...Health Care Economics 1 Term Comparison Paper Bernadette Cynthia Gibson July 28, 2014 HCS/552 Nancy Jennings Health Care Economics 2 Term Comparison Paper Demand, Economics and Supply Demand This paper will be discussing the definitions of demands, economics and supply and what how they play a role in health care. The definition of Demand: “The amount of a particular economic good or service that a consumer or group of consumers will want to purchase at a given price. The demand curve is usually downward sloping, since consumers will want to buy more as price decreases. Demands for a good or service are determined by many different factors other than price, such as the price of substitute goods and complementary goods. In extreme cases, demand may be completely unrelated to price, or nearly infinite at a given price. Along with supply, demand is one of the two key determinants of the market price.” When it comes to demands in health care, we can look at scheduling. Patients will need to make an appointment to be seen, and scheduling can be done the same day or in the future depending on what the visit is for. If there is a high demand of patients and the supply is not there then patients will be scheduled on the Backlog Reduction Plan. These are schedules for the future with the intent to keep the workload down. Example: can another physician see a patient and how can the person be treated without having to come back. Health...
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...Demand versus Supply HCS 552 Sarah Atkinson November 7, 2011 The concept of demand versus supply in home health care can never be satisfied. No home health care facility can meet the demand for medical services. There will always be someone needing treatment even after the supply of goods and services are drained. In terms of economics the supply and demand is the main determinate of what a good will cost (Getzen, 2007). Delivery of medical care services requires beds, professionals' time, disposable syringes, catheters, and dressing changes which require bandages and other supplies. In order to treat one patient's disease, all necessary resources should be available all at the same time and in the same place. Each patient's disease and treatment resources should have a supply collection. As long as all the necessary efforts are timely available, each patient gets treated. If one necessary supply item is missing then a person’s needs cannot be met. “The problem in healthcare is that the consumer often pays little or nothing for services, despite the current reality of deductibles and copayments. When this is the case, price stops being a factor in demand and demand increases to virtually unlimited levels” (Kleinman, 2009, p. 1). The Impact of Health Care Services There are many factors that contribute to demand and supply with health care services and products. Different events can have different effects on supply and demand home health care is an example of this...
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...Terms Comparison Paper Economics is basically the management of an administration. The focus of economics is to determine the primary behavior of supply and demand. In health care the demand is made through technology, cures, and needs. Although the supplies are available to the consumers not all consumers receive the same amount or type of supplies. That depends upon the economic status and if he or she can afford the supply or service. In health care demands develop because of economic growth, knowledge, social factors, and inexpensive public health care. With insurance and government programs health care becomes available to people no matter what socioeconomic differences. Still economic factors do persist with socioeconomic differences even with government programs. According to Getzen (20074) economics is the trade, or “making a buck” in the marketplace where buyers and sellers exchange dollars for goods and services. Economics is the study of the forces between supply and demand and the impact they have on allocation of scarce resources. Demand is the wants or needs of a product by a buyer and what he or she is buying at a specific price. Supply is the amount of a product for sale for a specific price. Then variability is the event of random changes in demand and supply over time. Economist will look at microeconomics to determine how business, consumers, and the government will affect the economy. Macroeconomics is economist...
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...numerous economic tools and concepts that relate to the health care field. When discussing the current nursing shortage, and the nursing shortage that will continue through the future, scarcity, supply, and demand are just a few of the important concepts to address. According to Explorehealthcareers.org (2012), “The United States has a serious shortage of practicing nurses” and “demand for frontline workers is expected to increase 50% over the next five years.” This paper will explore scarcity, supply, and demand and how these relate to the current and future nursing shortage. Scarcity Scarcity exists when the infinite human wants outweighs the limited amount of resources available ("The Problems of Health Care", n.d.). Scarcity exists within the health care field when discussing the nurses, the need for nurses, and the amount of nurses that are available to fill the number of positions available. There are many reasons that have led to the scarcity of the nursing resource. The amount of nursing schools and nursing instructors are not able to keep up with the amount of potential students, nor the need for more nurses; there are greater opportunities for nurses to expand their careers and move out of hands on nursing; there are more people entering the health care arena who will need health care and nurses to provide that care (American Nurses Association, 2014). The nursing shortage can lead to a decline in quality of care as well. According to American Nurses Association...
