Healthcare In Business with Ruth Lycke
Last month we talked about cost shifting and how much a company and employees can bear. This month we’ll endeavor to answer the question, “Is medical healthcare accessibility still available?”
- Time to get care
- Number of people insured
- British healthcare exposed
- Canadian wait times
- Number of physicians
- Nursing profession shortages
- Costs relating to accessibility
Lets start by taking into consideration the time it takes to make an appointment when needing to see a specialist. Would you believe 4 months? According to the Fraser Institute the average wait time to go from a general practitioner to a specialist was 17.3 weeks in 2008 before adding 47.3 million people to the insurance rolls with the healthcare bill passed in 2010. That’s up from 11.9 weeks in 1997 and with healthcare passage it is now projected to get worse.
In the UK they must see you within 4 hours of your calling so when they are backed up they simply stop answering the phone. Great solution, right? In Canada the average wait time to see a physician in an ER varies from 10 to 25 hours. Now consider that in the US there are over 119.5 million ER visits annually and that is expanding. Over 25% of all US based physicians are from foreign countries with limited time to practice in the US before returning to their country of origin. In spending countless hours researching physician forecasts and projected shortages I am amazed that the only conclusion they arrive at is, there is no single accepted approach to forecasting physician requirements. They all seem to attempt to identify the current and emerging trends. The fact that they try not to disclose is that there are fewer numbers of physicians entering the workforce in the US and increasing number retiring and leaving practice. Combine that with the growing 8.1% RN vacancy rate and there are definite problems looming for healthcare accessibility.
If you take a look at the following chart you will see the winners in bold black and the losers in bold red. It is amazing to see that we as a nation lose in 5 out of 8 categories and only win in one. Where we pay the most and expect to have the best care and life expectancy we actually loose. It is no wonder that emerging and small businesses are caught in a quandary trying to anticipate costs while their employees are trying desperately to gage the benefits that they really have.
| Country | Life expectancy | Infant mortality rate | Physicians per 1000 people | Nurses per 1000 people | Per capita expenditure on health (USD) | Healthcare costs as a percent of GDP | % of government revenue spent on health | % of health costs paid by government |
| Australia | 81.4 | 4.2 | 2.8 | 9.7 | 3,137 | 8.7 | 17.7 | 67.7 |
| Canada | 81.3 | 4.5 | 2.2 | 9.0 | 3,895 | 10.1 | 16.7 | 69.8 |
| France | 81.0 | 4.0 | 3.4 | 7.7 | 3,601 | 11.0 | 14.2 | 79.0 |
| Germany | 79.8 | 3.8 | 3.5 | 9.9 | 3,588 | 10.4 | 17.6 | 76.9 |
| Japan | 82.6 | 2.6 | 2.1 | 9.4 | 2,581 | 8.1 | 16.8 | 81.3 |
| Sweden | 81.0 | 2.5 | 3.6 | 10.8 | 3,323 | 9.1 | 13.6 | 81.7 |
| UK | 79.1 | 4.8 | 2.5 | 10.0 | 2,992 | 8.4 | 15.8 | 81.7 |
| US | 78.1 | 6.9 | 2.4 | 10.6 | 7,290 | 16.0 | 18.5 | 45.4 |
In meeting with HR department heads of small, medium, and even large businesses we continually see that they are being challenged to consider accessibility as a factor within benefits offered and guidelines they must meet.
Now an increasing number of patients are being seen in ER’s to cut wait times in clinics. With an increasing number of physicians entering retirement or choosing to leave healthcare practice because of new laws, seeking to change the rules of in-network care versus out of network is a valid consideration and choice. Knowing that there are options that can increase your available options, accessibility, and outcome is worth the time it takes a small or large business owner or an HR staffer to have a third party evaluate the access of current costs, offerings, and options.
For more information, please visit Ruth's TNNWC Bio.
Capital, Traffic Building, International Customers and unique SERVICES.
The National Networker Publications™ produced by TNNWC Group, LLC
Resources for Business Planning, Development, Capital and Growth
The National Networker Publications™ produced by TNNWC Group, LLC
Resources for Business Planning, Development, Capital and Growth
Forward/Share This Article With Colleagues And Social Media:
No comments:
Post a Comment