The Impact Of Modern Technology On Healthcare: Balancing Efficiency And Quality - An Essay.

1)As one learns about all of the wonders of modern technologies, how would you respond (positive or negative, and why) to Dr. Victoria Sweet who wrote: In trying to get control of healthcare costs by emphasizing “efficiency,” we’ve headed down a wrong path. Medicine works best—that is, arrives at the right diagnosis and the right treatment for the least cost when the doctor has enough time to do a good job, and pays attention not only to the patient but to what’s around the patient. Dr. Sweet calls this approach Slow Medicine, and she believes that, put into wider practice, it would be not only more satisfying for patient and doctor, but also less expensive.

2)Consider the involvement of insurance companies, the big business of healthcare, and cost-cutting activities. Explain what you believe is meant by a cardiac patient who, upon meeting his surgeon for the first time prior to surgery, says to the surgeon, “Hello, sir. I’m Mr. John Smith, husband of Mary Smith and father of Jeanette Smith. I’m a carpenter who has built close to 80 new homes over the last 20 years with these two hands. I’m not the heart attack in Room 403.” and why.

3) It’s been said that true quality improvement is only possible when those involved in the process can be completely honest with one another. In the case of healthcare, when mistakes cause serious pain, suffering, and possibly death, how is true quality improvement possible? When leveraging 6 Sigma, is total honesty really necessary? Explain.

4) Everyone agrees that reading the Electronic Healthcare Records is much easier than the hand-written entries of old, but many complain that too many are focusing too much on the computer screen instead of on the human right in front of them. Is this just lack of skill or training? Is it poor computer system design? Is it just the nature of the transition from the old way to the new? Is patient care suffering because computers and all the displays, alerts, and alarms distract us?
please separate all 4 questions in different paragraph and give heading

The benefits of modern technology in healthcare

Dr. Victoria Sweet criticizes the wonders of modern technology. I strongly go against her stand in her quote that criticized efforts being put for controlling health care costs through emphasizing efficiency to have being a wrong direction to follow. Although I disagree with her view on the modern technology, I support her believe that drugs could well work when they arrive to the right diagnosis and the treatment for the friendly cost (Wear et al., 2015). I as well support that with the doctors having enough time for doing the right job and paying attention to the patients and their surrounding environment would enable them effectively perform their job well. Modern technology helps in making their work easier and faster as well. A job that could take ages nowadays can be achieved in minutes. For instance, some diseases that could take longer period to be detected are now taking few minutes through scanning using the modern technologies. The approach as she claims is being put into wider practice though the use of the rising modern technologies thus satisfying the patients and the doctors as well as making the costs absolutely cheaper (Chang, 2017).

Although her stand on the face to face contact with each patient is right, I strongly ague on the rising number of patients who are to be attended by the fewer doctors we have around. Many nations are running short of trained and qualified doctors and the modern technology is aimed at narrowing the gap between many patients in our hospitals and the few doctors who should attend them. In other words, it would not make sense having some patient fully attended and losing the lives of equivalent patients. The modern technology makes it effective to attend a patient effectively within the shorter period thus creating room and time for another patient to be attended.

Involving insurance companies and connecting them to the large healthcare business helps individuals and patients to reduce the impacts of costs associated with seeking medical attention from hospital facilities. For instance, assuming medical attention costs pose great to patients who are financially unstable. However, it may be difficult for the rich to have set amounts of money at a glance to cater for huge medical bills. Insurance companies are extending their services even to cover for critical surgery that are operated to patients in healthcare facilities. Perhaps, the cardiac patient while anticipating his surgery pointed to his surgeon his identity and family for clarification in case of death.

