Healthcare Spending, Quality and Outcomes



Healthcare Spending, Quality and Outcomes

Introduction

The overall healthcare system in USA is damaged. However, the life morbidity rate has decreased, but the burden of chronic illness and difference in racial and socioeconomic mortality is increasing. The health insurance for more than 50 million of Americans is not covered. The Dartmouth Atlas project has been examining the practices in the field of medicine and health care spending for past two decades. The main focus of this policy is to shed light on the differences between spending patterns and quality of care.

Discussion

The main points of the aforementioned article by Elliott Fisher, David Goodman, Jonathan Skinner and Kristen Bron (2009) are explained as follow:

1.Areas where there are a number of hospitals, beds, medicines, etc., patients are more likely to get admitted. Medicare is more likely to spend on hospital care. Areas where there is lack of medical resources, Medicare is less likely to spend on improving the quality of care.

2.Various studies have been conducted to identify the relationship between increased medical resources and quality of care. The results have shown that increased spending in the field of medicine does not result into improvised quality of care. Similarly, the access to medical services is also found to be poor.

3.The reasons behind poor healthcare outcomes include increased probability of mistakes by too many physicians involved in one case.

4.These issues in poor US healthcare delivery system care caused due to lack of accountability pertaining to the overall quality of care and costs, lack of information available related to risks and benefits of various treatments, and inadequate payment system that should reward care.

The government of USA has taken necessary and immediate steps to resolve the highlighted issues in the aforementioned study. The Affordable Care Act is one of the efforts of US government to ...