Introduction
Today, healthcare organizations are striving to be proactive – take active steps toward education and prevention instead of dealing with the consequences of letting a situation aggravate. This strategy allows companies to be in control of what is happening and make well-informed decisions, given the vast impact that they may have on customers. This essay will discuss why being proactive helps health care organizations cut expenses, keep communities safe, and predict future challenges.
Proactive Approach and Economic Efficiency
In today’s world, when it comes to diseases, it is no longer enough to be reactive. Many disorders are well-researched, diagnosable at early stages, or even preventable altogether. If a health problem does not have a chance to get too serious due to a timely intervention, it will lessen the economic burden of patients, the medical facility that they are admitted to, and third parties (insurance companies). For example, a recent study has clearly demonstrated that chronic conditions cost the US economy billions of dollars each year. According to Waters and Graf (2018), obesity alone accounts for more than $1.7 trillion in annual expenses. Being morbidly overweight is associated with many other diseases that are quite expensive to monitor and treat, such as heart diseases and diabetes. These examples clearly show why healthcare organizations should use their leverage to educate communities, for instance, on healthy dietary habits and benefits of doing sports. Not everyone has access to quality education as well as resources for self-learning. By promoting a healthy lifestyle and launching intervention programs, organizations can prevent a problem from even emerging in the first place.
Keeping Communities Safe
It goes without saying that not money but citizens’ wellness should take front and center of healthcare organizations’ proactive policies (Geppert & Shelton, 2016). To keep communities safe, healthcare strategies should hold early intervention as their primary objective. To develop the example with obesity further, organizations can target children who already struggle with their weight to break the cycle of obese parents passing their unhealthy habits onto their children. In a study by Knight, Cole, Dod, and Oakley (2017), seven Mississippi schools enrolled in a health program with the focus on sports and clean eating. After nine months, the researchers saw a significant decrease in BMI-scores (body-mass index) and improved aerobic capacity scores in five out of seven schools. A normal weight is an important health marker: it reduces the risk of heart disease, stroke, some types of cancer, relieves back and joint tensions, and optimizes the immune system (Knight et al., 2017). Therefore, by being proactive, healthcare organizations can spread knowledge across communities, increase their life quality, and prevent them from having issues in the future.
Conclusion
As the world is becoming more interconnected, organizations are making an effort to maintain communication with their customers and request feedback to improve their policies, goods, and services. Healthcare organizations are not an exception: today, they need to work closely with communities to see the full picture and address issues in a timely manner. As opposed to reactive, a proactive approach helps to pinpoint a problem before it gets serious. By doing so, healthcare organizations can help communities to stay healthy by promoting wellness and providing educational resources. On a larger scale, this strategy can prove to be economically effective as it lightens the burden both on the organization and national levels.
References
Geppert, C. M., & Shelton, W. (2016). Health care ethics committees as mediators of social values and the culture of medicine. AMA Journal of Ethics, 18(5), 534-539.
Knight, K. B., Cole, J. W., Dodd, L. M., & Oakley, C. B. (2017). Effects of a school- based intervention on BMI z-scores and fitness parameters in Mississippi delta children. International Journal of School Health, 4(3), e13793.
Waters, H., & Graf, M. (2018). The cost of chronic diseases in the US. Web.