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...Comparison The economics of health care organizations and delivery is essentially the same as other services that employ principles of economics. The main goal is to make money from specific exchanges that take place in the business. Health care organizations provide a product which, hopefully, consumers want, and possibly need and the consumer is willing to exchange something of value for the product. How the organization determines the needs of the consumer is through the understanding of trends in the community. Specifically understanding the economic terms of utilization, supply and demand, variability, and third-party transactions will enable the organization to predict with some accuracy, the consumers health care needs. Utilization is a term to describe how consumer access or use a product. In health care utilization is used to help the health care organization understand what consumer health care trends are so that the organization can, with some accuracy, predict the necessary products of health care. Utilization and prices were out of control prior to the advent of diagnosis related groups (DRG) and managed care. Managed care helped to control some of the costs of health care by controlling the price of procedures and limiting utilization by the consumers. Increased access to or use of a particular item is may be beneficial in some business settings and through the use provides a better understand, which does not seem to be the case with health care. Higher utilization of...
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...Economic Tools and Concepts Wesley Hill HCS/522 Health Care Economics University of Phoenix Introduction Current health care issues in the United States use economic tools and concepts to understand and explain how to improve quality and minimize cost. Although there are many issues facing health care, one area of focus is a nursing shortage in health care facilities. Three economic tools that will be focused on in this essay are choice and opportunity cost, supply and demand, and marginal analysis. Registered nurses (RN) are the largest group of health care professionals in the United States, strengthening the entire health care delivery system (Caron, 2004). It is important to understand the effects that a nursing shortage has on the economy and the health care system. Choice and Opportunity Cost Choice and opportunity costs are two of the most important concepts in economics. There is never an endless amount of resources, supplies, or even time so choices must be made on a daily basis. The choices that must be made in health care organizations are how to spend their limited income in the best way. The term best can be hard to define when dealing in terms of buying or spending. Health care organizations must consider what choice will give the most satisfaction or maximize gain. Wiseman explains opportunity costs as being, “…any good, including service, is the satisfaction or benefit foregone in not being able to use the resources involved to obtain some...
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...Health Care Economics Dana Carter HCS 440 November 17, 2010 Tom Flora, PhD Health Care Economics Health care costs have risen steadily for years. “Health care expenditures reported in 2008 exceeded $2.3 trillion” (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2010, para 1). This figure reportedly will increase throughout the 21st century unless the government, employers, and consumers can work together to stem this out of control growth. The history of health care is short but it provides a small view of how the United States made a simple choice of demand and supply through fee-for-service to managed care, PPOs, and other insurers of health care including the federal government. Fee-for-service in the early 1900s was the norm for the American public. Insurance companies did not provide health care, and if they provided the service it was only available to a few wealthy people. Physicians charged a set price based on the ailment or disease, they were paid in goods or money. In the 60s and 70s it was becoming popular for employers to pay health insurance and employers realized that if they provided this essential benefit, the productivity and profits would increase because his or her employee is healthier. At the end of the 70s Americans were demanding health benefits and in the advent of the demand the cost of health increased. The government entered the health insurance arena in 1965 with the passage of Medicare and Medicaid, which covered people without health insurance and elderly...
