Scarcity of Resources in Healthcare Paper Example

Introduction

Economic concepts are concerned with how one makes choices amid the scarcity of resources available to satisfy the unlimited human wants. The understanding of economic concepts is important in the healthcare sector since there are economic decisions that require to be made in the healthcare service delivery. scarcity is an economic concept that explains the limited nature of resources and can be applied in health care to understand that there are limited resources available to meet the healthcare needs and hence the need to utilize them in a balanced, efficient and effective ways. For instance, the healthcare sector players have to make the right choices on whether to use the federal government healthcare allocation on the provision of health insurance cover or training and hire of more health professionals. The decisions have to be made on how many healthcare clinics to be constructed and the hospitals so that they avoid to leave unmet needs of clinics (Guinness, Wiseman & Wonderling, 2011).

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Opportunity costs in healthcare

There are forgone alternatives in the healthcare sector which simply means that given the scarcity of resources devoted to healthcare service delivery more purchases of drugs means less government-funded insurance cover. There are tradeoffs involved in making the choices in the healthcare sector such as the opportunity cost of treating more outpatient patients at the extent of inpatient. Given a constant labor force and hospital resources an increase in a number of patients admitted and requiring long hours of doctors attention means foregone opportunities for treating more outpatient clients.

Affordability and cost of healthcare are some of the critical issues worth understanding. The burden of diseases have continued to increase and the cost of accessing healthcare services has also increased meaning that the government continues to increase its expenditure in the healthcare sector. The government fiscal policies also impact how much resources are allocated to the healthcare sector to help improve the welfare of the citizens. The rising cost of seeking healthcare services can also be best understood through the application of supply and demand curves (Menzel, 2014). A case in point is when there are few available healthcare service providers compared to the high number of individuals in need of healthcare services. The high charges of healthcare can be attributed to the high costs of drugs and human capital as inputs in the healthcare institutions.

The consequence is very many patients who cannot afford the high costs of providing healthcare resulting into delay or high death rates arising from preventable causes. Equity and efficiency are another concepts that are important to the healthcare sector. Efficiency is an economic term usually referring to how outputs relate to inputs or maximizing the benefits from the limited resources. In hospitals, there are a lot of non-monetary gains realized such as maximizing positive health outcomes. Application of modern healthcare technologies is one important aspect towards increasing efficiency in the delivery of healthcare services. Efficiency also entails reducing costs in healthcare and the application of technology would help bring such costs down. The healthcare sectors are faced with a scarcity of resources which require an important economic decision be made to help facilitate the efficient delivery of healthcare services (Guinness, Wiseman & Wonderling, 2011). The aim of understanding economic concepts in healthcare sectors is to ensure that healthcare policies reflect the need to maximize benefits to the community using the limited resources allocated to the delivery healthcare services.

References

Guinness, L., Wiseman, V., & Wonderling, D. (2011). Introduction to Health Economics (Vol. 2nd ed. edited by Lorna Guinness and Virginia Wiseman). Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill Education.

Menzel, P. T. (2014). Economic Concepts in Health Care. In B. Jennings (Ed.), Bioethics (4th ed., Vol. 2, pp. 906-914). Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA.