First, let’s fix nurses and other first contact health care worker compensation without raising costs (I know it seems impossible) and increase training opportunities to increase the available workforce. Then, you will likely see quality go up.
^(i didn’t scan the article, cause clickbait)
The main issue is the high regulation of the healthcare system, which limits competition and innovation, is that simple. Also, this limits the entry of new players in the health industry and allows the monopolization of the current big companies.
Any other change is just wishful thinking.
Here’s a revolutionary idea: If hospitals aren’t profitable then – and just hear me out, this is wild – then maybe they shouldn’t be run like a business.
i think the only real answer here is we need more homeopathy /s
This isn’t gonna end well. A rapidly ageing population, burned-out health workers, increased drug prices, the under 65 years old will not accept a yearly minimum of +7% increase for basic healthcare for many more years.
Seems that no one is talking about removing the man in the middle —AKA private insurance model— that need also to be profitable and add cost to the system, and as others mention there remove inefficiencies that hospitals and practices have for running them as businesses instead of services to citizens…
Also no mention on switch to preventive medicine —AKA as you go to the doctor whenever you want because it’s free— so you can catch issues before they become major.
Also, a lot of practices do unnecessary tests or prescribe you medicines that perhaps aren’t really necessary, just for the sake of business.
> It is important that we reduce these temptations and, through the financial incentives, set them in such a way that the well-being of the patient is really in the foreground.
If you want the well-being of patients to be in the foreground, you need to remove the business incentives of practices, doctors, and hospitals. In other words, they work more and better if they have fewer patients and for less time, instead of more patients producing more business, money, and revenue.
If the salary and the job of the doctor depend on the number of patients, treatments, and producers they perform, they are going to have the incentive to go always for more and more expensive, no the other way around.
Is it seriously that difficult????
They should make doctors public employees and cap their salaries. Doesn’t have to be unreasonably low, but 190’000 for a GP and 250’000 for a specialist should really be enough and still keep the professions attractive. Half a million for a specialist is simply a slap in the face of the tax payer. And 275000 for a GP is too
One of the problems is that “quality” is in a large part not in the hands of a doc or hospital. We can often do the best medicine possible, then the patient goes home, doesn’t take the meds, fucks around with drugs or whatever, and then ends up being rehospitalised or has a bad outcome.
Currently, we also don’t even have a way to control that. As the system (especially digitally) is still extremely fragmentized, we have no way of seeing which meds a patient gets, if another doc did the same examination already, etc. There is a lot of redundancy, and we seem to spend a shitton of money on meds that are never taken and land in the bin.
We are – as hospitals – also penalized if a patient like that ends up coming back with the same problem, having no real way of doing anything about it. We cannot “force” people to use the Spitex for their meds, or anything, until they are reeeally demented. Obviously that’s correct, but then if we talk about measuring “quality”, stuff like that also has to be taken into account. It’s not as easy as just measuring the requirements of a car part, and so far no good quality measurements exist anyway.
But yes, we should put a lot more into prevention, and we should also stop trying to make a profitable business out of healthcare, that is not the way it is supposed to be, and is a huge part of all problems in healthcare. We could save a lot of money if we stopped having to be profitable.
One of the problems is that “quality” is in a large part not in the hands of a doc or hospital. We can often do the best medicine possible, then the patient goes home, doesn’t take the meds, fucks around with drugs or whatever, and then ends up being rehospitalised or has a bad outcome.
Currently, we also don’t even have a way to control that. As the system (especially digitally) is still extremely fragmentized, we have no way of seeing which meds a patient gets, if another doc did the same examination already, etc. There is a lot of redundancy, and we seem to spend a shitton of money on meds that are never taken and land in the bin.
We are – as hospitals – also penalized if a patient like that ends up coming back with the same problem, having no real way of doing anything about it. We cannot “force” people to use the Spitex for their meds, or anything, until they are reeeally demented. Obviously that’s correct, but then if we talk about measuring “quality”, stuff like that also has to be taken into account. It’s not as easy as just measuring the requirements of a car part, and so far no good quality measurements exist anyway.
But yes, we should put a lot more into prevention, and we should also stop trying to make a profitable business out of healthcare, that is not the way it is supposed to be, and is a huge part of all problems in healthcare. We could save a lot of money if we stopped having to be profitable.
