It is the general consensus that the structure and organization of the U.S. health care system is fractured and disorderly. For many health care consumers, especially those who rely on governmental health assistance, there is no motivation to seek appropriate care responsibly. Many of these consumers rely on the local hospital’s emergency department and municipal emergency services for their primary medical needs. The Committee on the Future of Emergency Care in the United States Health System (2006) states “[Emergency Departments] are an impressive public health success story in terms of access to care” (p. xiv), and continues to describe how the emergency departments have “become the ‘safety net of the safety net’, providing primary care services to millions of Americans who are uninsured or otherwise lack access to other community services” (p. xv). With health care comprising one sixth of the nation’s economy, doubling in the last 30 years, the focus should be to create a model of efficient and effective delivery of care so that we, as a nation, may be able to care for our sick and injured without becoming bankrupt (Kovner, Knickman, & Jonas, 2008; Mushkin et al., 1978).
As emergency medical services are considered as the health care gateway for many, allowing the emergency medical services to refer patients into appropriate pathways (e.g. primary care providers, urgent care clinics, psychiatric services) for their conditions would allow for more directed care for the patient with shorter wait times and shorter care times overall. Unfortunately, insurance providers, including Medicare and Medicaid, do not allow remuneration for such services, requiring the transportation component to trigger payment; therefore, the only option left is to transport these patients to the emergency departments. This promotes the inefficient use of such services and continues the current paradigm of inefficiency throughout the system. Though this change would increase insurance payments to emergency medical providers, increasing the initial cost of seeking health care, this would allow the provision of selecting more efficient pathways leading to more cost-effective care. Hopefully, this paradigm would result in an overall net savings.
This is only one example of modifying a current system to be more effective and help to promote efficiency throughout the health care experience. We need to consider where we can shift roles and responsibilities within the health care system in order to promote a more usable system, one that promotes integrity, efficiency, responsibility, and efficacy by both providers and consumers. Once we realize the opportunities that efficient use of current services will offer, we can realign the services to better fulfill the needs of the population where it comes to health and wellness.
References
Committee on the Future of Emergency Care in the United States Health System. (2006). Emergency medical services: At the crossroads. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Retrieved from http://www.nationalacademies.org/nas/
Kovner, A. R., Knickman, J. R., & Jonas, S. (Eds.). (2008). Jonas & Kovner’s health care delivery in the United States (9th ed.). New York, NY: Springer.
Mushkin, S., Smelker, M., Wyss, D., Vehorn, C. L., Wagner, D. P., Berk, A., … Louria, M. (1978, October). Cost of disease and illness in the United States in the year 2000. Public Health Reports, 93(5), 493–588. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
