Increasing unexpected healthcare utilisation in developed countries has led to several questions from the stakeholders, especially the health policy makers. Critics say unexpected healthcare utilisation cannot be prevented, while others say unscheduled utilisation can be avoided if adequate measures are put in place.
I believe, if the root cause of unexpected healthcare utilisation is known, there may be significant reduction to the high influx of patients to the health centres.
Question: In your opinion, what are the factors responsible for sudden utilisation of our health centres?
I know what you mean about the gap between long life and fit life. I am kept glued together by a lot of pills for a lot of symptoms, many of them really vexing. Waldemar, I plan to go to medical school when this body is wrecked. I think the students will be interested to see what a really messed-up body can continue to exist. Meantime, friends and interests keep me still curiously attached to life, fit or not . In a couple of years, I'll be at the average life span, a great surprise. If Trump's plan to remove most of my healthcare options succeeds eventually it will be a cruel joke on most of us, including women, immigrants, poor people, old people, kids, who did I leave out?
Speaking of medical advertising, have you seen the stupid ads with Steven Hawking saying he owes all his intelligence to a new brain drug? I thought it sounded too good to be true and Snopes agreed. But every day you can see that ad, even in the midst of a reasonably intelligent article. How can they do that? Once in a while I succumb to one of those videos where a "doctor" tells us all about a wonderful way to get healthy - mostly by taking one supplement - I've never managed to get to the punchline - all these ads tell us that we had better get the drug NOW as supply cannot match the demand and in 3 months it will be too late. And on and on. Who regulates what kind of crap these snake-oil salesmen can perpetuate? I bet for every cynic like me there are a dozen desperate people who will swallow the hook.
This has been an interesting topic. Keep it rolling, but more cynicism, please!
About unexpected healthcare utilization. I think the recent development of a wide variety of drugs for a broad range of minor and major pathologies and their advertisement in all media almost all of the time might have something to do with it.
The underlying problem has been known for 20 years, and has been recently mentioned in the Marmot Briefing 2017, it is the widening gap between people living longer (although the rate of increase is slowing) and the Fit Life Years, which has flat-lined for the past 20 years. This has led to increased pressure on the NHS.
It is too hard to dare from the distance to establish an answer to this pressing question. The causes may go from corrupt or new practices in the billing and public health payment and financing systems to unusual changes in the health environment, like rapid or cyclical fluctuations in the households' economic conditions, moving from popular medicine practices into the use of modern medicine facilities, demographic transformations (changing birth rates, or sharp alterations in the morbidity circumstances of particular age and sex groups, etc.) which may lead to significant transformations of life expectancy measured at birth or at a particular age interval (partial life expectations) and several more. .
A shift in the mortality schedule, say, due to the presence or reduction of contagious diseases,, is a case in point. In and out migration movements (reported or not statistically traced) may change one way or another the demand for health care services. From another perspective, one might well look at the relative price of some medicine compared to the unitary cost for the use of medical facilities, for they themselves influence somewhat the degree of substitution between different forms of taking care of illness. That and several kindred measures might shed some first light on the shifting characteristics of health care services supply across time and regions.
It might not be a bad idea to start by looking at the available demographic statistics and compare not just past fertility ,morbidity and mortality rates by age-sex groups to the present ones,(if feasible), but also, and at the same time, draw a random sample of those health care centers where there seems to had been a noticeable change in their use and to contrast your results with those reported by centers located within areas where you have before hand established their use has remained basically unchanged through time. That could be a first step in your search of the reasons underlying the rapid transformation of health facilities use you have observed so far; not an easy but certainly a rewarding purpose, to be sure.
I know what you mean about the gap between long life and fit life. I am kept glued together by a lot of pills for a lot of symptoms, many of them really vexing. Waldemar, I plan to go to medical school when this body is wrecked. I think the students will be interested to see what a really messed-up body can continue to exist. Meantime, friends and interests keep me still curiously attached to life, fit or not . In a couple of years, I'll be at the average life span, a great surprise. If Trump's plan to remove most of my healthcare options succeeds eventually it will be a cruel joke on most of us, including women, immigrants, poor people, old people, kids, who did I leave out?
Speaking of medical advertising, have you seen the stupid ads with Steven Hawking saying he owes all his intelligence to a new brain drug? I thought it sounded too good to be true and Snopes agreed. But every day you can see that ad, even in the midst of a reasonably intelligent article. How can they do that? Once in a while I succumb to one of those videos where a "doctor" tells us all about a wonderful way to get healthy - mostly by taking one supplement - I've never managed to get to the punchline - all these ads tell us that we had better get the drug NOW as supply cannot match the demand and in 3 months it will be too late. And on and on. Who regulates what kind of crap these snake-oil salesmen can perpetuate? I bet for every cynic like me there are a dozen desperate people who will swallow the hook.
This has been an interesting topic. Keep it rolling, but more cynicism, please!
Unfortunately, in the UK at least, it suits politicians to say we are living longer healthier lives, this is simply untrue and disingenuous ( although as most of them don't understand it, it probably represents what they think is the truth!).
The population, on average is living longer, with massive demographic variances, [averages are useless]. However, more people are living with extensive pre-existing medical conditions (cancer, heart disease, dementia etc.), which makes treatment very difficult and costly; therefore, the cost of healthcare is spiraling.
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