A healthcare system is a collection of individuals and organizations that function together to provide health care services to the population. In the United States, it includes all the clinicians, hospitals, insurance providers, patients, and private practitioners. The aim of any healthcare system is to provide universal access to healthcare services with an optimal number of preventative measures, disease treatments, and patient education to ensure the best possible patient outcomes (Ahluwalia, Damberg, Silverman, Motala, & Shekelle, 2017). While the goals of the system are clear, its current state in the USA requires improvement.
One of the primary issues with improving the current state of things is defining a high-performing healthcare system. According to Ahluwalia et al. (2017), due to obscurity of the definition and differences in opinions about the central criteria for measuring performance, it is difficult to elaborate a coherent framework that would lead to the emergence of appropriate policies, which could improve the current state of things. However, there are criteria that people agree upon worldwide. First, access to healthcare is a primary concern for healthcare systems all over the world. In the US, having health insurance is the requirement to have regular access to care services. Second, the cost of care is another matter that bothers healthcare authorities worldwide, and the US provides the most expensive services if compared to other developed countries (Ahluwalia et al., 2017). Third, mortality from all causes is another metrics that are widely used to measure the performance healthcare system. While these three criteria are universally accepted, the importance of every value is a matter of discussion.
In conclusion, the healthcare system is a broad term that includes all care providers and care purchasers in a country. The performance of a healthcare system is challenging to measure due to the absence of universal criteria. The US healthcare system needs to improve its access to health services and reduce the cost of care to become to provide patient-centred value-based care all around the country.
References
Ahluwalia, S. C., Damberg, C. L., Silverman, M., Motala, A., & Shekelle, P. G. (2017). What defines a high-performing health care delivery system: A systematic review. The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, 43(9), 450-459.