Multiple frameworks that constitute the cornerstone of the healthcare system in the US differ substantially from those in high-income European countries. The US healthcare system provides clients with high-quality services and can boast of unique, highly efficient equipment. Nevertheless, the high costs of medical care, the complicated insurance system, and the diminished number of emergency and urgent care providers continue to undermine the efficiency of the entire system. Therefore, new policies are desperately needed in order to enhance the way millions of people receive urgent help.
In the US, patients who need urgent care cannot be absolutely sure that they will receive the much-needed help in a timely manner. The US spends approximately twice as much as other high-income countries on medical care (Papanicolas et al., 2018). Nevertheless, the current model that focuses on providing health care to patients only in large hospitals after a standardized registration procedure that can often be lengthy is not truly sustainable.
There are multiple policies that the government can introduce in order to significantly improve the current state of emergency services and urgent care. One of the policies implies the introduction of numerous out-of-hours primary care centers at hospitals. Moreover, such centers should provide a wide range of additional services, including home visits from general practitioners. It is essential to ensure that the urgent care centers are organizationally independent, as only such a model ensures their proper functioning.
Diversification of the ways hospitals across the country provides their services can substantially improve the overall quality of the healthcare system. Therefore, the federal government should develop and establish an efficient framework that seeks to introduce various types of facilities and teams that specialize in providing urgent help, including visiting certain types of patients. The examples of different European countries prove that the implementation of such strategies is not as expensive and time-consuming as many taxpayers believe.
References
Papanicolas, I., Woskie, L. R., & Jha, A. K. (2018). Health care spending in the United States and other high-income countries. Jama, 319(10), 1024 – 1039. Web.