Addressing the shortage of doctors

The insurance companies are extending to even cover their insurer in case of death and perhaps that was the reason why Mr. John Smith identified profession, his wife Mary Smith and daughter Jeanette Smith. Most of the individuals are beginning to shop again for health insurances under certain Affordable Care Act like in America. They engage in wrestles with deductibles, premiums, out-of-pocket costs as well as other vague, and some confusing insurance-speech (Kala et al., 2014). I absolutely support that as the easiest part as compared to figuring out what health care could actually cost in instances of admission without any savings to cater for treatment costs (Shan, 2017). Just like America, many nations are as well using insurance cards that is sent to them via email (McMasters, 2017). In addition, American Express Platinum cards are as well used to cater for health care (Darling, 2017).

There is possibility of true quality improvement that can be achieved only if the individuals involved in the process are entirely honest with one another. Mistakes may arise anywhere in any organization (Eisenberg et al., 2016). For instance, mistakes in health care facilities entirely causes suffering, serious pain, and eventually death of people. In this case, quality improvement can be possible only when the individuals are honest enough to open up to get the roots of the suffering, pain, and eventually death. In this case, the individuals responsible should be honest to open up since learning is a process.

The management together with quality assurance team should focus on the root of mistakes and work towards improving the loopholes that caused the mistake. They can as well enroll their team for seminars and training that coach them for quality improvement (Eisenberg et al., 2016). However, the team can as well be honest to state where they did not well understand for the trainers to emphasize on that part in their training. In critical conditions, they could be sent on internship and attachment where they will work under a supervisor to oversee their progress. This approaches will trigger improving their quality of work in the healthcare facilities that will reduce the number of mistakes made by the team. Quality improvement is achieved through the organization being effective and efficient in their operations.

To read the electronic records in a healthcare is much easier as compared to the old way of reading the hand written entries made in a healthcare. The electronic records can be easily accessed through clicking to the saved documents in less time as compared to searching in the health records (Raghupathi & Raghupathi 2014). The records are safely kept as compared to the tedious way of bookkeeping that could be prone to misappropriation and loss of crucial information concerning patients (Hawley et al., 2014). However, the administrators in some instances are reluctant in their work and can focus too much on the computer screen doing their own things instead of attending the human rights in front of them. This instances are not majorly caused by lack of skill or training rather they are greatly caused by poor working environment or standards. This is generally caused by poor computer system design within the healthcare.

Consequently, in this case, there ought to be main servers to oversee their operations and monitor how they are doing in their machines. Moreover, having customer care administration can help the patients to query and table their complaints in the healthcare operation. This idea helps increase efficiency and effectiveness of the operations. The nature of transition from the ole way to the new way also have some constraints. Ideally, human nature is resistant to changes and changing to the new technologies is affected by resistance from the individuals who are not ready to change.

References

Chang, K. Y. (2017). “Slowness” in the Anthropocene: ecological medicine in Refuge and God’s Hotel. Neohelicon, 44(2), 331-345.

Darling, K. A. (2017). U.S. Patent Application No. 15/380,879.

Eisenberg, N., Lindsay, T. F., Oreopoulos, G. D., & Roche-Nagle, G. (2016). Quality Improvement in Elective Endovascular Aneurysm Repair Length of Stay Using Risk-Adjusted Vascular Quality Initiative Comparisons: A Local Study. Journal of Vascular Surgery, 64(5), 1539.

Hawley, G., Janamian, T., Jackson, C., & Wilkinson, S. A. (2014). In a maternity shared-care environment, what do we know about the paper hand-held and electronic health record: a systematic literature review. BMC pregnancy and childbirth, 14(1), 52.

Kala, A. K., Kim, S. S. H., Purkayastha, S. S., & Zucker, J. (2014). U.S. Patent No. 8,688,503. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

McMasters, K. M. (2017). Life, Surgery, and the Philosophy of Dry Creek. Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

Raghupathi, W., & Raghupathi, V. (2014). Big data analytics in healthcare: promise and potential. Health information science and systems, 2(1), 3.

Shan, Y. (2017). A Mobile Application for Maximizing Credit Card Rewards (Doctoral dissertation, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona).

Wear, D., Zarconi, J., Kumagai, A., & Cole-Kelly, K. (2015). Slow medical education. Academic Medicine, 90(3), 289-293.