Article Summary
Insigniam: Ten Disruptive Forces in Healthcare
The article articulates the factors that are perceived as disruptive in the healthcare sector. Part of the discussion includes transition to value-based reimbursement, which turned hospital systems into a healthcare system by providing pre-emptive care. In addition, the system is currently shifting volumes and lower reimbursement in order to reduce cost while maximizing the utilization of all systems. Another important areas of concern in healthcare are when the system moves from caring for the sick to focus on primary care. This issue is related to the prevailing increase in government regulation where agencies such as FDA slow the process of approval in devising and manufacturing cure. The increase in the government’s involvement in care delivery encompasses disparities as a result of services held back by slow regulatory actions. Advances in healthcare IT enabled the system to create a new model of care based on he available technological tools. However, the shrinking availability of capital demonstrates as a result of unpredictable government regulations impact many hospitals to have limited financial capacity.
On the other hand, critical success factors were also discussed in the article as determinants of the future of healthcare. Indispensability should be a part of the healthcare system’s core characteristic by ensuring that its services becomes an integral part of a healthy community where residents particularly those that cannot pay cannot easily avoid care. In addition, reinventing patient experience was also regarded as an important part of the healthcare restructuring where the system works with the patient in redesigning healthcare. Integration and diversification is also part of the critical success for healthcare as more physicians with strong leadership and diversity of specialization collaborate for the alignment of the various care services.
The guide created by the Health Research and Educational Trust was built upon reports that maps care system in terms of transition to the second curve of population health. The guide encompasses a framework that addresses the initiative to pursue development institutional infrastructure that supports population health. Part of the initiative is to create value-based reimbursement, care across all settings, education and workplace competencies on population health, and comprehensive integration of health IT supporting real-time accessibility, and community partnership to initiate community-based solutions. The transitioning of hospitals to the second curve of population health involves evaluation of outcome metrics that pertains to the improvement of the community and patients’ health. Furthermore, the outcome metrics introduced by the HRET guide allows a significant analysis of inequality, ability to function, summary measures, access to healthcare, cost of care, clinical preventive services, psychological state, and health status.
With the help of community stakeholders, healthcare units such as hospitals would be able to lead population health in terms of collaborating to implement innovative approaches towards sustainability and improvement of population health. There are myriad of forces encompassing the challenge in shifting towards population health. Nonmedical factors that determine community health status includes provider accountability shift in financial arrangements, increase transparency, legislative and economic pressures, recognition of acute medical care, and demographic change. The tern population health can be defined as the distribution of outcome within a group as well as the overall health outcome of groups of individuals. The context of population health is based on the interaction between advanced care coordination, improvement of care quality for the majority of the population, and increase in prevalence of evidence-based preventive behavior in care services. More importantly, achieving population health decreases medical cost and allowing hospitals to focus on prevention.
References
Health Research & Educational Trust,. The Second Curve Of Population Health. Chicago, IL: Health Research & Educational Trust, 2014. Print.
Insigniam,. "Ten Disruptive Forces In Healthcare". Insigniam Quarterly 2 (2015): 1-2. Print.
