What wasted resources or wasted efforts have you seen/heard about in health care today?
One of the major issues that is affecting the healthcare system and posing serious questions on its status is the sustainability of the healthcare system into the future. There has been a significant injection of resources into the system but the quality of care and the outcomes have not been reflective of these investments. Simply, the return on investment is not reflective of the costs incurred. One particular issue with the healthcare system today is the wastage of resources on some elements whose viability is questionable (Fabrikant, Kalb, Bucy & Hopson, 2015).
One particular instance where there is such wastage is the maintenance of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid website. A website that was previously thought to cut the costs of enrollment of patient into the care plan has turned out to be a major disappointment with increasing costs of maintenance which have in fact been transferred to the patients to cater for the costs. Previously, the government had indicated that the access to the health insurance plans would be assured and that individual would not be required to register first before they can check the available insurance plans and make decisions. However, this has been changed and today, if one has to access the insurance plans available, the first requirement is to register. The administrative costs of the site have tremendously been high and to date, figures of up to $500 million have been spent with no indication that the maintenance cost will be going down any time soon. An entity that was hailed as cutting down the administrative costs for enrollment into healthcare insurance has become the menace for the healthcare system budget.
At the patient level, a particular case of wastage of resources is the for instance the case of diabetic patients who are required to see the family practitioner and an endocrinologist on every visit. Each of these professionals requires blood tests done each time. Apparently they cannot share the tests done by any of them despite the order being similar in most of the instances. Such duplication even at a time when EHRs are being regarded as having eliminated redundancy is a case of wasted resources.
References
Fabrikant, R., Kalb, P. E., Bucy, P. H., & Hopson, M. D. (2015). Health care fraud: enforcement and compliance. Law Journal Press.