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...risks associated with insurance but, there is. The next focus in the paper is to determine what types of ethical misconduct can be foreseen if the supply and demand of insurance was too much to handle. This paper gives opinion of whether or not a person’s income should be a consideration as to whether or not they should be insured. Driving factors for the basis of a consumer seeking insurance and how it compares to the empirical measurements were discussed in detail as well as how to measure the demand for insurance. Lastly, the paper breaks down the lemons principle in terms of how it applies to health care and where we are today. Key words: insurance, health, supply, demand, insured What is insurance without risk? When we think of the term insurance the first though that comes to mind is something that we are given by our employers or others in the event that something should happen to us we are covered. One can say that insurance for consumers is almost the same as the insurance we purchase for our cars. The insurance covers us for medical procedures that might have to be incurred at the time of an accident. The proper description of insurance is that of the providing by a company to the consumer in the return of a premium or co-pay (Folland, Goodman, Stano, 2013). Insurance now has become more important to have than ever with all of the recent changes to the health care laws and what they can and cannot provide the consumers. Now, let’s look at the term risk and its meaning...
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...material welfare of humankind (Apollo Group, 2010). Economics in health care is concerned not only with the financial aspects of the system, but how those financial elements impact patient care. Supply and Demand Supply and demand is perhaps one of the most fundamental concepts of economics and it is the backbone of a market economy. Demand refers to how much (quantity) of a product or service is desired by buyers. Supply represents how much the market can offer and the correlation between price and how much of a good or service is supplied to the market is known as the supply relationship. The demand for health care is limitless as is evidenced by the number of people who use health care services on a day to day basis. Supply, however, is limited by the availability of medical resources and the skill to administer care effectively. Macroeconomics Macroeconomics studies the economy as a whole. Macroeconomic analysis studies the roles of the government, exports and imports, consumption, investment, government taxes, and other factors in an economy. In health care, the macroeconomic market is the entire country’s health care system including the way that it performs in terms of profit, loss and efficiency. Macroeconomics of health is concerned with parallel sets of large scale system issues concerning spending for employment and other aspects of health as part of the economy. The biological health status which includes longevity, fertility and productivity are also...
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...Health Economics- HSA510 Project Paper Foundations of Health Care Economics Supply and demand or demand and supply, which comes first in the study of consumer behavior regarding health care choices. Such questions can boggle the mind; however, healthcare economists and researchers have made it easier for professionals, health care managers and others to decipher how rational individuals make consumption choices when faced with limited choices, especially in the health care environment. In economics, the simplest way to determine the demand for a particular health care service can be illustrated through supply and demand curves. The theory of demand proposes that when prices increase for a health product or good then there will be less demand for that product or good. A further assumption of this theory is that all other things are equal or held constant. Therefore, if consumers buy less at higher prices then the demand curve will slope downward. Consideration should also be given to other variables that may affect the demand for a health product or good. Those variables or demand shifters would include income, other prices, insurance, and tastes. Supply can also be determined in the same fashion as demand. If a health supplier or producer is willing to offer a health product or good for at a certain price, generally if the price raises, so does the supply and in this case, there would be an upward sloping demand curve. The supply shifters in this case would...
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...Economic Tools and Concepts The U.S. health system is set to enter into a new era with the full realization of the individual mandate as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2014. About 34 million people will enter the health care system in early 2014, some with complex medical conditions that require the attention of primary care and specialty physicians (DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, & Smith, 2013). Despite this expected growth, this country is facing a physician shortage due to population growth, aging, and insurance expansion. The short supply has led to increased demand for physician services regardless of specialty or primary practice. According to some estimates, there will be a shortage of 91,500 physicians by 2020 with an increase in this figure to 130,600 by 2025 (AAMC, 2012). The projected shortage is equally distributed among primary care and specialties such as general surgery, cardiology, and oncology. This paper will discuss the physician shortage, describe two economic tools, and evaluate the physician shortage issue using the selected economic tools. Physician Shortage The future supply of physicians will not be able to keep up with demand for health care services. According to the Census Bureau, the population of Americans over 65 years of age will more than double between 2012 and 2060, from 43.1 million to 92.0 million (2012). It is a fact that this segment of the population has more complex health needs and utilizes health care services more readily than any other...
