Health care, or healthcare, refers to the treatment and management of illness, and the preservation of health through services offered by the medical, dental, pharmaceutical, clinical laboratory sciences (in vitro diagnostics), nursing, and allied health professions. Health care embraces all the goods and services designed to promote health, including “preventive, curative and palliative interventions, whether directed to individuals or to populations”.[1]
Before the term health care became popular, English-speakers referred to medicine or to the health sector and spoke of the treatment and prevention of illness and disease.
Emergency medicine is a speciality of medicine that focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of acute illnesses and injuries that require immediate medical attention. While not usually providing long-term or continuing care, emergency medicine physicians diagnose a wide array of pathology and undertake acute interventions to stabilize the patient. These professionals practice in hospitalemergency departments, in the prehospital setting via emergency medical service and other locations where initial medical treatment of illness takes place. Just as clinicians operate by immediacy rules under large emergency systems, emergency practioniers aim to diagnose emergent conditions and stabilize the patient for definitive care.
Chronic care management encompasses the oversight and education activities conducted by professionals to help patients with chronic diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, lupus, multiple sclerosis and sleep apnea learn to understand their condition and live successfully with it. This term is equivalent to disease management (health) for chronic conditions. The work involves motivating patients to persist in necessary therapies and interventions and helping them to achieve an ongoing, reasonable quality of life.
Patient safety is a new health care discipline that emphasizes the reporting, analysis, and prevention of medical error that often lead to adverse health care events. The frequency and magnitude of avoidable adverse patient events was not well known until the 1990s, when multiple countries reported staggering numbers of patients harmed and killed by medical errors. Recognizing that health care errors impact 1 in every 10 patients around the world, the World Health Organization calls patient safety an endemic concern.[2] Indeed, patient safety has emerged as a distinct health care discipline supported by an immature yet developing scientific framework. There is a significant transdisciplinary body of theoretical and research literature that informs the science of patient safety.[3] The resulting patient safety knowledge continually informs improvement efforts such as: applying lessons learned from business and industry, adopting innovative technologies, educating providers and consumers, enhancing error reporting systems, and developing new economic incentives. This patient safety page provides an evidence-based and peer-reviewed forum to learn about contemporary error and adverse event knowledge.
The Healthcare industry incorporates several sectors that are dedicated to providing services and products dedicated to improving the health of individuals. According to market classifications of industry such as the Global Industry Classification Standard and the Industry Classification Benchmark the healthcare industry includes health care equipment & services and pharmaceuticals, biotechnology & life sciences. The particular sectors associated with these groups are: biotechnology, diagnostic substances, drug delivery, drug manufacturers, hospitals, medical equipment and instruments, diagnostic laboratories, nursing homes, providers of health care plans and home health care.[6]
According to government classifications of Industry, which are mostly based on the United Nations system, the International Standard Industrial Classification, health care generally consists of Hospital activities, Medical and dental practice activities, and other human health activities. The last class consists of all activities for human health not performed by hospitals or by medical doctors or dentists. This involves activities of, or under the supervision of, nurses, midwives, physiotherapists, scientific or diagnostic laboratiories, pathology clinics, ambulance, nursing home, or other para-medical practitioners in the field of optometry, hydrotherapy, medical massage, occupational therapy, speech therapy, chiropody, homeopathy, chiropractice, acupuncture, etc. [7]
Biomedical research (or experimental medicine), in general simply known as medical research, is the basic research, applied research, or translational research conducted to aid the body of knowledge in the field of medicine. Medical research can be divided into two general categories: the evaluation of new treatments for both safety and efficacy in what are termed clinical trials, and all other research that contributes to the development of new treatments. The latter is termed preclinical research if its goal is specifically to elaborate knowledge for the development of new therapeutic strategies. A new paradigm to biomedical research is being termed translational research, which focuses on iterative feedback loops between the basic and clinical research domains to accelerate knowledge translation from the bedside to the bench, and back again.
In terms of pharmaceutical R&D spending, Europe spends a little less that the United States (€22.50bn compared to €27.05bn in 2006) and there is less growth in European R&D spending.[8][9]. Pharmaceuticals and other medical devices are the leading high technology exports of Europe and the United States [10][9]. However, the United States dominates the biopharmaceutical field, accounting for the three quarters of the world’s biotechnology revenues and 80% of world R&D spending in biotechnology. [8][9].
In California
California's Office of the Patient Advocate (OPA) commissions research and reports on a variety of health care topics. OPA's goal is to understand health disparities and make sure health plan members are receiving the care and information they need.[11]
OPA's most recent report published is called Quality Performance Measurement in California[12]. This Report was commissioned to identify useful measures for reporting the quality of health care in California and to assist OPA in developing strategies that contribute to the development of a coordinated and comprehensive set of publicly reported quality performance metrics for California.[13]
The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized United Nations agency which acts as a coordinator and researcher for public health around the world. Established on 7 April1948, and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health Organization, which had been an agency of the League of Nations. The WHO's constitution states that its mission "is the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health." Its major task is to combat disease, especially key infectious diseases, and to promote the general health of the peoples of the world. Examples of its work include years of fighting smallpox. In 1979 the WHO declared that the disease had been eradicated - the first disease in history to be completely eliminated by deliberate human design. The WHO is nearing success in developing vaccines against malaria and schistosomiasis and aims to eradicate polio within the next few years. The organization has already endorsed the world's first official HIV/AIDS Toolkit for Zimbabwe from October 32006, making it an international standard.[14]
The WHO is financed by contributions from member states and from donors. In recent years the WHO's work has involved more collaboration, currently around 80 such partnerships, with NGOs and the pharmaceutical industry, as well as with foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Voluntary contributions to the WHO from national and local governments, foundations and NGOs, other UN organizations, and the private sector (including pharmaceutical companies), now exceed that of assessed contributions (dues) from its 193 member nations.[15]
Health economics is a branch of economics concerned with issues related to scarcity in the allocation of health and health care. Broadly, health economists study the functioning of the health care system and the private and social causes of health-affecting behaviors such as smoking.
