Executive Summary of the Solutions Identified
In order to prevent the defined problems, the major focus should be made on increasing profits through considering high medical services utilization, introducing innovative technology, and spreading out the cost for implementing health care reforms.
All these actions should be fulfilled immediately in order to prevent the recession of the company’s revenues. It should also be stressed that all solutions are directed on the modernization of the production process and establishment of competitive standards.
Rationale for Selecting the Solutions to be Included into Plan
Considering the problem of medical services utilization, it is necessary to analyze cost management polices of the most widely used medical services (Kongstvedt, 2009, p. 98). Therefore, if there is an increase in medical services utilization, the costs will increase accordingly, which can lead to the decline of profitability
. In this regard, the presented solutions, particularly their focus on spreading the markets with low utilization of medical services and increasing the number of plan participants, will lead to the increase of the premiums.
It is impossible to ignore the fact that health care industry is now under the onslaught of technology (Wickramasinghe, Gupta, and Sharma, 2005, p. 121).
Therefore, there is an urgent necessity for implementing innovations and advancement of information networks within the organization. While implementing new technology, the managerial staff should make a primary focus on the analysis of data quality and privacy of information.
The implementation of health care reforms is inevitable because this sphere requires constant improvement and modernization to sustain a competitive advantage and to meet consumers’ needs.
More importantly, the necessity to introduce healthcare reform is closely connected with the problem of cost, quality, and standards (Fernandez, 2010, p. 8). Therefore, reorganization of resources and providing extra funding is crucial for insuring the consumers with high quality and standards.
In order to lessen the expenses on the medical services, it is necessary to conclude new agreements with pharmaceutical providers or provide amendments to the existing contracts. Certainly, such an approach is quite difficult and, therefore, laws and regulations should be introduced for carrying out this task.
While negotiating a new contract, it is, first of all, necessary to pay attention to the insurance and reimbursement that can reduce your medical deduction, which can be applicable to other types of medical costs (Lasser, and LAST, 2010, p. 354). Such an approach, therefore, are proved to be quite effective and reliable.
Evaluating the Solutions and Proving Opportunities for Improvement
An in-depth analysis of the solutions identified has revealed that all aspects and strategies that will be applied in future can contribute to the improvement of the current situation within UNH Company. However, some of them are not justified due to inaccuracy and inconsistency of decisions.
In particular, attention should be paid to the problem of high medical expenses that can be hardly improved by negotiating new contracts and changing pharmaceutical provides. This is explained by the fact, that the introduction of new partners and provides can be risky because it can have a negative impact on the quality of the product.
The best way in this situation is to introduce bidding by presenting concrete conditions and requirements. The rest of the proposed solutions can be quite effective because all of them are connected with the quality improvement and profit management.
Reference List
Fernandez, B. (2010). Health Care Reform: An Introduction. US: DIANE Publishing.
Kongstvedt, P. R. (2009). Managed Care: What Is It and How It Works. US: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Lasser, J. K., and LAST (2010). J. K. Lasser’s Your Income Tax 2011: For Preparing Your 2010 Tax Return.
Wickramasinghe, N., Gupta, J. N. D., and Sharma, S. K. (2005). Creating Knowledge-based Healthcare Organizations.