Chapter 5 Healthcare Flashcards
-Explain components of a well-functioning healthcare. -Analyse the mechanics between the funding and supply of healthcare.
What does Healthcare refer to ?
-This refers to the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease, illness, injury and other physical and mental impairments in humans.
What does a well-functioning healthcare system require?
- robust financing mechanisms
- a well-trained and adequately-paid workforce
- reliable information on which to base decisions and policies.
- well-maintained health facilities and logistics to deliver quality technologies.
Classification of care
- Primary
- Secondary
- Tertiary
What is Primary Care?
- Primary care refers to the work of all healthcare professionals who acts as a point of first contact for all patients in the healthcare system.
- Eg one of the following: physiotherapist, general practitioner, non-physician primary care provider like nurse practitioner.
-This refers to services that are offered in local community.
- Primary care involves widest scope of healthcare:
- all ages of patients
- patients of all socioeconomic and geographic origins
- patients seeking to maintain optimal health
- patients with all manner of acute and chronic physical, mental issues.
What is secondary care?
- This refers to the healthcare services provided by medical specialists that don’t have first contact with the patients eg dermatologists, cardiologists & urologists.
- Sometimes called ‘hospital care’.
- Patients are usually referred to medical specialists by primary healthcare practitioners. Self-referrals are rare.
- Secondary healthcare specialists like speech therapists, dietitians, occupational therapists are usually done by self-referrals.
What is tertiary care?
- Tertiary care is a specialist consultative healthcare,
- usually for in-patients referred by primary or secondary health professional
- in a facility with personnel and facilities for advanced medical treatment and investigations, such as a tertiary hospital referral.
-examples of tertiary care services are: cancer management, neurosurgery, plastic surgery, surgical investigations, treatment of severe burns, etc.
Healthcare may be supplied by (2)?
- Public sector healthcare
- Private healthcare
What is Public sector Healthcare?
- Healthcare services that are heavily subsidized or provided for free
- Generally administered by the government.
- These services are used by individuals without any medical aid.
(Associated with:
- significant queues
- prescribed protocols
- limited alternatives)
What is Private sector Healthcare?
- Healthcare administered by private institutions.
- Consist of listed and unlisted companies.
- Any member of the public can use these providers as long as they can fund the cost or are covered by a funding structure such as a medical aid scheme.
- where insurance does not pay full cost patient liable for difference.
Who are the supply-side key providers?
- doctors
- nurses
- support medical personnel and clinical associates
- hospitals
- upstream service providers
1. pharmaceutical manfacturers
2. medicine distributers
3. suppliers of medical equipment
Structure and ownership of private hospitals (2):
- Not-for-profit: Faith based hospitals
- These hospitals and small hospitals played large role in providing hospitals to the rural poor. - Not-for-profit: Mining hospitals
- Geographically remote mining companies provide a range of healthcare services to their staff and sometimes families of staff. - For-profit private hospitals
- These hospitals are either privately owned or listed companies with a direct profit motive.
Upstream service providers
-The provision of healthcare sector services is only possible because various other industries supply the necessary goods and services
Funders of Healthcare (4):
- the government
- non-government organisations and donors : May include foreign governments.
- out-of-pocket expenditure by the users themselves
- trade-related employer groups
- commercial insurance products
- employers
Funders: Government
- The largest funders of healthcare in a country
- In some instances gov may fund private healthcare to alleviate the public sector demand.
Funders: Out-of-pockets expenditure
There are 3 forms of out-of-pocket medical expenditure.
- Payment of invoiced medical services by users of commercial health insurance products who are required to:
- make co-payments
- fund diff between actual and covered price of service
- pay for services if threshold payments have been met. - Payments by those that don’t have commercial health insurance products. May include:
- young & healthy ppl who elected not to take any insurance
- wealthy ppl who choose to self-insure.
- lower income ppl - Payments for medical services not invoiced. eg surgeons and midwives.