Economics of Health Care Delivery

Factors that influence the cost of health care include inflation, changes in population demography, technology, and intensity of services. The aging population is expected to affect health services more than any other demographic factor.

Jefferson County is rural area with several small towns scattered throughout the large county. More than half of the population are over the age of 65 and have incomes below the poverty level. You are a community health nurse specialist hired to help Jefferson County prepare for the increased need for health services.

You decide to implement a program that would open several nursing clinics operated by nurse practitioners and registered nurses. The nursing clinics will specialize in geriatric care and be located in easily accessible areas for Jefferson County residents. The nurse practitioners will provide primary care and referral services, and the registered nurses will provide health promotion education.

1. When developing and implementing your program, what microeconomic and macroeconomic factors do you need to be aware of because of their possible influence on your program?

2. How can you evaluate the economic effectiveness of your program?

3. Which of the following methods for providing healthy nutrition education to Jefferson County will be most efficient? Which will be the most effective method? Write a paragraph explaining your answer.

A. Hold morning and evening educational sessions at the nearby community center.

B. Set out informational pamphlets in the nursing clinic waiting room.

C. Provide in-home, one-on-one education, demonstration, and follow-up with high-risk individuals already being followed at the center.

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.