Considerations: For Your Best Plan

By Jane A Malkoff MSN RN NP

Here are some useful statistics to take into consideration while making your much needed plan for living your best life.

  1. Health care spending is estimated at just over 18% of GDP. With millennials (those born roughly between 1982 and 2002) surpassing the number of boomers by approximately 500,000 and expected to top out in 2036 at 81 million people, the expenses for health care services will not decline if nothing changes. To help balance out expenses in areas we can actually control, focusing efforts designed to identify the causes of preventable health care related deaths could have a major impact on cost and well-being.
  1. According to a Johns Hopkins report (2016), “Incident rates for deaths directly attributable to medical care gone awry haven’t been recognized in any standardized method for collecting national statistics. The medical coding system was designed to maximize billing physician services, not to collect national health statistics”.
  1. Recent research indicates the US public does not widely acknowledge the health care system as patient centered nor do they believe they are being actively engaged. Over 70% surveyed noted the following issues; difficulty making appointment with their doctor, difficulty getting advise over the phone, difficulty receiving after hours answers without having to visit a hospital emergency department. In one study only 60% said their provider listens to them and only 40% said their provider works with them as a team. Additionally, 27% reported no one reported test results to them and 47% reported lack of coordination between two or more of their health care providers.
  1. Consumer driven health care services are not a one size fits all unwieldly disaster waiting to happen. Services can be customized personally based on health care consumer engagement models whereby healthcare professionals share their expertise in the open market, give opinions, express ideas, and work in team approach in the design of treatment plans for the individual consumers of health care.  These engaged models of care can range from simple routine check-ups to complicated life threatening emergencies.  This approach looks viable for reduced costs and happy customers.

No need to bury our heads when together we can take this on.  We can create a better future for ourselves, our loved ones, and those yet to arrive.  Think about it.