A seminal 1963 article by Kenneth Arrow, often credited with giving rise to the health economics as a discipline, drew conceptual distinctions between health and other goals.[16]
Factors that distinguish health economics from other areas include extensive government intervention, intractable uncertainty in several dimensions, asymmetric information, and externalities.[17] Governments tend to regulate the health care industry heavily and also tend to be the largest payer within the market. Uncertainty is intrinsic to health, both in patient outcomes and financial concerns. The knowledge gap that exists between a physician and a patient can prevent the patient from accurately describing his symptoms or enable the physician to prescribe unnecessary but profitable services; these imbalances lead to market failures resulting from asymmetric information. Externalities arise frequently when considering health and health care, notably in the context of infectious disease. For example, making an effort to avoid catching a cold, or practising safer sex, affects people other than the decision maker.
The scope of health economics is neatly encapsulated by Alan William's "plumbing diagram"[18] dividing the discipline into eight distinct topics:
Consuming just under 10 percent of gross domestic product of most developed nations, health care can form an enormous part of a country's economy. In 2001, health care consumed 8.4 per cent of GDP across the OECD countries[19] with the United States (13.9%), Switzerland (10.9%), and Germany (10.7%) being the top three.
The United States and Canada account for 48% of world pharmaceutical sales, while Europe, Japan, and all other nations account for 30%, 9%, and 13%, respectively.[9] United States accounts for the three quarters of the world’s biotechnology revenues.
Many argue that a single-payer universal health care system will save money through reduced bureaucratic administration costs.[20]Social health insurance is where the whole population or most of the population is a member of a sickness insurance company. Most health services are provided by private enterprises which act as contractors, billing the government for patient care.[21] In almost every country with a government health care system a parallel private system is allowed to operate. This is sometimes referred to as two-tier health care. The scale, extent, and funding of these private systems is very variable.
A traditional view is that improvements in health result from advancements in medical science. The medical model of health focuses on the eradication of illness through diagnosis and effective treatment. In contrast, the social model of health places emphasis on changes that can be made in society and in people's own lifestyles to make the population healthier. It defines illness from the point of view of the individual's functioning within their society rather than by monitoring for changes in biological or physiological signs.[22]
The United States currently operates under a mixed market health care system. Government sources (federal, state, and local) account for 45% of U.S. health care expenditures.[23] Private sources account for the remainder with 38% of people receiving health coverage through their employer and 17% arising from other private payment such as private insurance and out-of-pocket copays. Government intervention into a market is generally thought to distort pricing as government agents lack market discipline; they have less short and medium-term incentives than private agents to make purchases that can generate revenues and avoid bankruptcy. Health system reform in the United State usually focuses around three suggested models; Single Payer, as described above. Employer or individual insurance mandates, which the state of Massachusetts has experimented with recently. And Consumer Driven Health, in which systems consumers and patients have more control of how they access care and a greater incentive to find cost-saving healthcare approaches.[24] Critics of Consumer Driven Health say that it would benefit the healthy but be insufficient for the chronically sick.
The politics of health care depends largely on which country one is in. Current concerns in the UK, for instance, revolve around the use of private finance initiatives to build hospitals or the excessive use of targets in cutting waiting lists. In Germany and France, concerns are more based on the rising cost of drugs to the governments. In Brazil, an important political issue is the breach of intellectual property rights, or patents, for the domestic manufacture of antiretroviral drugs used in the treatment of HIV/AIDS.
The South African government, whose population sets the record for HIV infections, came under pressure for its refusal to admit there is any connection with AIDS[25] because of the cost it would have involved. In the United States 12% to 16% of the citizens are still unable to afford health insurance. State boards and the Department of Health regulate inpatient care to reduce the national health care deficit.
To tackle the problems of the perpetually increasing number of uninsured, and costs associated with the US health care system, President Barack Obama says he favors the creation of a universal health care system [26]. However, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said that Obama's plan would not actually provide universal coverage.[27] (In contrast, Dennis Kucinich, an early candidate who did not get on the ballot, supported a single-payer system.) Factcheck.org alleges that Obama's predicted savings were exaggerated. [28]
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The Commonwealth Fund, in its annual survey, "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall", compares the performance of the health care systems in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and the U.S. Its 2007 study found that, although the U.S. system is the most expensive, it consistently underperforms compared to the other countries.[29] One difference between the U.S. and the other countries in the study is that the U.S. is the only country without universal health insurance coverage.
^Patrick A. Palmieri; et al. (2008). "The anatomy and physiology of error in adverse health care events". Advances in Health Care Management. 7: 33–68. doi:10.1016/S1474-8231(08)07003-1. ((cite journal)): Cite has empty unknown parameter: |unused_data= (help); Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help); Text "accessdate 2008-08-29" ignored (help)
