Research Assignment Paper on Health for Life

Health for Life
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
United States healthcare system has what it takes to provide the best healthcare services to the Americans. Statistics indicate that U.S. spends the highest income per individual on health as compared to other industrialized nations. It has the best clinicians and the latest medical technology in the provision of healthcare services. However, it is sad that U.S. healthcare system is ranked the highest of all the industrialized countries concerning high rates of medical errors, high costs of medical care and inefficient coordination of medical care services. Besides, there are high numbers of uninsured citizens who do not access quality healthcare. Chronic illnesses are growing by the day, and they have not been adequately addressed by the U.S. healthcare system. U.S. healthcare also still experience high disparity in the provision of its services among people of different races, ethnic groups, and gender. These factors have had negative impacts on the entire healthcare system such as increased costs for medical healthcare and inadequate management for chronic illnesses as earlier highlighted. Nevertheless, nurses and other healthcare providers can still advocate for the improvement of healthcare through intensified use of research to guide treatment, enhancing measurement of performance to indicate opportunities for improvement, re-inventing care delivery, customizing care services.
Impact of Current Healthcare Issues on the Status of Public Healthcare
Currently, there are numerous issues affecting the U.S. healthcare system. These are escalating costs of healthcare, growing numbers of chronic illnesses, use of information technology (IT) in healthcare information, a high number of uninsured citizens and increasing medical errors and inadequate care (Andersen, Davidson, & Baumeister, 2013). U.S. healthcare costs have been rising at an alarming rate over the last few years. In 2014, national health care expenditures rose by 5.3% to $ 3 trillion which translates to $9523 per individual. This accounts for 17.5% of the GDP. Medicare spending increased by 5.5% (Andersen, Davidson, & Baumeister, 2013). Medicaid rose by 11% while spending on commercial health insurance grew by 4.4% according to the 2014 statistics (Andersen, Davidson, & Baumeister, 2013). The increasing growth of costs in the healthcare systems can be attributed to among other factors new expensive medical therapies, increasing costs of the insurance premiums increasing number of people with chronic illnesses and decreasing number of insurer competition (Andersen, Davidson, & Baumeister, 2013). Sadder is that this growth in healthcare costs have not translated into better health care outcomes, neither has it increased life expectancy as it would be expected. However, it has made health care less affordable for many citizens (Andersen, Davidson, & Baumeister, 2013). Most families have dropped insurance coverage due to high costs of premiums, and these families do not access adequate health care when they fall sick due to lack of healthcare insurance coverage.
Another trending issue in U.S. healthcare is the growing number of chronic illnesses among the Americans. Current statistics indicate that about 133 million Americans, equivalent to half the population, suffer from one or more chronic illnesses such as arthritis, hypertension and heart disease (Knaul, et al., 2012). Other illnesses such as diabetes have doubled in the last fifteen years. Chronic illnesses reduce the quality of life as well as life expectancy if not properly managed. The growing number of chronic illnesses among the population has raised the spending on public healthcare due to the management strategies for these illnesses (Knaul, et al., 2012). For example, people with cancer are required to undergo three medical examinations in a year which translates to higher spending on healthcare. Three out of every four dollars set aside for healthcare is spent on treatment for people with chronic illnesses. People with chronic illnesses also consume a lot of prescription drugs, are frequently hospitalized and are admitted for longer within the healthcare centers. Since 1987 to 2002, about two-thirds of the growth in Medicare spending has been due to ten chronic illnesses (Knaul, et al., 2012). Thus, chronic illnesses consume a huge budget of the health care and lead to high cases of patient admission and long stay in public healthcare facilities.
In addition, there has been increasing use of information technology (IT) in recording, keeping and sharing of healthcare information. IT enhances gathering of health data, aggregation and distribution of the same information (Jones, Rudin, Perry, & Shekelle, 2014). Through IT health data can easily be shared between healthcare units. Electronic health records is an example of health IT that has facilitated the exchange of healthcare data among care providers which has improved diagnosis and minimized errors in the prescription of drugs for patients (Jones, Rudin, Perry, & Shekelle, 2014). Health IT has had positive impacts on public health. IT has improved efficiency, quality and safety of patient care through assisting the care providers in making an efficient diagnosis of health conditions and treatment decisions (Jones, Rudin, Perry, & Shekelle, 2014). IT enables the care providers to perform tests and treatments for the patients using their medical data hence realize desired health outcomes. Patients can also be able to access their medical data through IT and use such information in managing their health conditions (Jones, Rudin, Perry, & Shekelle, 2014). Thus, health IT has facilitated management of disease conditions among the patients, efficient disease diagnosis and adoption of most accurate treatment decisions.
Another trending healthcare issue is the growing number of uninsured citizens. In a group of five people under the age of 65, there is one individual who is uninsured or lacks medical insurance cover (Knaul, et al., 2012). This translates to 47 million p...