HLTH - 556 DB 1 - Urgently Required. 10-12 Hours. Need A + Work

Discussion Board 1: Industrializing Structure for Delivery

            Industrializing structure for delivery may be defined as the way in which the delivery of health care has undergone changes regarding how work is organized (Rastegar, 2004). These transformations are like the changes earlier industries went through (Rastegar, 2004). For example, the way Henry Ford used standardization to increase efficiency, quality and productivity (Rastegar, 2004).

            The first noticeable problem about an industrialized structure for healthcare delivery is a marked difference in the relationship between the server and those being served (McLaughlin & McLaughlin, 2015). One example of this is telephone triage systems, which deliver impersonal, standardized advice (Rastegar, 2004, para. 5). When control moves from the physician to a more systematic process, the practice becomes less personal (McLaughlin & McLaughlin, 2015).

            Physicians are uncertain what to do with the system because as McLaughlin and McLaughlin (2015) note (as cited in Rastegar, 2004), "...physicians report frustration with their loss of autonomy and with the pressures for efficiency expressed as a measure of the number of patients seen" (p. 41). Rastegar (2004) notes that this increased attention to time and productivity are connected to the standardization of physicians' work (para. 3). This has caused some physicians to feel discontent about the lack of personal time with their patients (Rastegar, 2004). Continuing in this direction may endanger traditional values of the medical field, such as putting the patient's interest first, moral responsibility and service to the community (Rastegar, 2004, para. 14).

            A closely connected second problem has developed from an effort to increase access and reduce cost (McLaughlin & McLaughlin, 2015). The problem is fragmentation of care in that more and more labor substitutions have been made. For instance, a lot of medical work is done by less skilled and less expensive professionals than in times past. Today, nurse practitioners or physician's assistants are often the first encounter for many patients (McLaughlin & McLaughlin, 2015). This has contributed to a significant decline in specialists' income because just as technicians can now diagnose and a nurse can now offer treatment, so it is with primary care physicians, who now perform duties that were once limited to specialists (McLaughlin & McLaughlin, 2015).

            A third problem obvious within an industrialized structure is mass production. For example, this approach is sometimes used for cataract surgeries (McLaughlin & McLaughlin, 2015). Besides the impersonal nature of such systems, the problem with this industrialized method is that humans have large anatomical differences (McLaughlin & McLaughlin, 2015). Industrialization in the car industry worked wonderfully, but using some of those same principles for the delivery of healthcare is problematic.

References

McLaughlin, C. P., & McLaughlin, C. D. (2015). Health policy analysis: An interdisciplinary

            approach (Second ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett.

Rastegar, D.A. (2004). Health care becomes an industry. Annals of Family Medicine, 2(1),

            79-83.