Healthcare Challenges in the 21st Century
In the last ten years, the provision of healthcare has had drastic changes. Most of the changes in the health organizations have improved the quality of healthcare provided to the patients by the healthcare providers. People in America have enjoyed a period of healthier lives and advances due to improved technology that has enhanced the ability of healthcare providers to prevent and treat current infections in the world. Through improved technology in healthcare organizations such as the implementation of Electronic Health Records and the invention of more effective machines, the work of employees and other stakeholders has been made easier. There has been a reduction of medical errors from both the physicians and nurses, waiting time of patients has dramatically decreased due to EHR systems, and there has been the increased engagement of patients in healthcare through the use of electronic devices to access healthcare which has been made available by many healthcare organizations. Despite all the benefits of healthcare in the 21st century, several challenges are facing health systems that may or may not be associated with technological advancements.
Nurses usually play an essential role in dealing with all the challenges that are facing the healthcare system in the 21st century. The nurses typically play an essential role in the provision of healthcare, and those roles come with responsibilities and challenges that nurses have to deal with. This research paper will discuss the challenges that are facing the health system in the 21st century, the role nursing leadership play in dealing with the challenges, and the role they will play in dealing with future challenges in the health system. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
How Healthcare Delivery has changed
As I had mentioned in the introduction, the delivery of healthcare has completely changed, posing different challenges in the health system. Some of the noticeable changes include patient centricity, the total cost of care, revenue preservation, patient outcome, and documentation of healthcare outcomes. The first change that has been vital in the 21st century is patient centricity. Patient centricity has improved patient engagement by enhancing the doctor-patient relationship. This has created trust between the healthcare providers and the patients. The second important change that has occurred in the delivery of healthcare is the total cost of healthcare. The total healthcare is more of a challenge, and therefore, healthcare providers have adjusted by having better grasps on the services that are provided to the patients in order to control the total cost of healthcare. Revenue preservation is another significant change that has taken place in healthcare delivery. Healthcare facilities are supposed to preserve some of the revenue for emergency purposes. As a result, healthcare providers have moved away from free-for-service in order to obtain enough revenues for use and preserving in order to avoid any fines.
Patient outcomes and documentation of health outcomes of the patients are the other two changes that have taken place in the healthcare delivery. Due to technological advancements in the health system, information concerning the success of healthcare has been put online and therefore, will be available to the patients, who will be able to rate different healthcare providers depending on the outcomes and satisfaction of the patients. From the rating, healthcare providers are given the real assessment of whether they in the right direction, or there are any improvements they need to make to improve patient outcomes. However, the ratings that are done by the patient affect the compensation of such organizations from Medicare and Medicaid, and this may affect them either in the short run or in the long run. The last change that has taken place in healthcare delivery is the documentation of patients’ outcomes and information. Through electronic health records, healthcare providers document the quality of care that it has been providing. Through the documentation, there is more transparency as healthcare delivery systems are rated based on measurable outcomes.
Challenges in the Health System
There are many challenges in the health system that result from either the changes that have been discussed above or from other independent causes like new infections. In this section, four main challenges that are facing health systems in the 21st century will be discussed and where possible, provide real-life examples. The four challenges that would be discussed include health problems, increasing costs of health systems around the world, political influence on healthcare systems, and the challenge of the technological and digital revolution.
Increased health problems, especially the outbreak of new diseases, have been one characteristic and a big challenge in the world today. Diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, respiratory as well as diarrheal diseases have been prevalent in the 21st century. For instance, the whole world is now in a mess due to the recent outbreak of coronavirus (COVID 19), which has left scientists with more questions than answers on how they can deal with the epidemic. Almost the whole world is in lockdown and economy of individual nations as well as the world’s economy has been severely affected as people are encouraged by the government to stay in their houses in order to reduce its spread. The disease has been leading to the death of more than 1000 people per day all over the world. The most affected countries include Italy, Spain, the United States, and China. Whereas Italy has reported the highest number of deaths with over 10,000 cases reported, the United States has had the highest number of people infected by the infection with more than 700,000 cases. The reason why the disease is so dangerous is that the scientists have not been able to invent either a vaccine to prevent its spread or treatment to cure the already infected. The healthcare providers just manage the symptoms of the disease for the patients to recover. Apart from COVID 19, there are other infections in the 21st century that have swept mankind like Ebola, malaria, tuberculosis, among many others. These infections have really affected the life expectancy of the people, whether old or young. Like in the case of COVID 19, the disease has registered the highest number of deaths among the old population than young people. However, this does not mean that the young people are immune or safer from the epidemic, and that is why the World Health Organization (WHO) has called everyone to be cautious not to contract the infection.
