2nd Research Proposal
The main question that I am aiming to answer with my series of posts will revolve around how applicable the successes of other countries' healthcare systems are to the United States. It is important to learn from other countries to see what has been working in their systems and how they have been making advances in the quality and cost of their care. These lessons can help all three of the healthcare objectives but mostly it will help with reducing cost because that is the one of the big consequences of how poorly our system is set up.
As a last small part of the overall project, I will also research how globalization could help in some of these areas. Globalization has touched almost all industries but healthcare seems to be one that it has not fully affected. I aim to understand the factors that have made it difficult for the globalization of healthcare as well as the possible benefits of this idea.
Literature
Review
Preliminary
research into this topic brought some good insight for the direction that could
be most effective. This link provides a great overview of looking at the United
States healthcare system through an international scope. They bring up the Organization
for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) which comprises of 34
developed countries. This group of countries is a good place to start for
looking at applicable systems to analyze to look for comparisons. From the
readings so far it is becoming apparent that Canada, the United Kingdom,
Germany, and the Nordic countries may be the best systems to study because of
their high quality care and cost effective methods.
This source went
more in depth with the cost structures as well as the information technology
use of the US and other OECD countries. This paper aims to analyze the sources
of how costly healthcare is and how information technology has and can continue
to lower cost and improve quality. This will be a valuable source for my
research project because of the interesting way they merge technology and cost
among the different countries. Comparing other countries’ methods of
implementing Health IT and its effects on cost compared to the level that the
United States implements technology will be a useful comparison to make.
Globalization’s
role in healthcare was not one of my main focuses but this source came up when
I was searching for and was highly interesting. The notion of sharing medical
ideas and breakthroughs has been shaping our world for centuries but with the
recent advances in technology it is clear that it is an area that is lacking on
an international level. Researching the costs and benefits of adopting a global
healthcare system could provide another more insight into how the United States
could improve healthcare. Health information technology is an area where
globalization has had a relatively large effect which will be another point of
emphasis of this research project. Globalization has had a huge impact on
almost every industry in the United States and it is pertinent to look into it
more in respects to healthcare to see in which areas it would be appropriate to
implement.
Project Structure
I will be doing a series of posts that focuses on one country per week and investigate as many aspects of their healthcare system as possible. The way that cost is controlled, the incentive system for private companies, and the role the government plays in it all will be a sample of things I will discuss. The implications of how their system is set up and the decision of whether the US could apply some aspects of that country's system will be included as well.
These are great resources. Rather than trying to focus on one country per week, maybe you can look at these data and consider the factors that underlie the differences in OECD countries. Or how the US compares to other countries who are have (1) lower costs, (2) higher life expectancies, (3) public vs private differences, etc. Given that we have so few weeks left, this is what I'd recommend. You can pick the factors. I just threw out a few ideas.
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