Macroeconomics and Microeconomics in Health Care - Essay Example

"Macroeconomics and Microeconomics in Health Care" is a smart example of a paper on the health system. 
The US government is committed to offering best practices to its patient population through pro-active participation and joint venture and partnership programs.  Perhaps, keeping this in mind, The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program (RWHAP) has been enforced which concerns itself with the inconsistent influence that HIV and AIDS have on the poorest and uninsured Americans. “First enacted in 1990, it provides care and support services to individuals and families affected by HIV/AIDS, functioning as the “payer of last resort”; that is, it fills the gaps in care for those who have no other source of coverage or face coverage limits.” (HIV/AIDS policy fact sheets, 2007, para.1).  

This program mainly intends to find solutions to the burdensome stress on local health and social service resources by enhancing the emergence of several new reasonable and responsive HIV /AIDS care choices. This fund cares for affected victims of HIV/AIDS, mothers, children and families afflicted with various stages of the disease, accord of training to health care professionals and support staff who interact and help treat HIV+ persons, the implementation of innovative and unique health care provisions that alleviate the sufferings and bring relief to such genres of patients, and most critically, offering technical and organizing collaborations, along a wide and broad spectrum of disease care and management across the length and breadth of the country. Perhaps one of the major advantages of this RWHAP is that it reaches out to many marginalized sections of American society, who live below the poverty line and also a majority of them who are uninsured Americans who live on subsidies. This program also envisages a community-sponsored dental joint venture program, as well as AIDS Education and Training Centers. The use of any of these infrastructural facilities may be developed for promoting community-based facilities including preventive health care screening and counseling facilities for individuals and families.

Outline relating to benchmarking:

In the realms of health care services, benchmarks are predetermined health care provider standards that are constantly compared with actual performance in healthcare.

Besides, “More hospital performance data is readily available than ever before, and benchmarking is implicitly required by some Joint Commission standards and CMS measures.” (Barnard, 2006).

Variations are noted and remedial actions considered in line with ideal or benchmarked standards. Benchmarks could be set by a health care industry provider leader or having leadership status, for others to follow these as guidelines. It could also be seen in terms of setting goals and objectives to cut down costs and also improve and streamline the quality standards of health care provision to all, especially uninsured sections of the American patient population and their carers. In the domain of benchmarking, there can be four categories- generic, functional, competitive, and internal. The elements of competition could be reduced if partners conduct business in the same marketplace and among themselves are able to dictate pricing and level of quality of the health-care services. It is necessary that benchmarking standards should first be thoroughly understood and verified, and its constituent elements carefully analyzed and monitored over time. As in other domains, benchmarks need to be realistic and attainable in the case of the healthcare industry also, in order to be able to provide efficient service. Setting the highest standards of benchmarking without proper resources and infrastructure could be disconcerting and needs to be a team process with all constituent members playing their roles to perfection, institutionalizing changes, and enhancing performance standards.  Besides, the main ingredient of benchmarking in terms of productivity, quality, time, and cost-relation also needs to be considered in order to facilitate and sustain optimum health care provision.