Healthcare Trends and Shifts between the US and other Western Nations - Essay Example

"Healthcare Trends and Shifts between the US and other Western Nations" is a perfect example of a paper on the health system. Health systems around the globe are under increasing strain due to the rising prevalence of chronic conditions, such as asthma, diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic diseases. The improvement of patient management with chronic diseases is crucial to international efforts to improve care outcomes. Canada, England, Australia, and the US use reminder systems, create registries, use teams, and decision-support systems that alert and prompt physicians to provide high-quality care management.

For more than 15 years, the US and Germany, England, Canada, and Australia have been using disease-management programs (DMPs) as a solution to this problem (Thomson et al., 2013). By cautiously coordinating the delivery of high-quality care to patients with chronic conditions, the programs have improved the patients’ health, lowered treatment costs, and reduced hospitalization rates.Delivery of careHealth care organizations as employers operate various quality improvement programs so to enhance the delivery of care.

The professional boards in the US and Germany, England, Canada, and Australia now need that their members to participate in professional development programs so as to maintain their professional registration. Both nations use integrated care so that they bring together the various groups that are involved in patient care, to ensure that from the patient’s perspective, the services being delivered are coordinated and consistent. The providers in the US, Canada, England, and Australia focus on a single episode of treatment, other than the overall well-being of the patient.

In America, integrated care provides patients with higher quality and efficient care that meets their needs. As noted in the other nations, increased efficiency also assists to control costs (Thomson, et al., 2013).In Australia, public hospital care is actually provided free to the general public. The same applies to England where healthcare is free at the point of use. Medicare usually provides subsidized access to medical services. Canadian Medicare offers universal coverage for hospital and physician services.

Although there is no striking difference in the elements of the delivery of care that underpin efficiency and quality, there exists a wide gap between the lagging and leading nations in clinical information systems and payment incentives in the delivery of care.Both the Australian and United States health care systems are complex with varied models of care and practice. The differences, however, are that Australian healthcare is contributed by both the federal and state governments, health insurance companies, and individual out-of-pocket contributions while in the United States there are challenges to reform and improve the cooperation of all stakeholders (Johnson & Stoskopf, 2010).

Patient participationSince patient participation is a process in which both the physician and patient and contribute to the medical decision-making process, there is a need to promote the learning of patient-centered practice, decision making, and inter-professional collaboration (Towle, et al., 2012). In the United Kingdom, the National Association for Patient Participation usually supports and promotes patient participation in primary care (Florin, Ehrenberg, & Ehnfors, 2008). Results from the four-country survey depict that, generally, low-numeracy individuals in England, Canada, Australia, and the United States prefer to play a more passive role than their high-numeracy counterparts.

This means that those individuals who are not as fluent with numbers and statistics tend to let their physicians make medical decisions without much input from them (Galesic & Garcia-Retamero, 2011). Additionally, Americans play a more active role in the physician-patient relationship, by carrying out activities such as researching treatment options and asking follow-up questions.