Specific Health Care Trends in Acute Care Order Instructions: 1. American Hospital Association Policy Research and Trends Analysis.
http://www.aha.org/research/index.shtml
2. Health Research and Educational Trust Trends in Hospital-Based Population Health Infrastructure December 2013. http://www.hpoe.org/Reports-Hpoe/ACHI_Survey_Report_Report_December2013.pdf
3. American Hospital Association Hospitals and Care Systems of the Future September 2011. http://www.aha.org/content/11/hospitals-care-systems-of-future.pdf
4. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Measuring What Matters: Introducing a New Action Framework November 2015. http://www.rwjf.org/en/culture-of-health/2015/11/measuring_what_matte.html
5. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Pioneering Ideas Podcast: Episode 6 – What if? Shifting Prescriptions to Change the World. October 2014. http://rwjf.org/en/culture-of-health/2014/10/podcast_episode_6.html
6. RAND Corporation Retail Clinics Play Growing Role in Health Care Marketplace September 2012. http://www.rand.org/health/feature/retail-clinics.html
1. After reading or viewing the reference sources for this module, develop a five-page paper that addresses three points:
1. What are specific trends for each of the five healthcare service areas of wellness/health promotion, acute care, ambulatory care, long term care, and rehabilitation
2. What are significant causes for the emergence and evolution of these trends
3. How will these trends impact their respective healthcare domains for the next five to ten years
Where appropriate in the body of the paper, reference the sources being used to generate your observations, analysis, and commentary.
Specific Health Care Trends in Acute Care Sample Answer
Specific Health care trends in Acute care, ambulatory care, long term care, and rehabilitation
There are approximately 325 million people in the USA, and within this population, 36.5 – 39% of them are overweight. This indicates that obesity is becoming a growing concern and a major public health issue. Putting these factors into considerations, health and wellness trend is expected to become a dynamic market. It is projected that nutrition products will increasingly become integrated into the healthcare mainstream, with a potential of sports nutrition penetrating into clinical practice. People are expected to embrace feeding in organic products with the aim of managing their weight (American Hospital Association, 2013).
There is an increase of wellness mindset in the USA. It is projected that consumers will prioritize their well-balanced nutrition and physical wellbeing as well as mental health. Through technological advancement, wellness is expected to creep in all aspects of service user’s life and experiences. This project an increase in wellness market and the adoption of a healthy lifestyle as more service users will gravitate towards products embedded with health benefits. Healthier food sales will increase as 73% of the population will switch to healthier versions of food items (American Hospital Association, 2011).
Acute care is quickly evolving and shifting with as the need and demands of the patients grow. The need for fact walk-in care for urgent care has increased in the past decade, making it an aspect to be reckoned in health care. Acute care is now competing with primary care. The noticeable movements include service diversification, consolidation, and alignment with other healthcare aspects. The acute care trends to watch for include increased partnership and health systems acquiring. It is evident that urgent care cannot be eliminated. Therefore, the healthcare system is expected to reduce the cost of care by establishing systems that ensure that the patients are quickly and efficiently referred immediately to the correct level healthcare. The healthcare systems will integrate systems that ensure urgent care is performed urgently. The trend will aim to grow towards achieving cost-effective and quality care. More investments will also be poured in urgent care because the medical groups and ACOs are realizing the need of a partnership, which implies that there will be more joint ventures with the organization as well as other corporate entities (Health Research and Educational Trust, 2013).
Similar trends are and will be observed in ambulatory, long-term and rehabilitation care. Healthcare cost is currently a hot topic in ambulatory care. There are many reforms being implemented by the federal government that will bring huge impacts on health administration. Public medical cover such as Medicare will face significant impacts with the increase of life expectancy and disabled people. In addition, as the population increases, the health care plans will also increase indicating that there will be a considerable increase of uninsured population which will increase the levels of health disparity (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2015). Therefore, unless the current new government makes essential reforms, the increased cost of care and prescription cost will affect adversely affect service users considerably. The increased pressures to improve the quality of care will see the long-term care facilities and the rehabilitation center will be forced to explore evidence-based practices that promote quality care. Although the public medical covers aim to improve the quality of care, these stringent measures such as denying reimbursement for hospital-acquired injuries and infections might take increase patient’s burden.
