Please provide a comment on the discussion below. Use peer reviewed resources and follow APA format.

The future of healthcare is a strong one as healthcare is one of those things that we humans cannot live without. As we have seen over the past decade healthcare advances have been primarily fueled by the major advances in technology so if I was to be the predictive expert as to where the healthcare industry would be going it would be geared towards technology advances.

The first trend that I see emerging is the focus on patient centered care and how technology will allow physicians to have better access to their patients no matter where they are. One avenue that I see emerging is the use of social media to monitor and communicate with their patients as well as the use of social media by patients to shop for services and pricing (Brown, 2018). Social media has exploded over the last decade and it has been the make or break avenue for everything from news to consumerism, so I can see this as the new way that healthcare will transform itself and become more widely available for patients all over the country.

The second trend I can see emerging off the technology explosion is the use of on demand doctor services that patients can access via their smart phones or computers allowing them to be seen where they are instead of having to worry about how to get to their physician. More and more patients are covered by healthcare thanks to the ACA, but they still struggle to find time to see their physicians because of work obligations or transportation limitations so they don’t receive the healthcare they need. With the expanding abilities of technology, it will essentially change the dynamic between patients and their providers and will hopefully improve the overall health of Americans as their access to healthcare improves.

The third trend I hope to see in healthcare is creating a higher value of healthcare at lower costs. Healthcare spending is literally out of control as providers and physicians alike are padding their billing and patients are paying the ultimate price. With the government issuing major new mandates to regain control of billing and patient care, healthcare organizations are using value-based purchasing to assess and report measures of quality to redefine benchmarks (Brown, 2018). To improve the value of healthcare at greatly lower costs the healthcare industry has to improve their metrics on patient centered care such as throughput or time it takes to shortening time it takes to see patients in the ER, patient satisfaction, and of course cost containment that will keep treatments consistent and costs appropriate and predictable (Brown, 2018).

References

Brown, Bobbi. (2018). Health Catalyst. Top 7 healthcare trends and challenges from our financial experts. Retrieved from https://www.healthcatalyst.com/top-healthcare-tren…