Hospital Benefits | Distance Learning Systems (DLSI)

The Role Of The Hospital In The Community

A hospital is a place where we can go if we get sick. It is a conducive place for people who require treatment for their illness. It also plays a big role in the community. A community will not be complete without the presence of a hospital. In fact, a hospital is the community center for health and wellness. The environment of this place is one of the healthiest and safest space that is good for patients, visitors, and staff.

Many of us do not appreciate the true value of a hospital unless we get sick. Many lives are being saved by hospitals. It is the perfect place for those who are experiencing major sickness such as cancer, brain diseases and other major injuries. There are some diseases that are incurable. However, hospitals have advance facilities and technologies to sustain the lives of the people. This place is not only treating sickness but it also helps improving the health of the community. Many hospitals are creating programs that offer financial assistance to patients who cannot afford to pay for hospital care. This helps people to get the care they need, without having to worry about financial payment.

It is true that a hospital has a big impact to the community. They are the critical partners in making sure that communities remain strong, vibrant, and healthy. They are not just treating the diseases of patients, but they also educate the community on how to become healthy and away from all sickness. We need to be grateful that hospitals are there for us to make our lives comfortable and convenient.

Financing Hospital Care in the United States

Since the 60’s, Medical costs have risen dramatically in the U.S. The greatest increase comes from hospital care. Most hospitals have been granted large wage increase and installed expensive modern equipments. To meet these large expenditures, hospitals raised charges to their services by about 600 percent.

There are three main methods of financing hospital care in the country: (1) private insurance, (2) government funding, and (3) customer payments.

Private Insurance. Approximately 80% of Americans have health insurance of some kind. The employee, employer, and the government pays a certain amount for medical benefits. Private health insurance are offered either by insurance companies, medical service plans, employers, or organizations.

Medical service plans provide service benefits. This service is a direct payment to the physician or hospital for medical care. On the other hand, Health Maintenance Organizations (HMO’s) provide nearly complete health care services for a monthly or annual fee. Despite the complete services provided, patient’s options are limited or are bonded by the HMO’s restrictions. There are also employers who pay for the health care cost for their employees rather than buying insurance.

Government Funding. About 40 percent of all health care cost is paid by the government. Of course, the Federal government pays for the larger portion. Hospitals that receive such funding are those managed by the Public Health Service and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Medicare is the biggest government funded health care program in the U.S. IT helps senior citizens pay for out patient, nursing and hospital care.

Customer Payments. Most insurance do no pay for cost of medicine, medical appliances, dental , and eyeglasses. Some only cover a portion of the outpatient care. Patients will need to cover part of the cost themselves. Nearly 25% of health care cost is paid by patients.

Improving Healthcare Services

From healthcare discoveries to the most recent treatment options, America’s healthcare educational institutions and teaching hospitals, as well as their doctors and experts, possess a legacy of developing treatments and establishing the standard for the best patient health care. By way of a multi-year initiative to enhance the standard and security of health care, it is vital to work together to generate guidelines for better quality health care.

Through guidelines for much better Healthcare, it is necessary to integrate verified methods to guarantee more secure surgeries, decrease infections, and reduce hospital re-admissions. We must built an even tougher tradition of quality and protection in medicine by passing these guidelines to each new doctor educated and make sure high quality and safety is part of medical training from day one. Through good research and evaluation, best practices will be improved, learn new ones, and discuss our knowledge with others to enhance health care.

It is, of course, the responsibility of a hospital to secure their patients by giving quality standards, updating procedures, regular maintenance and developing technology. The health care education facilities must be able to educate the next era of doctors with quality and patient security. Through continued research and study, patients must be more secure with safer surgeries. Hospitals must as well develop or enhance a program that will reduce the hospital re-admissions especially for high-risk patients. This will reduce the hospital cost and the stress of staying long in hospital wards away from home.

Lastly, there must be a continued investigation, research and examination of new and efficient health care practices as well as the use of efficient technologies to establish a better future of the health care industry.

Hospital Dependent Patients

Hospital-dependent sufferers are those who, a generation ago, were doomed to die. Now they are being saved. But they are not like the so-called hot spotters, a number of sufferers more generally associated with regular re-admissions who come back to the hospital because of insufficient follow-up care, failing to take medications properly or difficult socioeconomic conditions. Instead, hospital-dependent sufferers come back because they are so delicate, their grasp on health so weak, that they easily “decompensate,” or decline under stress, when not in the medical center. Medical developments can grab them from the grip of death, but not actually free them from dependency on near-constant high-tech monitoring and therapies.

“They are like a house of cards,” said Dr. David B. Reuben, lead writer of the article and chief of the department of geriatrics at the Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. “When one thing goes wrong, they collapse.” Not surprisingly, hospital-dependent sufferers feel more protected and are happier in the hospital than at home. While physicians and even close relatives may assess theirs a diminished lifestyle, these sufferers find their total well being appropriate, enjoying their time with loved ones or involved in inactive interests like viewing sports or reading the paper, simultaneously in the hospital.

Over time, however, their recurring readmission can result in conflicted emotions among those who were accountable for saving them in the first place. Some physicians even begin to dislike their responsibility to continue providing resource-intensive care. “Physicians are socialized to treat sufferers and then move on,” Dr. Reuben noticed. “They want to treat sufferers, not adopt them.” Dr. Reuben and his co-author provide prospective alternatives, such as specific wards or facilities that would be more intense than experienced assisted living features, yet more affordable than a medical center. But they are fast to add that more analysis must also be done. Their idea of “hospital-dependency” is a new one, so no analysis is available to help recognize sufferers at risk of becoming hospital-dependent, estimate the amount of early re-admissions they are accountable for or determine the expenses they have.

Hospital Benefit Plans

Hospitals and health and fitness systems are generally considered as companies that handle the ill and, more progressively, motivate precautionary health and fitness. However, hospitals are also companies and some of the greatest companies at that. In non-urban areas, a hospital is generally the prominent company, and it’s not unusual to find a health and fitness program with thousands of employees. With that comes a large benefit program for employees, which can be very costly and a big part of a hospital’s financial strategies. Consulting company Towers Watson lately finished its “2012 Hospital Industry Benefits Benchmarking Study,” which analyzed the benefits plan conditions of 48 hospitals and health and fitness systems across the country. The average number a survey participant was 5,000 to 10,000 employees, while the average size was 20,000 employees.

Two Towers Watson benefits experts, Joey Dizenhouse, senior health and fitness and group benefits advisor, and Sue DeFelice, senior pension benefits advisor say hospital benefit programs are going through a period of major change right now, just like those in the rest of the industry and in other sectors as well.

Medical centers are interested in guiding their employees to their own suppliers and services. The expenses of health and fitness benefits signify more than one-third of a hospital’s total benefits expenses for employees, higher than most other sectors. As both a company and provider, hospitals have a unique advantage over other types of companies: They can direct their employees to use the system’s “domestic providers” to save on expenses, Mr. Dizenhouse says. This strategy is growing in reputation for two reasons. Medical centers are able to better handle the health and fitness of their employees, and their payments for worker medical care reuse to their own program instead of going to a competitor. “If employees use household suppliers when possible, a medical care facility is able to cure employees as sufferers,” Mr. Dizenhouse says. “That has always been key.”

Group health and fitness programs are being targeted toward hospital employees. Through outreach and education, hospitals have ramped up their initiatives to advertise maintenance in their areas. If people regularly see their doctor, that may lead to less trips in the more costly hospital inpatient setting.