Implications of the article to health care
According to Ferman in his article on future health care trend and implication, is predicted in three aspects. The hospital’s outcome and prices, the insurance coverage, and hospital leaders’ aspects.
Health care outcome and Prices
The prices and outcomes of the hospitals will be provided to all people for comparison. The availability of health care information of various hospitals will encourage both public and private sectors to put pressure on quality health care from various providers. This will enable people to make choices on the health care providers. Quality care standards will be established to control the performance of various health care providers, whose performance will be disclosed in a way all users of the health care will access and understand the information. Health care providers are expected to enhance patient’s safety, through new and expanded reporting requirements, and encouraging and supporting the Medicare policy which gives a financial punishment to health care providers who make medical errors. He does not believe by the year 1213 hospitals will be able to disclose information about their prices, because institutional health care providers are not capable of pricing diagnoses, meaning that the price information can not help the patients to make decisive choices (Ferman, 2008).
Insurance
The federal policy will encourage individual state’s insurance plans, instead of encouraging national solutions to the uninsured problem. The Democrats aim at extending health insurance to cover the uninsured without adopting association health plans or expanding health savings. Due to lack of policy driving crisis, policy consensus, and uninsured coverage, incremental approaches such as covering more children through SCHIP expansion, and Medicaid coverage will be required.
The government, employers, and individuals will equally participate in the universal health insurance program, but the health insurance will not cover all people in the state. The federal government will participate in coverage expansion through funding experimental and innovative programs. The coverage gaps will be filled by individuals and employers through the SCHIP, Medicaid, employer coverage system, or through federal incentives to individuals and employees.
Currently, the beneficiary’s Medicaid cost is higher than the GDP. The health care cost need to be controlled, which require both the federal price, to control both private and public sector. The federal financial programs can encourage and support the use of electronic health records. Health care services need to improve through chronic care management. This is necessary because a lot is spent on patients with chronic illnesses. This will reduce the amount spent by Medicaid and Medicare. The federal governments will involve traditional techniques to control Medicare costs (Ferman, 2008).
Hospital leaders
The health care providers will face financial pressures in the process of minimizing the federal budget, covering the uninsured, and reducing Medicare costs. They will face difficulties since the federal policymakers will be insisting on quality care and safety to patients. To respond to the changes the health care providers will spend more of their time in government relations will focus on coverage initiatives at the state level as employers and as health care providers. The health care providers will be under constant scrutiny on their services. In this case, they need to view the scrutiny as an opportunity that will distinguish them in the diverse market. With the expected changes, the health care providers especially those who depend on Medicare should expect Medicare to lower the spendings (Ferman, 2008).
Reference
Ferman, J. Health care trends and implications 2008-2013. Chicago: HA.