Introduction
One of the essential issues that are affecting the American health care system is the cost margins associated with providing long-term care to patients, some of who do not have anywhere to go after they have been discharged. Eliason, Grieco, McDevitt, & Roberts (2018) indicate that health institutions, within the United States, cannot, both legally and morally, discharge a patient if he or she does not have a safe place to go after the discharge. It is from this perspective that a significant number of health facilities find themselves contending with the challenge of having to cater for patients in the long-term with a majority of these patients not having medical problems that require them to be admitted. The issue has been driven by the fact that some of the patients coming into these facilities are homeless, which creates a challenge during their discharge. The focus of this report is to analyze the issue from the perspective of a recent news article.
Summary of the News Story
In a news article, Why Hospitals Are Getting Into The Housing Business , Hawryluk (2019) explores the issue associated with long-term stay among patients giving examples of a patient that has stayed for as long as 1,558 days and another spending eight weeks at Denver Health. It is from this perspective that the article explores an approach that health facilities in Baltimore, St. Louis, and Sacramento, California are taking up in a bid to dealing with this problem. The procedure involves having to allocate charity dollars towards housing as one of the ways through which to ensure that they create free beds that would be of value towards accommodating persons that actually need health care services.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Hawryluk (2019) recognizes the fact that it is indeed cheaper for a health facility to provide housing for a month when compared to keeping the patient in a hospital bed per night. That serves as a clear indication of the fact that indeed, an investment in housing would serve as a long-term solution towards reducing the strains that hospitals are experiencing concerning accommodating long-term patients. The article goes ahead to discuss the issue of accommodation from a health care point of view, suggesting that health institutions ought to spend in a bid to save money. Whiteford & Cornes (2019) reiterate this position arguing that a majority of health facilities find themselves contending with persons that are 'stranded' and cannot be discharged, which often has serious financial implications on the facilities. From the news article, what is clear is that keeping a patient at Denver Health costs approximately $2,700 per night, which is notably expensive from a health care requiring perspective.
Implications of the News on My Future as Leader
Going through the news, I took note of the fact that the administrators in the health facilities with 'stranded' patients often experience a significant challenge due to the legal constraint that they experience in their discharge of these patients. Cornes et al. (2018) indicate that health facilities have the legal obligation to ensure that their patients go to a safe environment after their discharge from the facility, which becomes a challenge when dealing with homeless persons. From my understanding of the problem, it was clear that the issue is brought out by the fact the facilities find it hard when accommodating these patients attributed to the cost implications that this tends to have on the facilities involved.
As a leader in health care, one of the critical steps that I will seek to take is to ensure that each hospital within my jurisdiction has invested in a housing project or home where patients without anywhere to go after their discharge can transition. Investment in housing would mean that health facilities would have the legal and moral authority allowing them to discharge 'stranded' patients without having to keep them within the facilities themselves (Herbst, 2017). In my view, this will not only help towards ensuring that the patients can be monitored to make sure that they are beautiful but would also contribute towards reducing the costs associated with providing for these patients. From the news article, I noted that most of these facilities find it hard when hosting these patients taking into account that the beds are often needed in ensuring that the facilities would provide care to sick patients.
I will also seek to work with both federal and state governments in ensuring that they avail adequate funding for housing projects that would be adopted as part of the strategic approach through which to save health care costs. Wood, Wood, Vallesi, Stafford, Davies, & Cumming (2019) indicate that the increasing costs of health care have severe implications for the quality of care offered; thus, creating the need for having to find alternative ways through which health facilities would be able to save on cost margins. By investing in these housing projects, health facilities would find themselves in a much better position through which to ensure that they are able to reduce their expenditures considering that they will also seek to accommodate patients that require health care services within their facilities. That creates the need for having to engage the government in ensuring that adequate funding is provided for the health facilities as one of the critical guarantees towards ensuring that they maximize on the idea of investing in housing.
References
Cornes, M., Whiteford, M., Manthorpe, J., Neale, J., Byng, R., Hewett, N., ... & Tinelli, M. (2018). Improving hospital discharge arrangements for people who are homeless: a realist synthesis of the intermediate care literature. Health & social care in the community , 26 (3), e345-e359.
Eliason, P. J., Grieco, P. L., McDevitt, R. C., & Roberts, J. W. (2018). Strategic patient discharge: The case of long-term care hospitals. American Economic Review , 108 (11), 3232-65. doi: 10.3386/w22598
Hawryluk, M. (2019). Why Hospitals Are Getting Into The Housing Business . Retrieved from https://khn.org/news/why-hospitals-are-getting-into-the-housing-business/
Herbst, J. L. (2017). Permanent patients: hospital discharge planning meets housing insecurity. Hastings Center Report , 47 (1), 6-7.
Whiteford, M., & Cornes, M. (2019). Situating and understanding hospital discharge arrangements for homeless people. Housing, Care and Support , 22 (1), 1-3.
Wood, L., Wood, N. J., Vallesi, S., Stafford, A., Davies, A., & Cumming, C. (2019). Hospital collaboration with a Housing First program to improve health outcomes for people experiencing homelessness. Housing, Care and Support , 22 (1), 27-39.
