...affordable and accessible health care coverage and services. Within the past thirty to forty years, the scope and cost of health care coverage and services has drastically changed, altering the manner in which health care was previously managed. There are several factors that have affected the cost of health care coverage over the course of the past two to three decades. One of these factors is the introduction and rapidly increasing enrollment in managed health care insurance plans. Managed care health insurance plans can, in most cases, help to alleviate the rising costs of effective medical coverage. Another important factor that has affected health care costs is the invention and implementation of new medical technologies. As prominent researchers and economic analysts have discovered, there is a distinct and direct correlat! ion between advancing medical technologies and rising health care costs. Medical innovation has been proven time and again to be an important determinant of health care cost growth. It would appear that managed care health insurance plans, which attempt to lower health care costs, and highly expensive new medical innovations and procedures are at cross purposes, pulling against one another in very different directions. Market-level comparisons have found the cost growth of health care in markets with greater managed care penetration to be generally slower than that of non-managed care health insurance markets....
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...The Role of Technology in Rising Health Care Costs. What should or shouldn’t be done. Neha Para, MPH Student 5453-001 US Health Care System University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center December 8, 2010 Abstract Health care costs are a longstanding concern to policymakers. For years, health care spending has been rising faster than the rate of economic growth, raising the question of what factors are responsible for rising health care costs. This paper explores published articles that report results from research conducted on technological innovations in health care and its relation to rising health care costs. The cost increases have a significant effect on households, businesses, and government programs. Health care experts indicates the development and diffusion of medical technology as primary factors in explaining the persistent difference between health spending and overall economic growth, with some arguing that new medical technology may account for about one-half or more of real long-term spending growth. Rising health care expenditures lead to the question of whether we are getting value for the money we spend. On an average, increases in medical spending as a result of advances in medical care have provided reasonable value. An alternative viewpoint holds that although new technologies represent medical advances, they are prone to overuse and thereby excess cost. Most of the suggestions to slow the growth in new medical technology in the U.S. focus on...
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...Running head: Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Student Names Florida Atlantic University College of Business Health Administration Program Dr. Attila J. Hertelendy Introduction to Health Care Systems HSA 6103 Electronic Medical Records (EMR) November 15, 2011 Table of Contents 2 Abstract ............................................................................................................................................3 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................4 Types of EMRs ................................................................................................................................4 EMR Technology ....................................................................................................................4 Practice Management ..............................................................................................................7 Vendors and Cost of EMR ......................................................................................................7 EMR Stimulus.........................................................................................................................8 Different Uses of EMR ....................................................................................................................9 Uses of EMR in Health Management .............................
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...Journal of Emergency Medicine The impact of medical technology on healthcare today LTH Tan and KL Ong Introduction Rapidly changing medical technology and availability of high technology diagnostic and therapeutic equipment together with changing practice pattern of doctors has revolutionized the way health care is being delivered today. Without doubt, medical technology is indispensable for people's health and better quality of life in some areas; and contributes billions of dollars to the economy. Some would go so far to say that the practice of medicine these days is inherently dependent upon health technology. This is probably based on the observations that clinicians use a wide variety of technologies in diagnosing, treating and assessing the care of their patients. Today's medical technology is more advanced, more effective, and in many cases, more costly than ever before. Furthermore there is an ever increasing demand for high technology diagnostic and therapeutic health care facilities and their availability may come into conflict with medical necessity, social justice and cost effectiveness. There is increasing pressure on health care resources that is driving more explicit and public decisions regarding the best use of these resources. The complexity of modern technology and its high marginal cost suggest to us that testimonial reviews of new technologies are no longer sufficient.1 Current trends in health care decision making favour a transition from a rationale...
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...Summary In supporting this model of care through home care services, informatics should be taken into account. As claimed by Parks (2015), home-based technologies like telemedicine and robotic care may certainly be useful tools in providing care for persons at home. Offering home-based technologies may result in better processes of informed consent in health care decision-making, since it allows individuals to make medical decisions or to reflect on options in the familiarity of their homes, where there are unique cues, practices, and configurations of objects and furniture that allow for more complete and authentic decision-making (Parks 2015). New telemedical and assistive technologies now make it possible for individuals to safely remain...
