The Safety Net Hospitals: Role and Functions Essay

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Introduction

A safety net hospital is a very important facility to the low-income, uninsured and/or susceptible populations. Regardless of a person’s financial status, a safety net hospital should always ensure that it provides patients with stabilizing care at least. These hospitals rely on funding from government, Medicaid and related programs. However, sometimes these hospitals run out of funding due to one or more reasons and this greatly impacts on provision of health care.

Discussion

Effect of closure of Safety-Net Hospitals on Public Health

To start with, other hospitals would be flooded with uninsured patients and this would impair provision of health care as well as lead to increased opportunity costs that would see these other hospitals to closure as well. Eventually, it would be chaos for a state, nation or country. The ratio between doctors and patients would be very large, say I doctor for 50 patients in a day hence affecting the quality of health care given. In addition, closure of safety-net hospitals would mean less training ground for doctors. This is because safety-net hospitals are an excellent training ground for doctors from where they gain experience.

The area that would be greatly affect if provision of health care. Patients would have to spend a lot of time in the waiting bay and appointments would be scheduled for longer dates. In addition, due to imbalance between patients to doctor ratio, some services would have to be terminated and the risk of death would be on the increase. As a result, the overall health status of a population would decline and this would have a negative implication on the nation’s economy (Dewan & Sack, 2008).

Effect of Economic Recession on Safety Net Providers

A recession is associated with loss of employment and inflation. This usually affects the health sector in that most people end up being uninsured or without public coverage. Subsequently, there is increased demand for health services from uninsured people and as such, the safety net providers experience greater pressure than when there would be no economic recession. However, there is reluctance by safety net providers to provide health care to uninsured patients and as such, there is higher use of hospital emergency departments. This arises from the need to provide at least stabilizing care to all patients despite their lack of coverage as stipulated by the law.

An economic recession can lead to reduced funding due to lack of economic growth and development and as such safety net providers would lack the necessary and adequate resources and equipment required for provision of health. This would subsequently lead to reduced quality of health care and health status. Safety net providers would experience a reduced volume of insured patients due to delayed elective hence creating additional strain on the already fragile budget (Felland, et al. 2010).

The importance of Health Reform in the state of North Carolina

Health reforms will help reduce business tax credit so that 124,000 small businesses would more easily provide coverage to their workers and easily secure premiums. As of now, small businesses suffer the most as they pay approximately 18% more on coverage and 3 times more on premiums as compared with large businesses. Therefore, making coverage and premiums affordable for small business would be of great impact on the state’s economy.

The support of early retirees in getting health coverage would prevent agony of the retirees when sick due to lack of sufficient funds required while seeking medical help. Covering retirees will help reduce high death rates and subsequently promote improved quality of life. The productive generation on the hand would greatly benefit from new consumer protections in the insurance market. This would be attributed to lifetime coverage hence there would no need of worrying about lack of money if the coverage ran out. This is very essential because, everyone would be covered including children, and the insurance companies would not have to abandon people when they get sick. This would help prevent loss of money and instead create a good ground on which to secure one’s health thus, improve overall population health and quality of life.

The inclusion of children and young adults into the coverage program is yet another positive action in as far as health reform is concerned. This way, the health condition of everyone in the state is taken care of and this promotes productivity and economic growth. This also included individuals with pre-existing conditions, where affordable coverage options should be made available to them. These kinds of reform would ensure that people are attended to immediately when sick and provided with quality health care to foster quick recovery (The Affordable Care Act, 2011).

Conclusion

It is very important that the essence of safety net hospitals become realized. They help to ensure that patients are out of danger despite their inability to pay medical bills. Various programs should be established to ensure that safety net hospitals never run out of funds despite an economic recession. This will help prevent closure of such hospitals hence improve the overall health status within a population and improve the quality of health care.

References

Dewan, S., & Sack, K. (2008). A Safety-Net Hospital Falls into Financial Crisis. The New York Times. Web.

Felland, L., Cunningham,.P, Cohen, G., November, E. & Quinn, B. (2010). The Economic Recession: Early Impacts on Health Care Safety Net Providers. Research Brief No. 15. Center for Studying Health System Change. Web.

The Affordable Care Act: Immediate Benefits for North Carolina. (2011). Web.

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