9 comments
First, let’s fix nurses and other first contact health care worker compensation without raising costs (I know it seems impossible) and increase training opportunities to increase the available workforce. Then, you will likely see quality go up.
^(i didn’t scan the article, cause clickbait)
The main issue is the high regulation of the healthcare system, which limits competition and innovation, is that simple. Also, this limits the entry of new players in the health industry and allows the monopolization of the current big companies.
Any other change is just wishful thinking.
Here’s a revolutionary idea: If hospitals aren’t profitable then – and just hear me out, this is wild – then maybe they shouldn’t be run like a business.
i think the only real answer here is we need more homeopathy /s
This isn’t gonna end well. A rapidly ageing population, burned-out health workers, increased drug prices, the under 65 years old will not accept a yearly minimum of +7% increase for basic healthcare for many more years.
Seems that no one is talking about removing the man in the middle —AKA private insurance model— that need also to be profitable and add cost to the system, and as others mention there remove inefficiencies that hospitals and practices have for running them as businesses instead of services to citizens…
Also no mention on switch to preventive medicine —AKA as you go to the doctor whenever you want because it’s free— so you can catch issues before they become major.
Also, a lot of practices do unnecessary tests or prescribe you medicines that perhaps aren’t really necessary, just for the sake of business.
> It is important that we reduce these temptations and, through the financial incentives, set them in such a way that the well-being of the patient is really in the foreground.
If you want the well-being of patients to be in the foreground, you need to remove the business incentives of practices, doctors, and hospitals. In other words, they work more and better if they have fewer patients and for less time, instead of more patients producing more business, money, and revenue.
If the salary and the job of the doctor depend on the number of patients, treatments, and producers they perform, they are going to have the incentive to go always for more and more expensive, no the other way around.
Is it seriously that difficult????
They should make doctors public employees and cap their salaries. Doesn’t have to be unreasonably low, but 190’000 for a GP and 250’000 for a specialist should really be enough and still keep the professions attractive. Half a million for a specialist is simply a slap in the face of the tax payer. And 275000 for a GP is too
One of the problems is that “quality” is in a large part not in the hands of a doc or hospital. We can often do the best medicine possible, then the patient goes home, doesn’t take the meds, fucks around with drugs or whatever, and then ends up being rehospitalised or has a bad outcome.
Currently, we also don’t even have a way to control that. As the system (especially digitally) is still extremely fragmentized, we have no way of seeing which meds a patient gets, if another doc did the same examination already, etc. There is a lot of redundancy, and we seem to spend a shitton of money on meds that are never taken and land in the bin.
We are – as hospitals – also penalized if a patient like that ends up coming back with the same problem, having no real way of doing anything about it. We cannot “force” people to use the Spitex for their meds, or anything, until they are reeeally demented. Obviously that’s correct, but then if we talk about measuring “quality”, stuff like that also has to be taken into account. It’s not as easy as just measuring the requirements of a car part, and so far no good quality measurements exist anyway.
But yes, we should put a lot more into prevention, and we should also stop trying to make a profitable business out of healthcare, that is not the way it is supposed to be, and is a huge part of all problems in healthcare. We could save a lot of money if we stopped having to be profitable.
One of the problems is that “quality” is in a large part not in the hands of a doc or hospital. We can often do the best medicine possible, then the patient goes home, doesn’t take the meds, fucks around with drugs or whatever, and then ends up being rehospitalised or has a bad outcome.
Currently, we also don’t even have a way to control that. As the system (especially digitally) is still extremely fragmentized, we have no way of seeing which meds a patient gets, if another doc did the same examination already, etc. There is a lot of redundancy, and we seem to spend a shitton of money on meds that are never taken and land in the bin.
We are – as hospitals – also penalized if a patient like that ends up coming back with the same problem, having no real way of doing anything about it. We cannot “force” people to use the Spitex for their meds, or anything, until they are reeeally demented. Obviously that’s correct, but then if we talk about measuring “quality”, stuff like that also has to be taken into account. It’s not as easy as just measuring the requirements of a car part, and so far no good quality measurements exist anyway.
But yes, we should put a lot more into prevention, and we should also stop trying to make a profitable business out of healthcare, that is not the way it is supposed to be, and is a huge part of all problems in healthcare. We could save a lot of money if we stopped having to be profitable.