Healthcare System and the Changes in Financial Mechanisms

Solution Preview

Please refer to file attached (alos presented below). I hope this helps and take care.

RESPONSE:

1. What are the three most challenges facing the healthcare system due to changes in financial mechanisms.

Healthcare continue to be faced with rising costs, declining reimbursement, and limited resources. Aggressive planning and ongoing cost management are critical to survival in today's health care environment. Additionally, healthcare facilities (i.e., hospitals) need to manage operations in the most productive and cost-effective ways. One way to accomplish this is by disseminating critical financial information to operational managers in a timely manner. Another involves identifying the profitability of services, product lines, and contracts and making the strategic decisions to either enhance, or possibly discontinue, those products (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3257/is_8_58/ai_n6154208).

The transition to innovative and high quality IT services Healthcare is challenged by this transition (i.e., setting up of financial and accounting computer systems is one of the financial and operational challenges facing healthcare today. Most industries recognize that world-class quality cannot be produced without automation. However, the LTC, for example, industry expects perfect execution and documentation from a labor source that is scarce and sometimes unskilled. Without IT solutions, those expectations are unrealistic.

The transition to integrated delivery system The optimal organizational form or model for structuring relationships between hospitals and physicians, which allows for a cooperative rather than competitive relationship is open to much debate. Local market forces will influence the feasible range of options available. However, the more successful models succeed in creating shared economic incentives for both the hospital and the medical staff. This alignment of financial incentives remains one of the most difficult challenges facing systems today, affecting both hospitals' strategic choices. As stated in the February, 1997 Bristol Review, Stephen Shortell in Remaking Health Care in America defines functional integration as "the extent to which key ...