NEW AMERICAN MODEL OF HEALTH CARE PROVISION: THE SERVICES OF HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS WILL CHANGE
Another way in which the services of health care providers will change is that a routine visit for a simple complaint may be handled not by a physician but by a nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant, who will report back to the physician about the patient’s complaint as well as the type of care that was given. Again, to cut costs and maintain efficiency in the HMO, a routine physical, advice about lifestyle concerns, and screening tests of all types will probably be made available by a provider who works with the physician. Assigning these basic responsibilities to other skilled health care providers will free the physician to care for patients who have a more complicated problem and need more care and time.
Though this arrangement may not make everyone happy, I see it as a way of creating a fair system that will allow all health care providers to give the best possible care to their patients in a timely fashion.
Now, for the third and most important group: the consumers of health care. Even though I’ve described how health care providers and health care purchasers will function differently under health care reform, the whole of health care actually concerns this group the most.
Under the increase in managed care systems, the availability of medical care will be more tightly controlled by the first two groups, yet each patient will be able to receive the amount and type of medical care that he or she needs. Just as a company will need to choose an effective, adequate health care plan for its employees, an employee will also usually be able to pick from several options within that plan. Plan A, for example, might offer excellent pediatric care, but Plan B might have a provision to offer care for children who are in college. If some of these options are more expensive than others, the employer may decide to pass the cost along to the employee or else absorb the cost into the company budget. Either way, the choice of options will be up to the consumer.
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