The healthcare industry is one of the most crucial industries in the country. The delivery of quality services to all citizens ensures that all citizens remain healthy and productive in the economy. However, in the process of delivering quality services to Americans, the healthcare industry encounters several challenges, some of which are discussed below.
One of the challenges that affects value within the healthcare industry is inadequate access and coverage to insurance and acute care. A large number of Americans have no insurance coverage while others have inadequate access to healthcare and acute care. This challenge was partly addressed through the introduction of federal health reforms such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. However, there are still many gaps in insurance coverage and the citizens with insurance coverage are not assured of consistent access to healthcare. Most rural areas have insufficient doctors and other medical care providers. Also, several doctors reject some insurance covers such as Medicaid coverage due to its low payment rates (Knickman et al., 2019) .
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Inadequate access to healthcare is common in rural areas. This is due to inadequate funds to seek healthcare, cultural barriers, availability of poor services, lack of trained healthcare providers, poor transport, among other reasons. This leads to a decrease in the quality of services acquired by rural residents. Poor healthcare services eventually lead to declining health. Low insurance coverage is also common in rural areas since most people are self-employed and most employers do not offer health insurance to their workers (Factors That Affect Health-Care Utilization, 2018).
Most people state that the cost of obtaining healthcare or insurance coverage is very high. Poor access to insurance cover and acute care reduces the number of patients who are likely to receive treatment or preventive care for chronic illnesses and conditions. Failure to access healthcare services to prevent chronic diseases leads to greater losses since more money is spent on the treatment of these diseases. People with no access to healthcare or insurance cover are more likely to suffer from preventable health problems which lead to a decrease in their general health. Inadequate or no insurance cover reduces the quality of value administered to the patients. In most cases, these patients face a higher risk of misdiagnosis, negligence, or lower quality of therapeutic services (O’Lawrence, 2019) .
Another challenge that affects value within the healthcare industry is increased healthcare expenditure. Healthcare expenditure is increasing faster than the other sectors of the economy due to the increase in prices of services and the volume of services. This increase in expenditure poses a challenge in service delivery to the low and middle-income classes. The efforts of reducing these prices seem to benefit the government and businesses more than the citizens who require quality care (Knickman et al., 2019) .
For drugs to be approved in America, they have to be safe and effective. The new treatment methods are compared to existing treatment methods before approval. The standards are less rigorous provided the new drugs or treatment method is approximately equivalent to an existing one. These new methods are adopted without the cost consideration or improvement in efficiency. As a result, a new medication is used at a higher cost. The citizens who seek healthcare are offered services at higher prices yet the value is constant or lower.
An example of this scenario is the approval of expensive cancer medication which has little benefit. The cancer drugs are estimated to extend life by approximately one month. This is very minimal gain compared to the cost of the drugs which is above $100,000 annually. The quality of services delivered to people with the inability to raise such huge amounts is decreased and the value of healthcare generally decreases (Burke & Ryan, 2014) .
The government should put proper measures in place to ensure that there is access to healthcare all over the country. A standard should also be set for the cost of health insurance cover to ensure that majority of the citizens can afford and obtain it. Also, the new medication should be tested for efficiency to ensure that only more effective medication is approved into the industry.
References
Burke, L., & Ryan, A. (2014). The Complex Relationship between Cost and Quality in US Health Care. AMA Journal of Ethics , 16 (2), 124-130. Retrieved 13 March 2021, from.
Knickman, J., Elbel, B., & Jonas, S. (2019). Jonas & Kovner's health care delivery in the United States (12th Ed.). Springer Publishing Company.
O’Lawrence, H. (2019). Lack of Insurance Coverage Affect Access to Healthcare. European Journal of Environment and Public Health , 3 (1). https://doi.org/10.20897/ejeph/3945
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Health and Medicine Division; Board on Health Care Services; Committee on Health Care Utilization and Adults with Disabilities. Health-Care Utilization as a Proxy in Disability Determination. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2018 Mar 1. 2, Factors That Affect Health-Care Utilization. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK500097/
