Essay Sample on Health Care Cost and Quality

Introduction

In our country, health care is extremely costly, especially for the uninsured and underinsured individuals. Our wellness program has faced some serious challenges over the past many years. These challenges have affected the quality of care in hospitals and raise the cost of medical services. Indeed, both the public and private stakeholders in our nation's health sectors have acknowledged the disparities among Americans regarding access to medical care services and have accordingly come up with measures to ensure that every American gets access to affordable medical care. This essay will attempt to analyse the relationship between cost and quality of care, highlight some of the measures adopted by both the private and public agencies in addressing charges and quality, discuss current and future initiatives in regards to price and standard of health care and conclude by reviewing the implications for the nursing practise based on charges for medical services.

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Most stakeholders in the health sector, when discussing ways to improve our health, center their conversations on the twin pillars of quality and cost. Will better care result from higher cost? Or will better patient outcomes help in containing fees? While most people expect the cost of medical care to be positively correlated with higher quality, this is, in most circumstances, not true. This is probably because the Food and Drug Agency's approval process mainly relies on comparison of a single treatment to an exact therapy in the market. Thusly, new drugs and equipment are not required to be more efficient and less costly to enter the market. With these expensive devices and drugs in the market, costly therapies will be chosen without meaningful evidence that they will improve outcomes (Anon, 2014).

Food and Drug Agency (FDA), a public health agency, has engaged itself in a number of activities to address the cost and quality of healthcare. Of importance is their Case for Quality initiative. This initiative allows FDA to work with industries in manufacturing high-quality devices. These devices generate confidence in hospitals and in patients that the appliance will perform as intended. This, in the long run, will improve the quality of care patients in hospitals receive (Lawrence et. al. 2015). On the other hand, the National Coalition of Health Care (NCHC), a private agency, advances its aim in quality healthcare provision by focusing on the person and family-centered case. Here, the patients and their families are engaged in decision-making processes for the sick. In the end, the success of treatment will be defined by both the resolution of symptoms and achievement of desired patient outcomes. Achieving the patient's desired results is indicative of an improved quality of care.

FDA adopted the Safe Use initiative to minimise risk of adverse drug reactions from medications. The initiative has helped in reducing patient suffering and consequently revamping patient outcome. Cases of long-stays in hospitals and readmissions have accordingly dropped, therefore reducing the cost of medical care. Contrarily, the NCHC promotes prevention and early treatment of chronic ailments such as cardiovascular disease. With early interventions to such diseases, chances of spending time and money receiving medical attention are substantially dropped (Herron 2017).

Currently, federal initiatives such as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have helped in enhancing clinical quality while concurrently making health care more affordable. ACA, has considerably increased the insurance coverage in the country. This has therefore made access to health care services easy for many. With easy access and affordable prices, hospitals will compete to have better patient care and outcomes. Such hospital competition inevitably improves quality of services (Hall 2017). However, the passage of the act led to an increase in the number of people who had access to opioids. Eventually, some of them became addicted to the substance. An increase in opioid and opioid-related deaths was the unexpected effect of this act ("The unintended consequences of Obamacare? - NetRight Daily", 2018).

In the future, there will be a likely shift from a 'volume and intensity of services offered' reimbursement toward accountability for overall cost and quality of service. This reformed system will reward value and quality. Health information to patients will also suffice in improving quality while lowering costs. With better information on value, charges and outcomes, a patient could make informed choices in getting needed care without spending an additional dollar on the same. Its unintended consequences, nonetheless, will be a probable increase in cases of 'fired' patients. With an increased notion of knowledge, the sick will be prone to being non-compliant with the doctors' advice. In the end, even if the patient can receive care from other hospitals, the continuity of care would have been interrupted.

Minimizing cost of healthcare while concurrently improving the quality will have implications for the nursing practice. Staff nurses and advanced practice nurses will have to utilize 'team-approach' to increase the standard of care and lower the fees. Team-approach will help in capitalizing strengths to reduce a patient's stay in the hospital while fulfilling their longed-for results.

Evidence-based practice can additionally be used to lower treatment cost and improve nature of therapy. By utilizing the available evidence on conditions, clinical experience, and patient expectations, nursing staff can come up with a tailor-made intervention procedure for every patient. Undeniably, such a practice will reduce the unnecessary procedures that are costly and dispiriting (Melynk, 2011).For example, numerous studies show that asthmatic children who are given bronchodilators via metered-dose inhalers show better outcomes compared to those who use nebulizers, which are costly and uncomfortable (Pietro et al. 2018). With such knowledge, the choice of a metered-dose will likely result in satisfaction and lowered cost of treatment.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there is hardly any direct relationship between cost and quality of care. However, lower cost of medical therapy can substantially increase the number of sick people who seek medical attention, and it would be therefore prudent for the government to put maximal efforts in ensuring medical care is readily accessible to every American.

References

Diana Mason, R. (2018). JAMA Forum: Is "Firing" the Patient an Unintended Consequence of Value-Based Payment?. news@JAMA. Retrieved 22 March 2018, from https://newsatjama.jama.com/2016/02/10/jama-forum-is-firing-the-patient-an-unintended-consequence-of-value-based-payment/

Hall, M. A., & Lord, R. (2014). Obamacare: what the Affordable Care Act means for patients and physicians. Bmj, 349(7), g5376-g5376.Herron, J. (2017). What Do We Belong to If We Belong to NCHC?.ChicagoLawrence, X. Y., Akseli, I., Allen, B., Amidon, G., Bizjak, T. G., Boam, A., ... & Furness, S. (2016). Advancing product quality: a summary of the second FDA/PQRI conference.Melnyk, B. M., GallagherFord, L., Zellefrow, C., Tucker, S., Dromme, L., & Thomas, B. K. (2018). Outcomes From the First Helene Fuld Health Trust National Institute for EvidenceBased Practice in Nursing and Healthcare Invitational Expert Forum. Worldviews on EvidenceBased Nursing.

Prieto, M., Rucker, A. C., & Payne, A. S. (2018). Increasing Metered Dose Inhaler Use For Acute Asthma Exacerbations In The Pediatric Emergency Department: A Quality Improvement Challenge. Clinical Pediatric Emergency Medicine.The Complex Relationship between Cost and Quality in US Health Care. (2014). Virtual Mentor, 16(2), 124-130. doi:10.1001/virtualmentor.2014.16.02.pfor1-1402

The unintended consequences of Obamacare? - NetRight Daily. (2018). NetRight Daily. Retrieved 22 March 2018, from http://netrightdaily.com/2017/07/unintended-consequences-obamacare/