Health care Delivery and Quality Case Study Health, Medicine Essay

Health Care Delivery and Quality Case Study
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Health Care Delivery and Quality Case Study
Introduction
The delivery of quality health care services to patients or consumers makes for one of the primary objectives of health care systems in the United States and around the world. The achievement of the said outcome is dependent on the ability of a given health care system to provide safe and affordable patient care to its wide range of consumers. The rising cost of health care witnessed in the United States and around the globe poses a great challenge towards the delivery of quality healthcare. The underlying factors contributing to the rising costs of health care include the rising cases of chronic diseases among the populace as well as extended lengths of patient stays across the diverse health care facilities. The prolonged patient stays in hospitals may be as a result of the severity of a patient’s condition or stem from the occurrence of medical incidents while in the hands of care providers within health care facilities. Medical errors account for a higher percentage of medical incidents recorded in health care facilities in the United States. According to a report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), for instance, medical errors account for the annual expenditure of approximately $29 billion in the mitigation of preventable harm and other adverse effects on patients due to the administration of medical errors. Healthcare insurance providers such as Medicare and Medicaid as well as a wide range of private health insurance covers often end up paying for such expenses due to the lack of accountability on the part of the care providers in the United States health care system. Provided herein in is an evaluation of a health care delivery and quality case study to highlight some of the concerns for health insurance providers towards the rising costs of health care as a result of preventable harm on patients and other hospital-acquired conditions.
Scope of the Problem
According to the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalition, American employers and health insurance policyholders spend an annual amount of approximately $300 billion on health care CITATION Min20 \l 1033 (Minnesota Health Action Group, 2020). The rising cost of healthcare due to the occurrence of medical errors in health care facilities, on the other hand, affects over 45,000 people in the United States who incur additional health care costs amounting to over $29 billion in a year. Healthcare-associated conditions and the adverse effects of medical errors affect over 2.4 million people annually in the United States CITATION Con08 \l 1033 (Consumer Reports, 2008). The occurrence of preventable harm on patients often differ in severity with the extreme cases leading to prolonged patient stays in healthcare facilities as well as death. Healthcare insurance cover providers and policyholders are at the receiving end of the rising costs of health care in the country. Collaborative efforts between the federal and state governments to cushion the low-income earners against the burden of the rising cost of health care takes the form of the Medicare and Medicaid programs CITATION Con14 \l 1033 (Consumer Reports, 2014)....