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...| Implications of Regulation in Health Care | Week 5 Application | | Tiffany Littlejohn | 2/9/2014 | | Implications of Regulation in Health Care In today’s highly competitive regulated healthcare environment, it is so important for different companies to bring to their market new medical technology and to keep them in their market. Therefore, managing different regulatory issues is an essential key to a strategic advantage. Currently, there are strong standards and guidelines put into place to ensure that all devices are well safety equipped, well studied before putting it out in the market and have less negative reactions. The strongest way to judge efficacy of any technology is data acquisition through randomized clinical trials (Berkowitz, Robert, 2010). Off course, this is not possible or even feasible in certain cases. Properly designed case series and cohort studies can provide and prove hypothesis. Observational and epidemiological studies can help identify unexpected deviations and outcomes. Meta-analysis can then take in to consideration all the available evidence and summarize the current state of knowledge. Incorporation of Cost-Effectiveness Analysis and Cost-Benefit Analysis help calculate and extrapolate economic aspects of any medical technology. Technology continues to affect the healthcare industry (Berkowitz, Robert, 2010). Currently, the industry is moving towards the electronic medical record (EMR), data reporting from the EMR, and...
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...management in hospital, this research would follow up various steps. First, the research would evaluate how healthcare providers administer medical care and whether or not patients receive adequate support that boosts their well-being. Second, the study would evaluate whether the care provided in the hospital aligns with the medical standards. Conducting this research would create a strong platform to understand the past and present management and further work hard to eliminate any activity, condition, or medical errors that would hinder quality healthcare. Research Questions It is a well-documented fact that, quality medical care is of essence in reducing high mortality rates that occur as a result of poor medication and services provided (Flores, Win & Susilo, 2010). With this in mind, this research would investigate various factors that hinder healthcare providers from administering quality healthcare. To fully gather facts and information, this research would answer the following questions; do patients receive quality care and what attributes to poor medical errors. I would investigate further areas in the hospital that require immediate intervention to achieve quality care. Data I Would Require to Collect In order to achieve a broad analysis, this study would collect data on what needs to be done to boost efficiency and quality care. First, I would interview a number of patients in the hospital to evaluate patient...
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...In the case study, we referred to the systems being developed and used as decision support systems. However, we also identified various artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. How can a decision support system incorporate and use AI technologies such as pattern recognition? - Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and techniques can aid in the diagnosis of disease states and assessment of treatment outcomes, so AI can be used by a decision support system as pattern recognition to analyze healthcare data and generate a representation of knowledge and make a decision support. One of this AI technologies tools is the Artificial Neural Networks which work much like the human brain and have the ability to learn from training data and store knowledge in the network. It maps relationship between inputs and the corresponding expected outputs. Neural networks have found the majority of their application in time series prediction, signal processing, and financial forecasting and especially in health care as pattern recognition. 2. At the Mayo Clinic, patients are given opt-in and opt-out rights concerning whether or not their information is used in the system that determines the most appropriate therapies given the specific patient profile. So far, 95 percent of the patients have opted to have their information included in the system. (This is the notion of opting in.) Why do you believe that 5 percent of the patients have opted out? Would you opt in or opt out in this case? Please...
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...Introduction The evolution of information technology (IT) over the years has taken up a special position in health care. As both a spectator and participant in this evolution, the health care industry moves forward with ever-changing technology as its primary driver (Bernstein et al., 2007). Health care organizations believe that in order to practice medicine in the digital era, they need health information and administrative tools that can be accessed immediately. Increasingly, health maintenance providers are taking on various technologies to overcome the complexities of today’s health care requirements, regulatory demands, and ever rising consumers’ expectations (Lee and Meuter, 2010). The intention of organizations to adopt IT is to improve...
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...Electronic Medical Records HCS/320 August 5, 2011 Electronic Medical Records Health care organizations have changed drastically over the years. Technology has made it more advanced than ever before. New technology has affected the way of health care communication. This paper has been written to show how efficient and effective communication is with electronic medical records, its advantages and disadvantages, its influence on consumers, and the electronic medical records short- and long-term financial impact on organizations. An electronic medical record (EMR) is a computerized medical record created in an organization that delivers care, such as a hospital or physician's office. Electronic medical records tend to be a part of a local stand-alone health information system that allows storage, retrieval, and modification of records (Wikipedia, 2011). Efficient and Effective Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) are increasingly used in health care organizations in general and ambulatory settings in particular. Electronic medical records include comprehensive documentation of a patient’s medical history, easy access to medical data from remote sites, improved communication among the various providers involved in health care, easy access to medical information and state of the art resources over the Internet (medical journals, guidelines, evidence-based medicine databases, medication databases,) and clinical decision support. A recent systematic literature review suggests...
