Healthcare Management today is under tremendous strain in just about every country in the world.
National
health costs are very high and rising (reportedly, spiralling out of
control). Yet the quality of care has to continuously improve.
Healthcare management
systems are required to keep track of cost while at the same time be
used to efficiently manage patient care from initial consultation,
through discharge to
aftercare. However, keeping costs down continues to be a challenge.
Cost Saving Strategies
Modern
healthcare management systems need to have efficient cost savings
capabilities embedded in their day-to-day functionality for the duration
of the patient
journey. Nations struggle to provide cheap or free healthcare for their
citizens yet medical tourism is a new high cost that challenges
providers today, through fraudulent healthcare service provision that
accept fake national identities, or unscrupulous practitioners
overlooking identity cross checking. Expensive drugs being dispensed
without charge in those cases where charging is a requirement. Effective monitoring and tackling of counterfeit and
outdated of drugs. The
practice of dispensing costly treatment in place of cheap alternatives
is another loophole. These issues ought to be mitigated through
verifiable identification
checks. Costly prescriptions and or treatments can be resolved through
healthcare systems presenting clinicians at point of care with next best alternative and cheaper treatment.
Clinical Staffing
More
advanced economies report of shortages of staffing levels, yet they
sponsor expensive recruitment campaigns for qualified staff from
developing economies
where the disparity of clinician to patient ratio is acutely wide and
flies in the face of achieving the UN sponsored Millennium Development
Goals (MDG) targets. Suffice to say these challenges ought to be solved
by both advanced and advancing economies, and
healthcare systems can avail staffing requriment levels via an
integrated Human Resource module within the system. The system can also
be extended to provide staff goals metrics, (not statistics for
statistics), healthcare projects and campaigns worked on to
provide clarity on healthcare service reach and delivery. Such measures
help identify staffing shortages, based on skills so as to target
increased funding for related training. The discussion of retention of
skilled personnel trained in developing nations
seeking more pay in advanced economies is a topic beyond the scope of
this article.
Discharge Management
Discharge
and aftercare is a central point of focus in the health sector around
the world due to ever increasing levels of easily avoidable
re-admissions
leading to ever increasing healthcare costs, and effective after-care
following discharge. Other associated cost drivers include clinical
misdiagnosis, avoidable patient relapse, ineffective side effect
management and the acquiring of new diseases by patients
in hospitals. Another indirect cost driver is due to bed-blocking in
those cases where a patient cannot be found a care or nursing home, or
would be rendered homeless for example.
Proactive Healthcare
Healthcare service providers' systems used in healthcare monitoring
and vaccination
or disease outbreak campaigns help improve health outcomes, in turn
reducing national health costs. Pre-emptive healthcare measures, patient
education and constantly raising awareness managed through the
healthcare system as projects with related work items
avail budget holders and providers with timely data of the state of
health from the various regions of a country.
It
is important healthcare providers and governments are aware of literacy
levels of their citizens, to avoid instances like HIV posters being
littered with
holes caused by target shooting of one type or another, like chewing
gum, stones from catapults because of illiteracy levels, implying the
healthcare message is not being effectively delivered, rendering a
costly campaign inefective. Effective healthcare practice
should deliver effective monitorable immunisation campaigns with deep and broad outreach and effectiveness. Clinicians ought to have manageable workload
levels that are also correctly recorded.
Control Measures
In
those cases where discrepancies are identified during healthcare
service delivery, appropriate reporting channels should be used in real
time. Mechanisms
for capturing and or reporting information relating to counterfeit drugs, fake/defective equipment should be used and managed securely. Such control
measures help ensure a reduction (or near erradication) of shrinkage (drug/equipment/materials theft) and associated costs.