Ways Technology Is Improving Healthcare

It is undeniable that more and more people are depending on the internet to inquire about their medical conditions. Healthcare has been using the internet as a medium for people to get in contact with the necessary information they needed. The internet is a good source of medical information, from symptoms, as well as treatments and medicines. It is of course not advisable to depend on the internet and avoid the doctor, it is somehow an immediate source of information on what they are about to do next.

healthcare technologyHealthcare facilities like hospitals and other facilities are using the social media to get connected with the patients. Through the social media, they are able to inform the public the services they offer, their available facilities and answer patients’ queries. Technology has been able to improve the facilities, equipments, medicines and treatments offered by hospitals today. Through this, they are able to save more lives.

Information Technology has made patient care secure and more efficient than it was before. Hand-held computers are now being used by nurses and physicians to trace a patient’s medical history and check that they are administering the correct treatment. Results of lab tests, records medicine orders and vital signs are all automatically put into a main record that can be checked and updated. Many healthcare institutions are using electronic health records. It is much easier to access patients’ information to make more accurate medications and treatments.

Electronic databases are used to consolidate large amounts of information that are used for health research. By studying patient history, scientists can have a better understanding of trends and causes of ailments. Technology can reach more milestones in the future and could lead to more breakthroughs. It has no limits and its capability has not yet been fully achieved.

Healthcare Management vs. Healthcare Administration

Healthcare institutions require managers with the skills, knowledge, and practical experience necessary to keep with the ever growing needs for healthcare and maintenance. Healthcare today is among the largest and fastest-growing industries in the United States. The Healthcare Management concentration develops the managerial skills needed to work in today’s synchronized, complex healthcare field.

healthcareDefinitions of healthcare management and healthcare administration can be easily confused. Many people, of course, cannot help but use the two phrases interchangeably. Mainly, the difference between administration and management is much similar to the difference between sales and marketing. In sales and marketing, they are used to generate revenue for a company, but they achieve that task in two different ways. It’s is the same with healthcare management and administration. The sales is the face of a company that has the personal contact with clients and marketing attempts to expand the corporate client base through advertising and other physical means. While marketing is much more involved in demographics than sales would be, the sales department is much more focused in increasing the revenue numbers than marketing.

Likewise, healthcare administration is responsible in running the healthcare organization. Administration deals more with functionality of a facility, while healthcare management deals more with staffing and direct patient care.

 

Healthcare Competition and Convenience

“You nailed it,” one physician had written. “Healthcare is changing and convenience is just one of the focused ideas for upcoming customers of medical care.” Competition is always a timely and sometimes frightening topic for physicians and marketing experts. “Change or die.” This is an excellent understanding by a marketing expert regarding the state policies of the changing medical care industry. Patients are not going to wait to see a physician. Healthcare “drive-thrus” are on the way! To succeed, physicians need to change their distribution models in the new wellness age and become more effective.

healthcareThis is a good insight. However, pharmacy leaders getting into certain micro-health promotions are not actually bad. It just indicates any current physician needs to be wiser, better and more targeted from a business viewpoint. That’s not a bad thing. Having CVS or others breathe down your neck means anyone currently providing the services the drug stores want to take a share of has a nice pressured probability to evaluate what they do best, what they should spend money on, what they no more perhaps should do in a few years removed and what they can do better, quicker, more viably and more product and expertise-focused for later on in a modified atmosphere. Competition is terrifying. But competitors can shine a light and a laser focus often in discussions that otherwise might not take place.

The great news is that the focus on customer/patient of a Walgreen’s or CVS is not actually the target focus of the most effective treatment centers in the US. Not that the common affluent patient never goes to Walgreen’s or CVS, but I think it will be a while before that individual recognizes a pharmacy as a practical replacement to going to their own physician. Primary care doctors and internists who may be threatened by this should concentrate on focusing what skills they provide their sufferers as doctors, over and against the NPs who will likely be offering care in these pharmacy treatment centers.

Healthcare and Us

You may have already read or heard about Steven Brill’s outstanding, long article in Time magazine, known as “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us.” If you think it does not concern you, do not be so sure. Put simply, Brill says, these expenses tell us there is no free market in our healthcare system, that healthcare facilities set their rates knowing that someone in pain or in fear for his or her life is not going to ask to see the price list first before going to some test or treatment. It’s no wonder that 60 percent of Americans who declare personal bankruptcy each year do so because of healthcare expenses.

healthcareOf course, if you have Insurance policy or costly health insurance coverage, your expenses are going to be reduced, since healthcare facilities are compelled to give you a lower cost and insurance protection providers themselves are able to settle much affordable expenses for services. In any case, drug companies, medical device makers, healthcare facilities, and laboratories are confident of profit; it just relies upon how big and that is really what all those who want to take the government out of healthcare are shouting about. They want no constraints placed on earnings of healthcare market, or for that matter, anywhere else.

Today, when the gaining of wealth, quickly and in considerable volumes, is popular above any other individual effort, every medical emergency or disastrous sickness is seen as a chance of some to enrich themselves beyond their wildest goals. It’s no wonder that our healthcare system is so much more costly than that of every other designed nation in the world, where the expenses are not only much reduced, but people also live longer than we do. As opposed to us, other nations have the unusual idea that revenue has no place in any scenario in which the primary decencies that people owe to one another ought to be the first concern, and for that reason control the cost of life saving medication and functions. In short, they are less voracious than we are and far more humane.