Healthcare Management
Healthcare Management
Healthcare management, also known as healthcare administration, is the management, oversight, or administration of healthcare systems, hospitals, public health systems, and the entire hospital networks. The goals of healthcare management are to ensure that employees are hired, individual departments run smoothly, information is disseminated efficiently, and qualified employees. Several factors, including budgetary constraints, DIY healthcare, diversity imperative, and biotech/pharma/technology intersection with patients, influence healthcare management. This essay discusses how DIY healthcare impacts healthcare management.
Do-It-Yourself (DIY) healthcare is a system of healthcare where patients play a crucial role in the management and treatment of their health conditions. The DIY healthcare revolution has shifted the primary goals of the healthcare sector from sickness to wellness, from inaccessible and expensive to easily accessible to affordable (Richterich, 2020). It has also shifted the healthcare management system from government to individuals. These shifts result from the convergence of individual users, knowledge, and mobile technology that has made it possible for individuals to manage various aspects of their health (Richterich, 2020). Additionally, the unsustainability of conventional healthcare, the omnipresent threat of global pandemics, and the increased burden of non-communicable diseases bring the world and the healthcare system to a tipping point.
The rise and popularity of DIY healthcare allow a holistic integration of low and high tech, the social and the personal, and traditional and futuristic knowledge into the healthcare system and its management (Jennings & Hussain, 2020). DIY healthcare allows mobile technology users to access and contribute valuable knowledge for decision-making that affects wellness, health, and prevention. This new DIY healthcare system empowers users to create personal health ecosystems connecting to big data resources (PwC Health Research Institute, 2020). When guided by an open-minded and intelligent approach that embraces all evidence-based health information regardless of historical, cultural, or geographic origins, users manage their health and create a valuable structure for a global health system.
DIY healthcare systems allow individuals to access valuable health information through evidence-based health advice, experience, and knowledge. It also allows people to measure and assess their health-related performance parameters such as rest, moods, exercise, physiological, and diet metrics using various quantified self-tools (Richterich, 2020). The knowledge acquired using various tools also empowers users to take practical steps towards improving their health by growing herbs, fruits, vegetables, and other plants for dietary prevention and affordable cures (PwC Health Research Institute, 2020). Lastly, the users can use the existing data to develop an individualized wellness program and lifestyle to deal with their health issues.
In 2020, DIY healthcare gained popularity in the U.S as consumers began to reap benefits from investment by the country’s industry in data collection, storage, and analysis. Apart from offering tools to monitor and test various aspects of their health, various companies are building business structures that allow consumers to access their data with attached insights (Jennings & Hussain, 2020). New companies are collecting electronic data, sleep patterns, lab work, and steps to give people a holistic view of their health where it is heading.
Health organizations are using data to assist individuals in making better health and financial decisions. They also allow them to access more clinical trials because of the genomic information. As a result, many individuals gain control over their health data and use them to make better decisions about their finances and health (Edenfield et al., 2019). This DIY healthcare revolution is pressuring traditional health systems to give new players and consumers more information and may find opportunities to give more access. Organizations seeking such information often use federal HIPAA requirements to extract and request EHR data to allow users to pool medical information from various providers and seek different opinions (Edenfield et al., 2019). The increased popularity of DIY healthcare and the huge amount of health data generated significantly impact healthcare management.
Patients’ data security is one of the most critical roles of healthcare management. Each healthcare facility must ensure that all healthcare data are securely stored against access from unauthorized individuals (Jennings & Hussain, 2020). However, with the popularity of DIY devices and regulations allowing third parties to access medical records from healthcare facilities, such organizations find it difficult to ensure data security. Such third parties are particularly concerned about data privacy and security. Generally, when it comes to the use of data, few organizations find it difficult to work alone (Edenfield et al., 2019). Most of them have limited internal capabilities, require contract services to send or store data, lack data science talent, or mostly rely on contractors to analyze the data for them. Although the use of contractors helps drive efficiencies, it is easy to breach the data. As a result, all parties must access the data and be responsible for any misuse of data within their areas of influence (Edenfield et al., 2019). A high level of data security can be achieved by requiring vendors to alert the organization and the cybersecurity of any data breaches as soon as possible.
The risk related to data representation is another major challenge affecting healthcare management due to the increased adoption of the DIY healthcare system. According to Ellen Jorgensen, the New York-based Carver, DIY genetic testing is only for specific populations. Despite the increased innovation of technologies for DIY healthcare, the field is characterized by inequity caused by the trust and financial factors (Yamanoor & Yamanoor, 2021). The current trends reveal that although such great technologies are coming, they do not impact all people in the same way. Therefore, the data derived from such technologies are biased and may not be effective for generalization.
DIY healthcare also has some positive impacts on healthcare management. First, it reduces the workload in the hospital because many patients manage their health without going to the hospital. Self-testing kits have become common for monitoring blood glucose and testing pregnancy. DIY has made it possible to self-test and monitor several conditions from diabetes to sexually transmitted infections, from high blood pressure to urinary tract infections (UTIs). In the current COVID-19 pandemic era, self-care is no longer an option but a necessity. During the lockdown, only surgeries were booked for face-to-face, while all other access appointments took place online (Yamanoor & Yamanoor, 2021). When traditional health services stopped, DIY healthcare enabled patients to test themselves, interpret the results and undertake the necessary treatment measures with the virtual guidance of their nurses and doctors.
Additionally, DIY healthcare, particularly the do-it-yourself Digital Medical Centres (dMCs), have helped increase efficiency and reduce operational costs in various health facilities. Incorporating digital DIY healthcare services into the traditional healthcare system addresses the most pressing issues associated with using limited resources while improving quality, performance, and access to care (Jennings & Hussain, 2020). Additionally, DMC does not discriminate against patients based on risk, and there exist incentives for such services to under-provide their healthcare services.
Evidently, from the discussion above, it is clear that DIY healthcare has a significant impact on healthcare management. DIY healthcare allows individuals and patients to have control over their health through self-testing and diagnosis. The main challenge facing healthcare management due to adopting DIY healthcare is the security of data received from patients because third parties are allowed to access such critical data. However, DIY healthcare also increases efficiency and reduces the cost of healthcare.
References
Jennings, P., & Hussain, S. (2020). Do-it-yourself artificial pancreas systems: a review of the emerging evidence and insights for healthcare professionals. Journal of diabetes science and technology, 14(5), 868-877.
Edenfield, A., Colton, J. S., & Holmes, S. (2019). Healthcare and global tactical, technical communication in online trans-DIY Forums. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 433-457.
PwC Health Research Institute. (2020). Top health industry of 2020: Will digital start to show an ROI.
Richterich, A. (2020). When the open-source design is vital: the critical making of DIY healthcare equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Health Sociology Review, 29(2), 158-167.
Yamanoor, S., & Yamanoor, N. S. (2021, January). Position Paper: Low-Cost Solutions for Home-Based Healthcare. In 2021 International Conference on COMmunication Systems & NETworkS (COMSNETS) (pp. 709-714). IEEE.