Region of China? PLOS ONE, 13(11), e0205794. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0205794

Yu, C., Liu, J., Nemati, S., & Yin, G. (2023). Reinforcement learning in healthcare: A survey. ACM Computing Surveys, 55(1), 1–36. https://doi.org/10.1145/3477600

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Write a 4-6 page analysis of a current problem or issue in health care, including a proposed solution and possible ethical implications.

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Introduction
In your healthcare career, you will be confronted with many problems that demand a solution. By using research skills, you can learn what others are doing and saying about similar problems. Then, you can analyze the problem and the people and systems it affects. You can also examine potential solutions and their ramifications. This assessment allows you to practice this approach with a real-world problem.

Analyzing a Current Health Care Problem or Issue

Instructions
Note: The requirements outlined below correspond to the grading criteria in the scoring guide. At a minimum, be sure to address each point. In addition, you are encouraged to review the performance-level descriptions for each criterion to see how your work will be assessed.

Describe the healthcare problem or issue you selected for use in Assessment 2 and provide details about it.
Explore your chosen topic. For this, you should use the first four steps of the Socratic Problem-Solving Approach to aid your critical thinking. This approach was introduced in Assessment 2.
Identify possible causes for the problem or issue.
Use scholarly information to describe and explain the health care problem or issue and identify possible causes for it.
Identify at least three scholarly or academic peer-reviewed journal articles about the topic.
You may find the How Do I Find Peer-Reviewed Articles? library guide helpful in locating appropriate references.
You may use articles you found while working on Assessment 2 or you may search the Capella library for other articles.
Use scholarly or academic peer-reviewed journal articles published during the past 3–5 years that relate to your topic
You may find the applicable Undergraduate Library Research Guide helpful in your search.
Review the Think Critically About Source Quality to help you complete the following:
Assess the credibility of the information sources.
Assess the relevance of the information sources.
Analyze the health care problem or issue.
Describe the setting or context for the problem or issue.
Describe why the problem or issue is important to you.
Identify groups of people affected by the problem or issue.
Provide examples that support your analysis of the problem or issue.
Discuss potential solutions for the health care problem or issue.
Describe what would be required to implement a solution.
Describe the potential consequences of ignoring the problem or issue.
Provide the pros and cons of one of the solutions you are proposing.
Explain the ethical principles (Beneficence, Nonmaleficence, Autonomy, and Justice) if pthe potential solution was implemented.
Describe what would be necessary to implement the proposed solution.
Explain the ethical principles that need to be considered (Beneficence, Nonmaleficence, Autonomy, and Justice) if the potential solution is implemented.
Provide examples from the literature to support the points you are making.
Example Assessment: You may use the following to give you an idea of what a Proficient or higher rating on the scoring guide would look like: