HLT 205 Health Care Essay: Cost, Access, and Quality
HLT 205 Health Care Essay: Cost, Access, and Quality
Details:
An understanding of health care cost, access to care, and quality of care is vital for health care professionals, as is the ability to articulate these issues. For this assignment, students will examine the effects of cost and the issues associated with accessing quality care, both in a historical context as well as the future impact on health care. For this assignment, address the following in 750-1,000 word paper:
Identify the factors contributing to the rising cost of health care. When did rising health care costs become an issue? Why are health care costs continuing to rise? What can be done to address this issue?
Identify the impact that cost is having on access to care. How does access to health care today compare to 10 years ago? Can providers refuse care to those with certain payment methods such as Medicaid? Do you believe that we will have universal access to health care in the future?
Discuss the issue of providing quality care. How much of a factor is cost in determining quality of care? What does the future of health care look like with regard to quality?
Two references (minimum) in addition to your textbook are required for this assignment.
Remember that this word count does not include your title page or reference page.
Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the GCU Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center.
This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.
You are required to submit this assignment to Turnitin. Please refer to the directions in the Student Success Center.
This issue of the Health Care Financing Review focuses on issues and advances in measuring and improving the quality of care, particularly for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. Discussions of quality-related topics are especially timely, given the growing and widespread interest in improving quality in the organization, financing, and delivery of health care services. This article has several purposes. The first is to provide a brief description of some of the causes underlying the growth of the health care quality movement; the second is to provide a contextual framework for discussion of some of the overarching themes that emerge in this issue. These themes include examining conceptual issues, developing quality measures for specific sites and populations, and creating or adapting data sets for quality-measurement purposes.
Go to:
Health Care Quality Movement
Quality has been a topic of attention in American health care since the early years of this century (Donabedian, 1989). Although quality has not been neglected in the intervening years, the focus on quality is a fairly recent phenomenon, beginning in the late 1980s (O’Leary and Walker, 1994). Since then, quality has become a front-and-center issue for providers, payers, and patients.
A number of converging influences account for the accelerated rise of the quality movement in health care today. These include the growth and transfer of quality theories and practices from the industrial sector, concerns about rising health care costs, and changes in the health care industry.