COMPETITION IN HEALTHCARE

Competition in Healthcare

Competition in Healthcare

Introduction:

Health care is the deposit of different industry stakeholders: government, individual medical centers (general practitioners, nurses, researchers, etc.) doctors, home care providers and workers, and, last but not least, the client / patient and their families. Overlapping and interactive environment, including hospitals, clinics, long-term care facilities, primary health care institutions, families, involved in a serious, urgent, chronic, primary and outpatient services. According to a report of the American Medical Association, competition in healthcare industry is disappearing with the passage of time. (Moseley, 2009)

Discussion:

Forms of Competition in Healthcare Industry

More health care competition exists in the United States than in any other industrial nation. The puzzle confounding reformers is that while competition has been enormously successful at producing quality-enhancing innovation, it appears to have failed on the crucial dimension of cost. A closer look suggests not that competition is failing, but that incentives throughout the system have been so skewed that the normal rules of competition simply do not apply. Prices remain high even when there is excess capacity. Technologies remain expensive even when they are widely used. Hospitals and physicians remain in business even when they charge higher prices for equal quality or fail to provide high-quality service. Until recently, incentives existed only for innovations that raised costs or increased quality regardless of cost. Different forms of competition which exists in U.S health care industry are:

Competition between hospitals on the basis of quality and innovative services which includes diagnosis and high visibility services.

Availability of professional doctors and nurses is also creating a new form of competition in healthcare organizations of U.S

Competition among organizations on the basis of offered patient care services

Competition in Healthcare insurance organizations

A major form of competition in the healthcare industry is between R & D departments of pharmaceutical industry

High prices and costs of medical services offered by different organizations is the major form of competition between them.

Competition and Health care Industry

The positive effects of competition on healthcare industry should not be neglected. These impacts include improved range of patient care services, the waiting times of patients are shorter, and the tone toward the patient has become friendly. In addition, work processes have been organized patient-friendly and faster. Competition in healthcare industry has also increased pressure on the updating of knowledge and technology. Competition and regulation are not necessarily to be seen as less of the other. Example is the quality, specialization and quantity competition, triggered by price regulation. Hospital services are paid more uniformly on the basis of diagnosis-related packages (DRG), which are known in some different form in all the examined countries.

Pharmaceutical, biotechnological, and medical device companies are beginning to deliver cost-reducing innovations. Private companies are beginning to develop quality comparisons and outcome measures. Small businesses are beginning to form buying groups to negotiate with payers for quality care at competitive prices. As a result, the rate of health care cost increases is slowing.

The competition in healthcare industry is also changing the public ...