Trade-off Between Quanity/Quality/Cost In Health Care Delivery - Term Paper Example

? Trade-off between Quantity/Quality/Cost in Healthcare Delivery [Term, year] Trade-off between Quantity/Quality/Cost inHealthcare Delivery The paper is aimed at analyzing the trade-off between quantity, quality and cost in delivering the healthcare services. Trade-off is referred to a situation when one thing has to be forgone in order to enjoy the benefit of another thing. In case of healthcare services the trade-off is usually practiced between the quality, quantity and cost. When patients are looking forward towards quality they forgo the cost aspect attached to it and end up paying more money for something that could have been availed otherwise. Introduction The supreme objective of healthcare institutions is to deliver timely, quality based and cost effective treatment to patients. The whole process of medical treatment requires in depth knowledge about the disease and different methods of prevention, diagnosis and cure of the symptoms. However, the integration of all these variables is often very difficult and costly which develops a trade-off between the quantity, quality or cost. Trade-off is an economic term which is referred to a situation where one aspect of a product or service has to be lost in order to gain the other aspect. In terms of healthcare delivery this is defined as the situation when quality is skipped due to cost or quantity (David Robertson, 2009). The ideal situation is when there is a balanced trade-off between the three variables which finally end up in benefits for both the medical institution and the patients. Description The trade-off between quantity/quality/cost in healthcare delivery revolves around three fundamental options (Spurgeon, 2012) Deliver the equal or superior quality and quantity of medical service from fewer resources. This is primarily done with the objective of serving those customers who cannot afford to have expensive treatment. Deliver service in extended quantity of the equal or superior quality from the equivalent resources. This idea is not possible especially when the company is operating in perfectly competitive market and the quantity of service delivery is solely in the control of monopsony power. Deliver equal quantity of service with improved quality from the same resources. This is the most applicable and highly acceptable idea of all three as it delivers the better quality service within the equivalent resources. Medical institutions or professionals working independently can acquire any one mode of delivering service for their patients. Quality is a significant aspect of healthcare and medical treatment which should not be neglected in anyway. Researchers and economists have concluded that quality in terms of medical treatment should not be correlated with price or quantity. It should be based on evidence based approach. Quality is actually the extent to which the healthcare services are expected to be beneficial for the population and the level to which it is consistent with the medical knowledge and professional experience of service providers. It revolves around the concept of doing right things at the right time with the confirmation of acquiring desired results. Quality is assessed by its overall structure, procedure and results. The concept of quality in healthcare is somewhat different to its concept in other industries i.e. the healthcare professional might be extending quality services to one patient and not to others. This reflects that the resources spent by an individual customer are unimportant to the determination of the quality services. Researchers and analysts have explained this phenomenon by simply stating that quality is such an aspect of healthcare which can be traded-off against cost and quantity (Timothy J. Muris, 2004). The quantity restrictions are usually the major cause of increase in treatment cost for the consumers. The restrictions are primarily imposed by the monopsony power i.e. the service providers operating in the same industry are restricted to the boundaries of quantity set by the market. Since the market is perfectly competitive therefore the competitors cannot go beyond the preset limits. In this situation medical service providers cannot move out the market as that will result in more restrictions subsequently leading to increased cost for consumers. Considering the distinctive features of the quantity aspect of healthcare, researchers have concluded that it cannot be traded-off against quality or cost. Even if quantity is traded-off with any of the healthcare variables then that will not generate the desired results of medical treatment (Timothy J. Muris, 2004). The cost of healthcare facilities has become a major issue in most of the countries. Treatment cost is greatly influenced by the increase in research and development in the medical sciences. The technological advancement requires more funds from the government. Cost is directly related to the quality of services; for instance, in order to acquire improved quality services patients have to spend more money on their healthcare (Mawani, 2011). Similarly in this case also patients have to pay more for better quantity of healthcare. Subsequent increase in the cost of healthcare has put additional stress over the management of medical service providers and also on the government and household budgets (Timothy J. Muris, 2004). Analysis Cost and quality though seem to have a direct relationship and patients often perceive them correlated. However, in real terms they are just manipulated by the service providers. This is primarily due to two basic reasons: Patients usually have a perception that the reduced cost or inexpensive treatment will surely have low