Another important challenge affecting the health system in the 21st century is the continued increase in healthcare costs around the world. This problem has been the main concern of healthcare providers in the 21st century, and it has been the major concern of health system policymakers and managers. Generally, the healthcare equipment, new devices, and technical instrumentation that is marketed year have skyrocketed the cost of healthcare. Although the healthcare indices in the last two decades have increased by 71 folds, many issues in the health system have also been encountered. The number of patients sharing or paying their bills has drastically increased. The lack of both health care and financial equity has not helped the course of ever-escalating medical costs. Insurance organizations do not also pay patient’s medical bills or protect them from any unexpected costs despite the premiums that patients have to pay every month. To be more specific, pharmaceutical services have been facing many challenges as a result of economic problems, which affects the availability of funds to finance its operations. In this department, many people blame the inaccurate and misappropriation of financial and human resources and not having healthcare management policies to deal with increased costs. However, the truth of the matter is that pharmaceutical services are very expensive ad. Therefore, they need to be financed to help doctors and nurses to do their work.
Additionally, the increased health costs have been a result of the insufficient referral system and clinical guidelines to providing patients with suitable covers through the use of insurance companies, especially for dental and pharmaceutical treatment, which are very expensive. The cost of obtaining insurance coverage is also high, making it impossible for many patients to obtain it, and therefore, patients rely on what they earn to visit doctors. This prevents the patients from having periodic visits to their doctors for their checks-ups as they may not afford to do so. The only time the patients go to the hospital is when they are ill. This makes it for doctors and nurses to detect infections early and prevent them from the population.
The third challenge faces health systems in the 21st century s political influence on public health. It is only through concerted actions that public health can be achieved, and therefore, in the 21st century, politics have played an integral role in determining how public health is provided by the health systems. Therefore, to be able to work effectively and efficiently, healthcare providers need to understand the political systems as well as be willing to work with or under politicians. Notably, in every part of the world, politics and populism have been rising continually, and therefore, public opinion has shifted their take on the significance of scientific evidence. As a result, healthcare providers should be willing to collaborate and coordinate with politicians at all levels to ensure that their voice of evidenced-based approaches is heard.
The fourth and last challenge facing health care systems is the technological and digital revolution. As mentioned earlier, the importance of technological advancements in the health system is clear and cannot be disputed. They have led to the development of medical equipment like robots that carry out surgery and improved and faster diagnosis of infections, which has helped in the prevention and treatment of the diseases. However, there has been a risk of digitalization in the health systems. A good example is genetic information that has been used discriminatively for the request of mortgages and health insurance. Although the internet enables us to easily access information from every part of the world, the relevance and quality of information obtained does not help us as most of it is fake news technology has also led to new infections like the addiction of playing games like PS4, which who included in its 11th International Classification of Diseases. Although really useful in our life, people need to be aware of the benefits and limitations of technology and digitalization to minimize some of its challenges at the healthcare organizational level.
The role of nursing leadership play in dealing with the challenges
The nursing leadership plays many significant roles that determine the outcome of patient care, and therefore they are at the center stage of dealing with the above challenges. First, nurses deal with increased cases of infection by working long hours to assist the patient. For example, nurses in the United States have to work for a shift of sixteen hours in order to deal with the effect of the ever-increasing threat of COVID 19. Nursing leadership has also been affected by the cost of health care. Although they work for long hours, nurses have to accept average wages to keep the health systems financially stable and run their activities. Additionally, since political influence in many countries has become more significant than evidence-based approaches, nursing leadership compromise their profession and have to work with notorious politicians to enable their voice of evidence-based to be heard. Finally, although the nursing leadership in every country has embraced technological advancement and digitalization in general, they have done that cautiously. They try as much as possible not to be biased in their decisions by using the technology available in the best way possible to ensure every patient is able to obtain insurance services. The nursing leadership also offers guidelines to patients on the best use of existing technologies to avoid gaming infection, which has been affecting the lives of many people.
In the future, nursing leadership should be prepared to deal with new challenges due to rapid changes that have been taking place in the health systems. Nurses will be required to undertake training on how to deal with emerging challenges in the health systems in the future. They should also understand the importance of new technological advancements as well as new devices and equipment that may be required to be used to improve the diagnosis, treatment, or engagement of patients. Nursing leadership should also be prepared to deal with a future increase in the costs of treatment. In the last twenty years or so, the cost of healthcare has been increasing, and there is no chance that costs will go down. Therefore, the challenge of high costs is a challenge now and is a challenge tomorrow, and nurses should learn how to deal with it by avoiding medical errors as well as advising patient’s accordingly on ways they can avoid contracting infectious diseases. For instance, COVID 19 will country many nations millions of dollars, and therefore, it is the responsibility of nursing leadership to find ways to reduce the spread of such diseases in the future.
In conclusion, it is evident that health delivery has undergone considerable change, especially due to technological advancements, and the way things are done. Although new technology has obvious advantages that are clear for everyone to see, it has led to many challenges. It is the role of nursing leadership and the whole healthcare fraternity to device ways of dealing with the current and future challenges.