There is a blur of change happening in healthcare services.
Solutions such as reduced staffing positions, production processing of patients, secretive pricing policies – all have been pushed by large hospital systems as a move to maximize profit.
Increasingly, we’re finding these delivery systems of 2020 are not functioning the way we expected them to.
The continuing meltdown of traditional healthcare boundaries in our COVID 19 world is resulting in service cuts. Due to profit reasons health products, and services have continued to change and merge with larger health systems. Health Care delivery as we knew it has become a different animal.
Many of our traditional nonprofit facilities have jumped the line by adopting for-profit goals and objectives. As part of this change many physician practices and smaller health delivery groups have been shanghaied into working for larger health networks. Almost over night consumers in major markets have been enrolled in some form of managed care and mega health delivery system.
This tsunami of change has been caused by several driving forces. The recent transformation of health services into monopolistic/predatory practices, has resulted in intense pressure by employers to cut their health care costs. As seen by the COVID pandemic, health care is now even more tightly wired to the rest of the economy. Large hospital systems and related providers are functioning independently as the lack of government cost controls continues.
The managed care environment has also had a hand in this change. Managed Care is redefining the health care delivery models it will pay for, and this has rapidly spread across the country. Consumers have taken notice of these increasing restrictions and lack of reimbursement for medical expenses. People are demanding more accountability and comparison price disclosure from both hospital systems and managed care.
Individual patients and their families are coming to doctor appointments armed with cost information and reports from the Internet. Patients suspect that they are not being told about all available treatments. As the length of doctor appointments decreases, there is decreasing patient satisfaction.
