Solution
Soma answered on
Feb 10 2021
#2.
The medical expenditure is stu
ornly high in United States, one of the highest among the developed world. Compare to the rest of the world, Americans are paying hefty amount for the medical service like doctor’s visits, prescription medication, hospitalization and surgical procedure. Many people in the country are not able to afford the health insurance. Even those who can afford the health insurance are now struggling with exo
itant medical expenditure. Moreover, most of the medical insurance does not cover all the expenses, many Americans have to pay huge amount out of pocket to have the medical service even for giving birth in any of the American hospital. According to USITC report made in 2015, every year 150,000 and 320,000 Americans are found to travel other countries every year to save the expenditure on health care. The USITC study further claimed that the knee replacement surgery that costs $30,000 for an uninsured American can be done at the expenditure of only $12,000 in India. So medical services in other countries are much more affordable for Americans. As a consequence, every year millions of Americans are flying to other countries in order to receive an affordable health care. This is known as “medical tourism’ which has become a common phenomenon in United States. (Hu, 2018)
Global medical tourism is growing rapidly during the last few decades. The rapid pace growth of medical tourism as well as the trend of Americans seeking affordable medical service from a
oad will lead to the outsourcing of US heath care service. The health care providers in America have stated an a
ay of factors that are responsible for skyrocketing health expenditure. On the other hand, economic benefits are the key drivers that forces the people to seek the medical help outside the border. According to the most American patients who has traveled foreign countries for medical procedure has claimed that the treatment is not only cost efficient but quality of health care is also comparable or even superior to that of US. A growing number of Americans are now taking the advantages of dental care or the cosmetic surgeries in low cost countries as they are covered in the health insurance. Low labor cost is the primary factor that plays a major role for providing the affordable care by the developing countries. Singapore, Thailand and India are some of the key destinations for global medical tourism. The cost of any medical service is 10 to 25% of what it actually costs in America. For example, the costs of heart surgery are estimated at $10,000 in India where as it costs $60,000 in United states. India, one of the major hubs for medical tourism, is earning 3 billion revenue from medical tourism industry in every year. (Hu, 2018)
Despite the fact that health care industry is one of the biggest industries in the world, it lagged behind in terms of adoption of outsourcing compare to other industries. The core competency of the health care providers is to diagnose and treat the patients. Since the cost of health care has risen unprecedently high and the cost structure of the hospitals have become unsustainable there is an urgent need for the health care providers to reduce the cost. Health care providers are facing serious economic and social challenges that affects the expenditure as well as their ability to deliver the affordable and quality health care. As result, almost every health care providers are now considering to outsource one of more areas of operations. The key objective is to remain competitive and maximizing staff efficiency. The health care providers usually do not outsource the core functions like medical care and nursing care. They primarily outsource the non- core functions so that they can spend more time and effort on their core service. Outsourcing is found to be a very successful strategy in the health care system of Greece. (Kondylis, 2008)
The kind of outsourcing services that the US heath care providers have undertaken has both advantages and disadvantages. By outsourcing the non-core services, US health care providers can increase the quality of service, reduce the cost and improve the patient’s outcome. On the other hand, outsourcing is also involved the risk of increasing the liabilities and the health care providers need to assess whether the benefits outweigh the cost.. One of the most common area for outsourcing is IT as the IT health care outsourcing service market is expected to reach $61 billion by the year 2023. IT health care operations include medical billing, electronic health care records, asset management, data management and operations management. But now the outsourcing has gone well beyond the IT service – health care providers are increasingly relying on the outsourcing of many other operations inside their complex environment. Many scholars advocates that outsourcing with proper management is the only viable strategy for health care organizations in controlling the cost of operations and marinating the quality health care. (Davies)
Outsourcing is both beneficial and harmful for US economy. On the benefit side, hospitals can offer cutting edge medical service due to outsourcing without investing to upgrade the in-house equipment. Another major advantage is that outsourcing can widen the provider’s talent pool. It is hard to find out highly skilled and competent workforce in rural areas. Outsourcing, in that case, can
idge the gap by managing the key operational areas. Through outsourcing, health care providers can off load the tedious management and administrative jobs and spends more time on patient care. The burnout rate for the physician is substantially high which is not a desirable situation. So it is essential to share the workload in order to improve the patient outcome and attain the national health care...