HEALTH CARE

Health care

Health care

Introduction

The United States is generally viewed as having the best health care in the world—when best is defined as having the most advanced technology and highly skilled specialists. However, when the United States is compared on basic health status factors against other countries in the world, it comes up deficient. Infant mortality status is a measure of how many children die before their first birthday. On this measure, the United States ranks 42nd in the world behind countries such as Cuba, Portugal, Finland, the Czech Republic and many others. When measured on the average life span of its citizens, the United States was reported in 2006 at 78.0 years, the same as Cuba and Chile and behind countries such as Switzerland (82), Spain (81), Sweden (81), Canada (81), Singapore (80), and the United Kingdom (79). These data suggest that the U.S. population, while enjoying access to the most highly sophisticated medical services available, is not as healthy as other developed and underdeveloped countries. This presents a problem for health care leadership—one in which improving the health of the community comes into conflict with the existing structure of the delivery system. Basic health indicators suggest that the “low-hanging fruit” of population health improvement is in the expansion of primary care services. However, these services have the least financial support in U.S. reimbursement mechanisms, whereas in other countries, primary and preventive care has historically been a hallmark of health care system design. The challenge for leadership presented by these data is one of restructuring medical delivery with a balanced focus on primary care and access without diminishing the specialized services that are the pride of U.S. communities and providers (Myers, 2007)

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Discussion

Hospitals may be structured as Nonprofit or as for-profit organizations. As with other Nonprofits, this organization structure brings with it ...