The need for quality care practices is a crucial requirement. This ensures that patients' specific medical needs are achieved. Nevertheless, the financial environment in healthcare and its influence on decision making ought to be factored in to ensure efficiency. Therefore, an assessment of the financial environment in healthcare and its influence on decision making, various types of healthcare settings, the benefits and disadvantages of integrated delivery systems are of essence.
The Current Financial Environment in Healthcare and its Influence on Decision Making
The healthcare financial environment anticipates, acquires, and makes use of assets. To achieve this, the environment is tasked with planning and budgeting, which is vital in getting ready for what is to come. The spending plan spells out what assets are to be acquired and financial targets to be attained. Also, there needs to be the budgetary reporting of operations and the monetary status of healthcare organizations through monetary explanations. Subsequently, the organization will be aware of its standing and ability to acquire or not to acquire assets. Also, the financial environment has the capital investment decision to accomplish but this should be founded on the anticipated returns of the investment. Also, the financial environment has the financing decisions to handle by raising money to purchase the leads to strengthen the organization’s operations.
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Types of Healthcare Settings
First, there is the ambulatory care, which refers to medical care based on an outpatient basis. In this case, patients can access diagnostic, consultation, curative and rehabilitation services and then allowed to go home. Secondly, there is the home health care plan where medical services are rendered to a patient while in their homes. It is regarded less costly and convenient. It is mainly applied when taking care of people with injuries or the elderly who are less mobile.
Thirdly, long-term care is a medical plan where both medical and nonmedical services are rendered to patients to enhance their health for a more extended period. This can be done while at home or within a medical facility such as a nursing home. The hospital refers to an institution equipped with health professionals where medical services are provided to both inpatients and outpatients. They can handle both mild and severe healthcare conditions. Lastly, an integrated delivery system is where different types of healthcare organizations like hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes are possessed and operated as a single organization. Hence, they strive to meet the needs of all patients regardless of their medical conditions.
Benefits of Integrated Delivery Systems
Normally, interconnected organizations have enhanced access to capital. Also, healthcare administrators in these settings have a cost-effective administration (Gapenski, 2012). In this case, various medical services can use the same resources, which makes it cost effective and easy to manage. Also, there is a greater availability of support services financed by the same medical facility due to the economies of scale (Gapenski, 2012). For example, laboratory services support therapeutic procedures in other areas. Then also, there is improved security for patients’ information. Patients’ medical histories and personal details are stored in a single database, hence, less likely to be stolen or misused. Additionally, the settings are able to recruit and maintain management and professional employees.
Challenges to Implementing Integrated Delivery Systems
First, there is the lack of specialisation since medical providers are required to handle patients with various medical needs. For instance, they can cater for injuries, chronic ailments and common illnesses. Secondly, acquiring medical services in this setting takes long since providers are required to care for patients with varying medical needs. Thirdly, the quality of care in these settings is significantly low. This is because medical practitioners cannot focus and research on various specific areas all at once. Thus, this hinders their ability to master the handling of various medical conditions. Thirdly, vulnerable groups such as the elderly and children are not adequately handled due to much work overloads and overcrowding.
Conclusion
The primary goal of the healthcare sector is to enhance the quality of care. This can be achieved through the establishment of dedicated healthcare settings to deal with various medical needs. In this case, hospitals, ambulatory care, home care, long-term care and integrated care settings in healthcare are meant to enhance quality care services. To achieve this, the financial environments’ decisions like planning and budgeting, budgetary reporting, capital investment decisions, and financing decisions ought to be considered. On the other hand, the integrated delivery systems settings work as single entities with various healthcare organizations like hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes. These organizations are cost effective, have economies of scale, and ensure patient data security. However, the integrated delivery systems have poor specialization, are slow and have poor quality care delivery, together with the poor handling of children and the elderly.
Reference
Gapenski, L. C. (2012). Healthcare finance: An introduction to accounting & financial management . Healthcare Administration Press.
