Costs: The Role Of Cost In Health Care

Costs have been an issue in health care since the beginning of time. In an article by Eddy it states that from 1970 to 1990 there was a 700% increase in health care costs and was estimated to be over $1 trillion by the 2000’s. Like any other conflict there are two sides to the argument. One the first side if people are willing to pay the increased costs there would be issue, instead they want to pass them along to another person – their insurance company. On the other, patients are expecting their health professionals to use the newest, most expensive technology to manage their health care needs. If the insurance company refuses to pay for the treatment, it would cause huge issues and using an older, less expensive tools doesn’t seem like an …show more content…
It is a huge issue as costs of health care are increasing every year as new technologies are being introduced. Costs would affect how I approach new technologies and policies in the work place. To get a control on costs, it would be necessary to regulate them by implementing policies or guidelines. These policies or guidelines could contribute value to the costs, creating a standard across the entire health region. They would provide information like costs of the health professionals, the technology, and the facility. Even with guidelines implemented the users may ignore them and continue to over-consume costing them more than is necessary. For example, if I was policy writer for the Health Information field and I wanted to implement a policy that rationed how much of a certain technology could be used per day, it would require personnel to allocate the times each user can use the technology. Since the technology would be on a tight schedule to ensure that everyone gets the appropriate amount of time with it, it guarantees that there would be no over consumption of the technology. Overall this would decrease the amount of cost it would take to run that technology (Shabestari, 2015). As a Health Informatics professional, it is essential that costs are maintained and rationed so that they do not get out of hand causing debt to the country. I would change my …show more content…
For myself, I believe these four topics will affect my approach within the field. Each topic discussed in this paper are vital to the systems that health informatic professionals create, implement, and maintain. Having PROACTIVE, decision trees, and diagnostic error techniques implemented directly into the system gives health professionals necessary information and tools ensuring that the patient receives the best treatment plan, reducing the possibility of a misdiagnosis. Since these tools will be in the system, it reduces the cost of using other technologies as they will be in one place for the health professional to look it up. This gives the health professional more time to interact with the patient, as well as reducing the costs of maintaining any systems they may have been looking at to gather this information before. These four topics along with others learned in this course will change my approach on how I practice Health Information, as I will use the information learned and implement it into my work ensuring that the health professionals have the necessary information to give the patient the best possible