Patient_Support_Services

Patient Support Services Vanassa Kay Fultz HCA305: The U.S. Health Care System Quida Davis November 1, 2010 Patient Support Services Patient Support Service is information and advice on your local health care services, help the public be informed of what services are available to them. Also can help resolve any problems with their healthcare service and advise them on how to make a formal complaint if needed. The social services department helps patients with discharge plans and help with the community based services. Generally this department assists patients and their family with achieving the best social and domestic environment for the patients care and recovery. (Sultz & Young, 2009, 3.2) A Patient's Bill of Rights is one of the information’s that is available through the Patient Support Services. The Bill of Rights lets a patient know what they are allowed to know and what rights that a person has as recipients of medical care. Typically, a statement articulates the positive rights which doctors and hospitals ought to provide patients, thereby providing information, offering fair treatment, and granting them autonomy over medical decisions. Bipartisan Patient Protection Act (Senate bill S.1052) The Senate-passed Patients' Bill of Rights confers a broad array of rights on patients. The bill would ensure that patients with health care plans have the right to: * have their medical decisions made by a doctor; * see a medical specialist; * go to the closest emergency room; * designate a pediatrician as a primary care doctor for their children; * keep the same doctor throughout their medical treatment; * obtain the prescription drugs their doctor prescribes; * access a fair and independent appeals process if care is denied; and * Hold their health plan accountable for harm done. This bill was passed by the US Senate by a vote of 59-36 in 2001. (The Senate-passed) The University Of Colorado Hospital has many different situations that they take care anywhere from Additions to Women’s health. They do transplants of all kinds. They have a Children’s Hospital that is top notch and some of the best Doctors in their field working there. This is also a teaching hospital. Because of all of this they have a very large Patient Support Services. You can get this information from either on line or at the hospital itself. Depending on the area of information one needs they can find this information regarding the procedure, a support group, an event or a doctor. Some of the types of support they give are explaining what a procedure is like a 12 Lead EKG which is part of the cardiovascular assessment of a patient. The purpose of this one-day course is to assist the registered nurse and other healthcare providers in understanding and interpreting the 12-Lead EKG and the changes often seen on it. (Patient Support Services) This is just an example of many things a person can find in the Patient Support Services at this hospital. They also have information on where families can stay while their loved ones are staying. There is also the clinics themselves. The training and compassion that is shown is of high caliber. The Patient Support Services deal with patients that have no insurance or the finances to pay for the medical services that are needed. They help with forms to get them grants if the qualify for. They also help deal with the insurance companies if the patient has any. Most procedures will not be preformed or even looked at if the patient does not have insurance. . Those that do not have access to healthcare are often either unable to afford the insurance, or have been denied coverage by insurance companies.  Individuals frequently have coverage denied to them due to pre-existing conditions or diseases. Insurance companies are not willing to take the risk of insuring high risk people, which means that people that need insurance the most do not have access to it and will not be able to have a life saving procedure done. The US spends more money on healthcare than any other country in the world. The US spends approximately $2 trillion per year. About $600 billion is never seen by recipients. Almost $98 billion is spent for administration cost. In other countries whose life expectancies go beyond those in the U.S., all of whom have some kind of structured insurance plan either paid from a taxpayer-financed, or single-payer structure, this used to be called "socialized medicine." by detractors. Worse yet, the current system we have, leave more than 40 million Americans lacking health insurance. Because many are unemployed or have very low incomes, programs that provide incentives through employers and tax relief do not help these people. With this much room for possible improvement, the incentives should be sufficient to foster changes in behavior. A recent McKinsey study estimates that more than half of the $98 billion of excess administrative costs it identified goes for insurance company marketing and underwriting. (hbswk) When people do not have insurance or cannot pay for medical expenses they will use the emergence departments for their normal care. When this is done the implication are high and affects the whole community. Some patients that need only a routine visit will go to the ER to get a quick fix by getting the medications they are prescribed or test that might be required. These patients will not or cannot follow up with a primary doctor do to the fact they cannot pay for these services. If someone is not able or will not follow up with another doctor they may get worst or even die because they are unable to pay for the care they need. Other problems that happen when someone uses the ER this ways is that the time that the ER doctors are spending on the routine exams take away from the real emergencies that can cause someone to receive lower quality of care. Some of these emergencies are life threatening. The other problem is that when the bill is not paid and this is a community hospital, then the city uses the tax payers’ money to keep the hospital running and eventually has to cut projects from around town to pay for these services. These kinds of practices cause everyone to suffer. Then the city must raise the cost of these services to pay for other services. It is a vicious cycle. Patient support services also help with Ambulatory care. Ambulatory care is any patient care that is handled on an outpatient basis. The most common type of service that is provided is same day surgeries. A patient can go to ambulatory care center to have this procedure done. An ambulatory care center is like an outpatient center. It is a facility that a person goes to when they have to have a procedure done. They only are there for the day and then they go home. By going to an ambulatory care center the cost is much less then if the person was to have the same thing done in a hospital and have to stay overnight. Ambulatory care providers are becoming a large part of the U.S. health care system. Scientific advancements have made many treatments formerly offered only in a hospital setting, now possible in an ambulatory setting. The change to ambulatory care, while commonly recognized as an encouraging move toward a less expensive and more appropriate health care setting, has often left providers scrambling to adjust to the rapid change. (Executive Summary) The implications of this kind of care will be good. The hospitals are able to have more room to care for the more critical care cases and have less staff on duty to take care of these patients. In turn this cuts the administrational cost down. Our county has been working on trying to get healthcare for all of its citizens. The people of this country need to stand up and say enough is enough. We spend billions of dollars each year helping out other countries with health, food, government and many other things. It is time for us to keep our dollars in our own back yard. We need to cut our spending out that is spent on nonsense research, services and supplies that are mundane and start taking care of the important things that our country needs like just the basics of healthcare. If our government would look at the medical coverage that our military is provided and adopted that for the country then maybe we would be a healthier people for it. We as a nation have been spinning our wheels for so long on trying to figure out how to come up with a healthcare plan by using a market-drive reform and it has not worked yet, so it is time for our government to stop dragging their feet and become more forceful to redesign our Healthcare system so that it will cover each and every American. If the government can set a bill on what is going on with our economy as fast as they do then they should be able to find someone in this country that has a good head on their shoulders to come up with a plan that includes everyone and make it happen. Patient Support Services are here to help in so many ways that they leave most people with the feeling that they can see the light at the end of the tunnel. These services are available of all. They are also the backbone that helps get our needs heard by the government and pushes to get things done. References Sultz, H. A. & Young, K. M. (2009).  Health care USA: Understanding its organization and delivery (6th ed.).  Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Publishers Senate bill S.1052 Retrieved October 23, 2010 from: http://www.righthealth.com/Health/Patients%20Bill%20Of%20Rights-s'lid=goog-ads-sb-3320568958#ixzz13BtT6wQf The Senate-passed Patients' Bill of Rights retrieved October 10, 2010 form: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Patients%27_Bill_of_Rights Patient Support Services Retrieved October 24, 2010 from: http://www.uch.edu/site-seach.aspx'term=Patient+Support+Services McKinsey study Retrieve 11/1/2010 from: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5645.html Executive Summary Retrieve 11/1/2010 from: http://www.urban.org/publications/310347.html