The Change in How Your Health Will Be Cared For

The quality of healthcare has been changing a lot over the past few years. When I was in high school I worked for a nursing home in the kitchen. There were a lot of workers there who genuinely cared about the service that the residents were receiving. Then on the other hand there were staff members who worked there that you could tell they were there for a paycheck. I read an article written by two Harvard students (Michael E. Porter and Thomas H. Lee) called “The Strategy That Will Fix Health Care”. They had six suggestions that would improve health care, and I believe it would help the structure of nursing homes. The first one was “organize into integrated practice units (IPUs)”, which is a team that will provide full care for the patient’s condition. IPUs would also engage family members in counseling, education and support. The second was to “measure the outcome and cost for every patient”. This strategy is how it sounds. They are going to compare the outcome the patient got with the cost they had paid. This is to see if the care they are receiving is worth what they are paying. The third is “move to bundled payments for care cycles”. This means that the full care cycle will be covered in one bundled. You won’t be paid for each separate visit to the doctor, or for a single MRI. You will be paid for the whole care at the end. The fourth strategy is “integrate care delivery systems”. This means that there will be more options available at different places that you could receive care. The article gave an example of a patient who had back pain. With this strategy, the patient will be able to receive care closer to their home. The fifth strategy was “expand geographic reach”. This is similar to strategy four. There are two models that could be followed. There is the more common hub-and-spoke model and the second is clinical affiliation. Both systems use ways to provide high quality care to people who wouldn’t receive it, such as those who live in underdeveloped parts of the city. The last strategy these two students provided was “build an enabling information technology platform”. This is probably the most important strategy. Building this platform will allow all those who are involved with the patient’s care to have access to it. Another advantage to this is that it will have the capability to have terminology related to the patients treatment so all the other doctors involved are on the same page. I really agree with this system that they have created here. I feel as if it is more practical and up-to-date with our busy and technological lives.

 

https://hbr.org/2013/10/the-strategy-that-will-fix-health-care/