1) Describe the area of activity/industry.
The health care industry also known as the medical industry or health
economy, is a combination of sectors within the economic system that offers
goods and services to treat patients with curative, preventive, rehabilitative,
and palliative care. It comprises the generation and commercialization of
goods and services bestowing themselves to maintaining and re-establishing
health. The contemporary healthcare industry includes three significant
branches which are services, products, and finance and may be divided into
many sectors and categories and depends on the interdisciplinary teams of
trained professionals and paraprofessionals to meet health needs of
individuals and the public. The healthcare industry is one of the world's
largest and fastest-growing industries.
2) What is the value proposition in this area?
Value proposition is a declaration of intent by the company to its customers.
A value proposition refers to the value a company promises to deliver to
customers should they choose to buy their product. A value proposition is
part of a company's overall marketing strategy. The value proposition
provides a declaration of intent or a statement that introduces a company's
brand to consumers by telling them what the company stands for, how it
operates, and why it deserves their business.
A value proposition can be presented as a business or marketing statement
that a company uses to outline why a consumer should buy a product or use
a service. This statement, if worded compellingly, convinces a potential
consumer that one particular product or service the company offers will add
more value or better solve a problem for them than other similar offerings
will.
The value proposition of this health care delivery, involves the promise of
satisfactory healthcare treatment to customers. Many times, physical
appearance at the hospital has been remarked as bad, health care delivery
service steps in here. It eases the rigor of appearing at the hospital spending
time, waiting till it is one’s turn before service is rendered. It promises swift
delivery of customer services.
What customer problems are being solved?
Quality health services not only prevent human suffering and ensure
healthier societies, they also ensure better human capital and healthier
economies. The cost of healthcare, is a usual problem that faces customers,
healthcare delivery helps reduce the cost in the form of health insurance.
Healthcare delivery service helps in improving customers’access to
healthcare. Services are provided whether or not a patient is located
somewhere where they have access to healthcare facilities and services.
Whether or not a patient is able to address a medical concern in a timely
fashion, whether it be a life-threatening injury or a slowly-developing
chronic condition, timeliness of care is promised.
In finance, customers are granted medical loans, when their application
letters are compelling enough. If they are under any sort of insurance, its
utilization is guaranteed.
Healthcare delivery service enhances the concept of patient-specific
treatment. For example, instead of using a broad-spectrum antibiotic to treat
an infection, physicians are increasingly performing tests to identify
the precise antibiotic that will be most effective in treating a disease. Instead
of assuming a patient will react well to a certain drug, physicians are
increasingly designing drugs to be patient-specific in order to ensure
effectiveness—particularly important in the treatment of diseases like
cancer.
3) Describe the different perspectives regarding what business they are
actually in.
The business involved in this discourse is healthcare delivery services.
CONCEPT OF HEALTHCARE QUALITY
Many efforts have been made trying to develop the thorough and generally
applicable definition of health care service quality. Donabedian (1980)
defined health care service quality as In 1984 the American Medical
Association defined health care service quality as such care,which
contributes to the improvement ad or maintenance of life. (Blumenthal,
1996). The association identified specific attributes of care that should be
examined in determining its quality, including an emphasis on health
promotion and disease prevention, timeliness, the informed participation of
patients, attention to the specific basis of medicine, and the efficient use of
resources. Quality has also been defined as the ability to reach desired
objectives using legitimate means, where the desired objectives implied the
achievable level of health (Donabedian, 1988). Thus, quality is attained
when a physician properly helps the patient to reach an achievable level of
health. According to Helminen (2000), this definition emphasizes the
professional point of view.
These different approaches to quality show that there are several different
perspectives to quality of health care, at which quality can be analyzed.
Different perspectives on and definitions of quality logically call for
different methods of quality measurement and management.
PATIENTS’PERCEIVED HEALTHCARE QUALITY
Patients tend to define quality in terms of their preferences and values, and
that leads to quality definition emphasizing satisfaction with health care and
the results, such as recovery, mortality and functional status. An interest in
the views of patients is not fundamentally inconsistent with physicians’ view
of quality. When talking about the quality of personal interaction between
service provider and the client, health care professionals have agreed that
satisfying patients is essential to providing high quality care. However, at
the same time, physicians have often discounted the importance of patients’
perspective stating that patients have very limited knowledge of what
constitutes technical quality and because of the difficulty of measuring
patients’ views accurately and reliably.
Both political and scientific developments have fostered the growing
emphasis on the importance and legitimacy of patients’ perspectives on the
quality of care. Using psychometric techniques, researchers have developed
better measures of patients’ evaluations of the results of care, thus allowing
patients’ views to be assessed with greater scientific accuracy. The view that
consumers should have information and other resources necessary to make
Judgment about the value of goods and services finally was bound to
influence the healthcare sector. The concept of ‘’patient-centered care’’
emerged (Blumenthal, 1996).
Patients tend to evaluate health care quality according to the responsiveness
to their specific needs. Most patients define quality as efforts of physicians
to do everything possible for a patient. They often focus on effectiveness,
accessibility, interpersonal relations, continuity and tangibles as the most
important dimensions of quality. However, it is important to note that
patients do not always fully understand their health service needs and cannot
adequately assess technical competence. Health providers must learn about
their community’s health status and health service needs, educate the
community about basic health services, and involve it in defining how care
is to be most effectively delivered (Brown et al., 1992).
HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL’S ATTITUDE TO HEALTH
CARE QUALITY
Health care professionals (physicians) tend to define quality in terms of the
attributes and results of care, and this definition emphasizes the technical
excellence with which care is provided and the characteristics of interactions
between provider and patient.
According to Blumenthal (1996), technical quality of health care has two
dimensions: 1) the appropriateness of the services provided and 2) the skills
with which appropriate care is performed. High technical quality consists of
‘doing the right thing.’ To do the right thing requires that physicians make
the right decisions about care for each patient (high quality decision
making), and to do it right require skills, judgment and timeliness of
execution (high quality performance). The quality of the interaction between
physician and patient depends on several elements in their relationship:
quality of communication, physician’s ability to maintain the patient’s trust
and physician’s ability to treat the patient with concern, empathy, honesty,
tact and sensitivity.
Physicians also tend to balance between efforts to control costs, their own
judgment about the best way of treatment and demand to consider the values
of patient while making the treatment choices (McGlynn, 1997). Those three
things do not always lead to the same conclusion. Cost control frequently is
achieved as third parties make decisions about what services will be covered
and what types of providers can offer those services. The involvement of the
third parties may diminish the importance of physician judgment and
autonomy, which may lead physicians to conclude that the technical quality
of health care is suffering.
Traditionally, health care professionals when talking about quality focused
on the technical nature of health care events. The focus has been on the
training and updated skills of the physicians and the nature of the actual
medical outcome (O’Çonnor, Shewchuk and Carney, 1994). One of the most
widely used conceptual framework for quality of health care was proposed
by Donabedian (1980) and is known as the structure-process-outcome
model. ‘’structure’’ assesses the quality of health care through a study of the
settings in which care takes place. ‘’Process reflects the interaction between
the patient and health care professional, and depends on technical and
interpersonal excellence. ‘’Outcome’’ considers whether a change in a
patient’s current and future status can be attributed to health care received
(for more explicit explanation of the SPO model, see Piligrimiene,
Buciuniene, 2005).