New technology is a crucial tool in any industry, but it is a central part of the healthcare industry. The increasing demand by patients to have accurate and faster access to treatment will ensure that more and more healthcare technological advancement. For instance, technological measures such as Electronic Records will ensure that patient information is rapidly accessed and shared across the healthcare facilities with ease. The facilities will also adopt new technologies that lower discomforts and improves patient safety including laser based medical devices such as laser glucometer or laser themed thermometer. Technology is expected to increase interoperability in healthcare systems. However, the main issue of concern in this advancement is measured to ensure that patient privacy and confidentiality is maintained- which is the main challenge with these digital systems (American Hospital Association, 2013).
Significant causes of this evolution on Specific Health Care Trends in Acute Care
There are various factors that have caused these trends includes the shift in political, social and economic factors that will accompany the new governing system. However, all these factors are driven by two main needs namely a) need to improve access to care and b) improve the quality of care. Therefore, the major force to make these adjustments is technological adjustments (Health Research and Educational Trust, 2013).
Other key drivers of these new trends include is changes in population growth and demographic characteristics. Technological advancement has aided in improving people’s wellbeing thereby increasing life expectancy. As a result, a higher percentage of the population in the near future will be the elderly. In addition, the internet has improved health literacy and patient acuity level. This calls for changes in ideologies to most of the public health frameworks. The previous governments have eradicated the regimes of health monopoly by creating opportunities for private services. This has helped relieve the public’s health burden but at an extremely high cost. There is a need to ensure that the new government system decentralizes healthcare system even more in order to reduce the misallocation of resources (American Hospital Association, 2011).
Lastly, most of the current infrastructure conditions are too old and inadaptable to providing effective services in this dynamic industry. The infrastructures are described with demerits such as reduced staff retention, the high cost of care and inconsistent delivery of care. These challenges will drive technological advancement in order to tap more innovative techniques that will increase the efficiency and management of healthcare in a manner that maximizes the community’s health benefits (RAND Corporation, 2012).
Impacts of these specific healthcare domains in the next decade
One of the major impacts of these trends is that it will facilitate the decentralization of healthcare system, which will help improve the delivery of care and to lead to better health outcomes. In addition, the trends will help remove quality healthcare barriers associated with monopoly and bureaucracy. The political benefit associated with these trends is that it will increase democratic control of the healthcare services to the service users. This will provide opportunities to identify specific community needs and in designing of strategic interventions (Health Research and Educational Trust, 2013).
In addition, increased competition and innovativeness will lead to designing of medical devices that will not improve patient safety and quality of care, but also reduce the financial burden. Technological advancement will improve management of administrative duties and the allocation of resources, thereby reducing health disparities as well as ethnic and tribal tensions. This trend will sharpen healthcare system accountability, operations and delivery of healthcare services (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2014).
Specific Health Care Trends in Acute Care References
American Hospital Association (2013). American Hospital Association Policy Research and Trends Analysis. Retrieved from http://www.aha.org/research/index.shtml
Health Research and Educational Trust (2013). Trends in Hospital-Based Population Health Infrastructure. Retrieved from. http://www.hpoe.org/Reports-Hpoe/ACHI_Survey_Report_Report_December2013.pdf
American Hospital Association (2011). Hospitals and Care Systems of the Future. Retrieved from http://www.aha.org/content/11/hospitals-care-systems-of-future.pdf
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (2015). Measuring What Matters: Introducing a New Action Framework. Retrieved from. http://www.rwjf.org/en/culture-of-health/2015/11/measuring_what_matte.html
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (2014). Pioneering Ideas Podcast: Episode 6 – What if? Shifting Prescriptions to Change the World. Retrieved from http://rwjf.org/en/culture-of-health/2014/10/podcast_episode_6.html
RAND Corporation(2012). Retail Clinics Play Growing Role in Health Care Marketplace. Retrieved from. http://www.rand.org/health/feature/retail-clinics.html