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...Supply and Demand At the same times as a good number merchandise and requires hold to the essential financial standard of provide and require, in a lot of ways medical treatment does not. The standard of provide and require explains an equilibrium that increases among the contribute of an thing or examination and the require for it. The up-and-down is that of cost. There is a straightforward equilibrium in which as cost set increases; require decreases, and vice versa. Usually, make available reproduces stipulate as who would maintain to increase manufactured goods or provide a repair for which insist has dropped. The difficulty in medical treatment is that the customer frequently disburses small or not anything for services, regardless of the present realism of uninsured amount and copayments. As soon as this is the folder, value discontinues individual an issue in insist and demand enlarges to almost limitless points. There was a time when my health insurance cost me nothing, individual had no deductible and no copayment. So I had no out-of-pocket expenses whatsoever associated with healthcare. Now I really don't like going to the doctor, so it did not matter to me all that much, individual still did not use a great deal of care. But many people, when costs are not a factor, use services at the drop of a hat. This is the reality that triggered the current healthcare crisis. Even now, despite out-of-pocket costs, utilization is at record levels. People even tend to feel...
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...Demand Versus Supply of Registered Nurses HCS/552 March 19, 2012 Jayme Carrico Demand Versus Supply of Registered Nurses Demand versus supply in the United States continues to be an issue with increasing shortages of registered nurses (RN) and the increasing demand for health care services. There is a higher demand for registered nurses because of the increase in population, aging baby boomers, and increase in chronic diseases. The shortage of registered nurses impacts the health status and quality of life of the population. Factors that impact health care are the importance of supplying adequate nursing personnel and retaining RN’s in the workplace. There is a need to provide resources to educate registered nurses along with recruiting future registered nurses. “Economists use the concepts of demand and supply to inquire how the quantity of services used changes as price changes” (Getzen, 2007, p. 24). The purpose of this paper is to discuss demand versus supply of registered nurses and the effects of consumer demand versus the economic variables of cost, access, and supply. Demand Registered nurses are in more demand than ever before because of the continued nursing shortages. Factors contributing to the shortages are advancements in technology, people are living longer, and the health care needs are more complicated. In the early years nurses were trained to take vital signs, administer shots, and insert catheters. Nurse training in the...
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...hospital then loses money finding it very difficult to offer quality care and to keep their doors open. Customers will lose quality care and have to pay higher cost and insurance premiums keeps getting higher each year. Medications are very expensive and your health insurance can force you to get fill your medications from different pharmacies. For example I was filling my prescription at Stop and Shop and one day the pharmacy told me that they no longer accept my insurance and I would have to go to CVS to fill all my prescription from now on. These insurance companies control everything whether you pay or not. What is a demand curve in health care? Provide an example of a demand curve in health care. How could this example affect the economics of health care? This predictable relationship between price and quantity demanded allows us to define demand formally as the quantity of a good or service that buyers are willing and able to buy at every conceivable price. The demand curve shows this relationship graphically. A graphical representation of this economic relationship produces the classic downward sloping demand curve and the upward sloping supply curve. At some point in time however, the treatment plan is completed, the patient is satisfied, and additional services are not needed. This is known as market equilibrium. When an industry becomes more competitive – either by too much supply or too little demand – market equilibrium fees tend to become elastic while patient...
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...history of health care economics it has greatly evolved during it course and will continue to change. There are many factors that have influenced the changes of health care economics. Money and technology has definitely been the reason for the change of health care economics over the years. Money is want makes the economy evolve. There will be advancement in technology and there needs to be people are managing these to keep up with the changes. The U.S. has definitely progressed as far as influencing factors to change in new advancement of technology and medical care. Having a good financial manager in your organization will prepare for these upcoming advancements and changes. Money drives these advancements in providing successful health care industries. Most of the funding that comes to make these changes comes from insurance companies but it also affects patients. Patients have to pay for insurance and the money adds up. It can be very expensive to pay for health insurance as well as medical bills and prescription medication. Today in society we provide services in health care for money. Money creates revenue for the organization can pay for supplies, workers, and other things to keep the organization running. Before money was involved physicians would trade in their skills and work for supplies to help you live such as food, tools, cotton etc. In 1929 the first health care insurance plan was created for population. Before that time there had been some form of health care available...
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