quality and that the low cost treatment will not generate their desired healthcare benefits. To resolve this issue patients often move to the costly treatment in order to seek for the best quality and quantity of healthcare services (NRHI, 2009). Payers of the expenses of medical services often assume that higher quality is directly related to higher cost. Therefore they do not feel reluctant in paying huge amounts of money for the treatment which could have been done with comparatively lower cost. This encourages the service providers to demand higher initiative costs in order to assure their quality services to the patients (NRHI, 2009). Resolution Similar to every other industry healthcare delivery can also maintain balance between Quality, Quantity and Cost so that the need of trade-off could be eliminated from the medical services. Following are few precautionary steps that can be taken in order to reduce the trade-off element from healthcare. Reduction in acquired infections and adverse events: during the medical treatment patients often fall prey to different acquired infections which ultimately lead to adverse events and increase the cost of treatment. In this situation the service providers charge more without considering the quality of service and the customers pay more when such events take place. Significant reduction in the chances of acquired infections and adverse events will ensure the balance in quality and cost (NRHI, 2009). Admissions and readmissions: research indicates that patients of chronic diseases such as asthma, cognitive heart failure, etc. are often required to be readmitted in the hospitals within 30 days of their discharge. This requires the customers to pay more despite of the fact that quantity and quality of the medical service remains same. In order to save patients from potential loss of money the hospital management or the medical service providers should make it certain that they are extending quality services to their patients so that after some time they don’t require to get a readmission (NRHI, 2009). Cost in healthcare delivery is calculated by the quantity of services consumed by the patients and the actual price of the service. As new treatment methods are making their way into the healthcare delivery system the cost of services for the providers is increasing immensely which has resulted in the increase in cost of treatment for the patients. Implications for Master’s Prepared Nurses Advance practice nurses need to perform several roles as part of their medical practice. These include: teacher, researcher, counselor, leader, etc. Two of them are described below. Teacher Teacher requires having substantial experience in his/her teaching field in addition to quality educational background and understanding of all the key concepts and practices. The importance of knowledge increases even more when it comes to an advance practice nurse who is performing the job of a teacher. The advance practice nurse closely collaborates with the senior physicians therefore they have significantly more exposure to the critical events occurring during the treatment of different patients. Advance practice nurses performing the duties of a teacher also play their part in developing the future healthcare delivery designs for the government and other institutions (Cynthia Fitzgerald, 2012). Researcher Advance practice nurses are significantly more motivated towards research and development as compared to others. Due to technological advancements; patients are now aware about different diseases and maintain their own perceptions about treatments. This requires the nurses to use the case studies and personal experiences to deal with the patients in addition to actively participating in research. Nurses who work in close affiliation with the physicians require to do practice on the basis of evidence based approach which can be done only through research and analysis (ASRN, 2008). Conclusion The trade-off between quality, quantity and cost basically revolves around the preference of patients and the way they are served by the medical service providers. The trade-off is usually between quality and cost, in order to avail best quality health care services patients pay more to the service providers hence they forgo the cost to avail the quality benefits while on the other hand they save cost and compromise on the quality which is a rare case. The healthcare service providers seek to charge customers with increased cost while maintaining the same quality and quantity. This further adds to the discomforts of the patients. The trade-off scenario can be easily solved by maintaining a balance between cost and quality in addition to eliminating the extra charges which are frequently imposed on the patients. References ASRN (2008). The Motivation of Advanced Practice Nurses to Explore. Journal of Advance Practice Nursing . Fitzgerald, Cynthia (2012). Advanced Practice Nursing Education: Challenges and Strategies. Nursing Research and Practice , 8. Robertson, David (2009). Clinical and Translational Science: Principles of Human Research. Academic Press. Mawani, A. (2011). Can We Get Better for Less: Value for Money in Canadian Health Care. Certified General Accountants Association of Canada. NRHI (2009). From Volume to Value: Transforming Health Care Payment and Delivery Systems to Improve Quality and Reduce Costs. Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement . Spurgeon, P. (2012). The Innovation Imperative in Health Care Organisations: Critical Role of Human Resource Management in the Cost, Quality and Productivity Equation. Edward Elgar Publishing. Muris, Timothy J. (2004). Improving Health Care: A Dose of Competition. Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice. Read More