Between 1750 and 2000, hospitals and the healthcare in general have evolved in the United States. They have evolved from the simple systems of home remedies with no qualified doctors to complex systems comprised of modern technological equipment and well trained medical care practitioners. In the 1970s hospitals were small units that offered services to patients. An example of the hospital that was created in 1736 was the NYC+ Hospitals/Bellevue and is the oldest hospital in the history of America. The hospital was initially small and could house few patients at ago. The facilities at the hospital were very outdated and the medical practitioners depended on the archaic facilities which provided very little help. The hospital has tremendously evolved to a facility that handles about 670,000 out patients every year. It also admits about 116,000 emergency visits and about 26,000 inpatients every year. Initially, the hospital occupied a piece of land but it has expanded to a 25-story facility with an ICU and radiology and an outpatient facility (Shi, 2014). These are some of the evolutions and changes that most hospitals in the United States have undergone. Most hospitals in the United States have taken a drastic change within the years. There has also been a technological advancement in the means in which diseases are handled and treated. In addition, there has been a rise in the number medical training and research institutions. The training institutions are meant to train medical care personnel while the research institutions are used by professionals to conduct research on a particular subject in medical care. Many years ago, there were no research facilities or professionals who would handle the diverse diseases. The lack of research facilities was as a result of poor facilities and technological advancements to handle the sophisticated research. The hospitals, however, have evolved with time as a result of the advancement in technology (Uhlemann, 2014).
There has also been an evolution and the rise of health insurance. Before the 1930s, all people who seek medical attention had to part ways with their own money. People were left to pay for their medical expenses that are agreed upon between the physicians and the patients. In the 1930s, the American healthcare took over from the doctor-patient relation and became the third-party financier. The third party payer is categorized into two: public and private sectors. The first insurance company to come into existence was the Blue Cross & Blue Shield insurance which was a private insurance. It was started at the Baylor Medical Center where hospital insurance was sold to the community at 6 dollars for 21 days. Public health insurance pursued the private health insurance in the moment when President Johnson approved the Medicare bill in 1965 (Uhlemann, 2014). Medicare was the federal insurance plan which was managed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Medicaid was also passed into bill the same year and is partially funded by the federal government. Medicaid tries to cover where Medicare did not cover such as the prescription of drugs, where Medicare did not cover. Also, a person may qualify for Medicaid even when they had money before falling sick. Prevention of diseases nowadays may occur in different ways, one of the being sensitizing the public on what to do in order to prevent the spread of a certain disease. Finally, the evolution of hospitals and healthcare has made it possible for patients to receive quality treatment in terms of the drugs and medicine they are provided with. Initially, there were no medicine to give to the patients, but currently there is a diverse type o drugs and medicine which is provided to patients depending on their illness (Cordain, 2013).
References
Shi, L., & Singh, D. A. (2014). Delivering health care in America. Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Uhlemann, A. C., Otto, M., Lowy, F. D., & DeLeo, F. R. (2014). Evolution of community-and healthcare-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Infection, Genetics and Evolution, 21, 563-574.
Cordain, L., Eaton, S. B., Sebastian, A., Mann, N., Lindeberg, S., Watkins, B. A., & Brand-Miller, J. (2013). Origins and evolution of the Western diet: health implications for the 21st century. The American journal of clinical nutrition, 81(2), 341-354.
