Challenges Affecting Health Care Delivery

The U.S. Health Care Delivery System
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The U.S. Health Care Delivery System
The three biggest challenges affecting health care delivery in the U.S. are coverage, access, and cost. These three challenges are interrelated where cost is the biggest barrier since addressing access and range requires that the former be lowered to a reasonable level. This essay will discuss each of the three obstacles and identify methods health care leaders can use to circumvent the challenges within a health care organization.
Challenges Affecting Health Care Delivery
High health care costs in America can be evaluated from a macro perspective or a micro perspective. The macro view usually takes a national standpoint and refers to the fraction of a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) spent on health care services. U.S. spends a large proportion of its GDP on delivering health care services compared to other developed countries. On the other hand, the micro perspective usually takes an individual standpoint. It refers to the cost of buying health insurance and out-of-pocket payments individuals make when receiving health care services.
In this too, the U.S. leads other developed nations: health care consumers in America pay higher for insurance premiums and physicians’ bills than health care consumers from other developed countries. America’s high health care costs have been attributed to the intricate interaction of various factors. Besides general inflation in the economy, some of the other factors contributing to medical cost inflation include the country’s third-party payment, which incentivizes high utilization by consumers, the introduction and intensive application of costly technology, and an expanding aging population with chronic conditions and in need of long-term care (Shi & Singh, 2017). Other factors include a preference for medical intervention in place of preventative medicine or behavior changes, a fragmented health care system that often results in duplication of costs, a tendency to practice defensive medicine owing to unrestrained malpractice suits, waste and abuse in the form of unnecessary medical services, and practice variations between physicians. All these factors are responsible for America’s high health costs at the macro and micro levels.
Health care access disparities in the U.S. are best analyzed by race, occupation, and income. These three factors are also interrelated in that members of a particular race are likely to be of the same socioeconomic status and in related occupations. For instance, minority groups are likely to be situated in job environments that expose them to greater health risk, over and above, poor. Racial minorities are more likely to have limited access to ongoing care when compared to their white counterparts. For instance, members of these marginalized populations are likely to have fewer flu shots, cancer screenings, or ambulatory and physician visits than white people. Other factors such as geography also play a part in limiting health access to certain populations: those living in rural areas face greater barriers to health care access such as i...