The Health Protection Scheme Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

The Health Protection Scheme - Essay Example As the essay states Hong Kong has had private health insurance for many decades in various forms. In 2009, about four million policies covered two million individuals and over 1.5 million groups. This was representative of 34% of HK’s population being privately insured. The number of people buying private insurance has gone up in the past four years. Private health insurance has contributed 12% of HK’s financing in health care between 1998 and 2009, while it has continued to grow at 9% every year with regards to total health expenditure share during the same period. In 2010, hospitals in the private sector spent a quarter of their entire expenditure on caring for inpatients, of which at least half was covered by insurance from the private sector. According to the research findings the Food and Health Bureau, through a study on private health insurance, outlined various challenges and inadequacies that insurers, providers, and consumers were confronted with, particularly in the private health insurance sector. This led to proposals on the health protection scheme, which sought to address several issue. With regards to the insurers, it sought to address rising and non-transparent medical fees, unnecessary admissions and moral hazards because of investigations, non-disclosure and anti-selection when underwriting, and the challenge of public insurance that was dimming attractiveness for private health insurance.... Despite these statistics, the Food and Health Bureau, through a study on private health insurance, outlined various challenges and inadequacies that insurers, providers, and consumers were confronted with, particularly in the private health insurance sector (Gauld & Gould, 2012). This led to proposals on the health protection scheme, which sought to address several issue. With regards to the insurers, it sought to address rising and non-transparent medical fees, unnecessary admissions and moral hazards because of investigations, non-disclosure and anti-selection when underwriting, and the challenge of public insurance that was dimming attractiveness for private health insurance (Dembe & Boden, 2000). For consumers, it sought to address uncertainty of charges and coverage and lack of quality assurance and medical fees that were non-transparent. Finally, it sought to address coverage of procedures for outpatients and inadequate coverage for private doctors and hospitals (Shek, 2012). A rgument for Health Protection Scheme One area that the HPS will help the situation is in financing, particularly with two tiers in the HK health system, i.e. public and private. The private sector mainly gets its funds from private sources like out-of-pocket payments and private insurance. In contrast, the public health insurance sector gets heavy subsidies from the Hong Kong government that come from taxes (Wong et al, 2011). While the HK government spends relatively less compared to countries from the west, the expenditure trend has been increasing. The health protection scheme has proposed to improve controls on expenditure through inclusion of voluntary participation in premiums by individuals. The government is encouraging HK citizens to join the scheme to enjoy

The Ways In Which Communication Fails In Accident And Emergency Essay

The Ways In Which Communication Fails In Accident And Emergency Between Radiographers - Essay Example to be the leading cause of unnecessary delays in patient care and treatment, insufficient radiation exposure to the patients, improper use of imaging technology facilities, prenatal deaths and injuries, and is the second leading cause for patient falls (JCAHO, 2006). A very important fact is mentioned in a report that is about how medication errors can be reduced in the hospitals according to which, â€Å"between 44,000 and 98,000 people die each year as a result of all types of medical errors.† (Patel, 2004). The ultimate importance of communication is suggested by almost every person, because it lays the foundation for good results unequivocally. Actually, the basic characteristics of good inter-professional communication need to be understood but, despite many efforts to develop healthy and bias-free relationships in the hospital setups, no research regarding the ways to develop beneficial inter-professional communication exists in the present. It is mentioned by (Wear, 199 7) that the medical students are not deeply taught about ways to handle relationships with other health care professionals like technologists, radiographers etc. in their medical schools. (Zwarenstein M, Goldman J, and Reeves S, 2009) suggest that inter-professional communication (IPC) skills need to be properly taught to both doctors and radiographers, so that they may know how to practically use those skills when needed in emergency situations where immediately many x-rays one after another are required and for good x-rays, doctors must collaborate vigorously with radiographers. (Pearson, 2011) suggests that lack of verbal communication between doctors and radiographers can lead to the professionals simply forgetting some patients, which leads to chances that those patients might be left... The purpose of this is to establish new and better lines of communication between doctors and radiographers. Critical discussion is also presented in the report which underlines the major reasons why doctors and radiographers find it difficult or impossible to communicate with each other in emergency situation especially. Some recommendations are also included which may help in improving the patient care and removing the deficiencies resulting primarily from bad management and poor inter-professional relationships. Rationale: The main purpose of this report is to identify the major reasons that prove to be hurdles in the path of effective communication. From the discussion above and the results of the survey analysis, this much becomes clear that the heavily strained communication between doctors and radiographers in situations of emergency proves to be markedly hazardous for the patients. There is also lack of understanding about the significance and importance of inter-personal communication and good managerial skills, due to which occupational stress results and chaos is produced in the hospitals. There do exist some strategies like â€Å"VoIP Telephony and wireless communications† for modernizing the communication capability between the health care professionals. For proper and person-to-person communication between doctors and radiographers, wireless communication must be ensured in all the hospitals. Moreover, both doctors and radiographers should be especially educated about the ways to handle the important burden of patients in A&E departments and OTs for improving the patient care.