In a report published in Physician digest it stated that substandard care in America results in death of over 57,000 people and a waste of over $9 billion worth of nation’s money annually. The report further went on and said that America has the medical knowledge and clinical structure to avoid the problem, but the resources have not been effectively placed. It said that the main need of these resources is at point of care.
The issue of substandard health care has been increasing in size and impact. A sustainable solution should begin from each individual doctors and the hospital he works at. The doctors alone take up 80 percent of the medical bill. With the huge chunk of money they take they should provide and research on best-practice in treating patients.
Apart from the doctors not employing best practises there are other factors that contribute to the substandard health care in amaerica. The problems vary from health care being underuse, overuse, misuse, to simply inconsistency of health care delivery services.
Underiuse of medical services inculates not providing the necessary treatment to the patient. This adds to additional problems and complication in the patients illness, hence increasing the costs or in some instances can even lead to premature deaths. For example, in a study of cardiac patients it was revealed that 80 percent of these patients failed to receive life-saving beta-blocker treatment.
Since this treatment was not provided to these patients as many as 18,000 premature deaths happened each year. If this was not enough in another survey conducted by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) of managed care plans. There study showed that 60 percent of diabetic patients with age 31 and above were not prescribed an eye exam. also the survey showed that 30 percent of women.......