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...CASE: SM-136 DATE: 10/24/04 BETTER MEDICINE THROUGH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INTRODUCTION The health care industry in the United States was troubled. Most of the world’s state-of-the-art health care research occurred in U.S. university and corporate laboratories. Similarly, most of the best centers in the world for delivery of health care were located in the U.S. However, the costs of health care in the United States were exploding and overall quality, along many dimensions, was not increasing. For U.S. consumers it was the best of times and the worst of times—health care services were often terrific if judged by the ability of individual physicians to do more for patients and yet, as judged on almost any broad parameter such as life expectancy or infant mortality, the United States was at best average compared to other developed countries. In most developed countries, spending on health care grew dramatically over the past several years. This increase in spending, combined with lower overall economic growth, pushed up the share of health care expenditure as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) of OECD countries from an average 7.8 percent in 1997 to 8.5 percent in 2002. By comparison, the share of GDP spent on health care remained almost unchanged from 1992 to 1997 (Exhibit 1). In the United States, health care expenditure grew 2.3 times faster than GDP, rising from 13 percent in 1997 to 14.6 percent in 2002. Spending was $5,267 per capita in 2002, almost 140 percent...
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...“Transformational change is associated with organizational restructuring and represents a broad and complex radical shift, as the organization “reinvents itself.” (Johnson, 2009) In the healthcare industry, things are changing every day. New technology, medication, and the way we deal with patients changes on a daily basis. Change is necessary because there are people behind the scenes always finding new ways to better improve the quality of care we give to our patients as well as creating new technology to help assist with the way we treat our patients. Adding and taking away from departments are changing as well. With change we may want to be uninterested with it, supportive of it, to be a participate in it, or unreceptive about it. Whether the case may be, change has increased and will continue to happen whether we like it or not. Throughout this paper I will discuss two healthcare organizations that have experienced change. “Effective change has been characterized as unfreezing old behaviors, introducing new ones, and refreezing them.” (Al-Abir, 2007) Change can be random, rare, occasional, or continuous. Change that are predictable allow preparation time, whereas change that is unpredictable may be difficult for everyone to respond effectively too. Since in healthcare changes happen so fast, they are more than likely predicable. Even though change is recognized, the employees what to be able to understand why change is occurring and how it will affect them in...
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...for providing quality health care to patients via the exchange of medical services using communication technology (Siegal, 2012). This exchange of medical information has brought the accessibility to health care to many patient in which otherwise would not have the required resources to access many health care services. In many scenarios, telemedicine has bridged the gap between the need of specialized medical technology at one specific location and an individual’s medical diagnosis at another. Hospitals and other health care providers, which service rural areas of the country, now have an avenue of approach when dealing with accessibility of patients, especially the aging population in these areas. Telemedicine has provided the way of accessing technology and reaching out to a new strategy of practical medicine. In this research we will discuss many of the value added approaches of telemedicine and how it has affected the change in healthcare. There are three main areas of focus that will be considered. As stated, we will discuss and assess the technology currently being used to provide telemedicine services. This technology is broad and can cover vast amounts of information, but the focus will be to explain the main contributors of telemedicine technology and the adoption of this technology by providers. The first part of emphasis of application will include technology that is utilized by hospitals, clinics and physician offices and how this technology differs depending on...
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...Work Related Project Analysis Part I Work-Related Project Analysis Part I Great Plains Regional Medical Center in North Platte, Nebraska during the time of this case study had 116 beds, offered a full service health system; provided care services for over 25 specialties, a referral center for eight critical care hospitals. Great Plains Regional Medical Center’s emergency department medical records was a paper system. They invested in an emergency department (ED) specific technology. This technology was needed to improve care management and continuity, clinician collaboration, and physician alignment (Anderson, 2011). This essay will overview the business system at the departmental level for Great Plains Regional Medical Center. Additionally, an overview of information gathering technique used and design method used. Finally, the impact of the project in terms of success will be discussed. Information Gathering Techniques Used Information gathering by analysts can involve watching people who will be using the system or interviewing people who will be using the system. Information can also be gathered by reviewing documents; either from planning, policies, or existing systems (Satzinger, Jackson, & Burd, 2009). Information gathering technique for this study was not specifically revealed. However, there was pertinent information gathered and noted. When patients transferred from the ED department to the inpatient unit, tertiary facility, or sent home...
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...The Health Care reform bill has the creation of an Institute for Comparative Effectiveness as a key component with the hope of improving quality and reducing health care costs. The institute would have the authority to make official determinations of the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of medical treatments, procedures, drugs, and medical devices. President Obama's initial nominee as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), former Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD), has likewise proposed the creation of a supremely powerful Federal Health Board, which would have similar authority to make decisions that would be binding on health plans and providers financed by federal taxpayers, and potentially on private health insurance coverage.[2] While Senator Daschle has withdrawn his name from Senate consideration, the concept of such a board or institute is strongly indicative of the Obama Administration's policy orientation toward centralized health policy decision-making. Last year, congress has passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (H.R. 1, which would establish a Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. The bill provides $1.1 billion for the new council and delegate spending authority to the HHS Secretary to investigate the effectiveness of different drugs and medical devices.[3] Of course, there is no reason why anyone should not have access to information on what works and what doesn't. There is no reason...
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