The Cost of the Health Care Workforce

The Cost of Health Care Workforce

Team F: Michelle Amos, Natasha Haskins, Saneeka Hunter, Oscar Ivy, and Monroe Simpson

MHA/543

January 22, 2018

Dr. Lawrence Fergus












The Cost of Health Care Workforce

There are many costs within the health care industry. One of these costs are labor driven costs. These costs must be carefully evaluated like all other costs within health care such as supplies. There are several drivers which can be identified within a health care facility such as the number of employees, productivity boosts, and personnel benefits. These costs must be evaluated and solutions are created to address each labor cost. Identifying current labor cost is only the start, but future changes and solutions must be addressed as well. This provides a proactive response to combat any challenge a facility may face in the future.

Key Drivers of Labor Costs

The facility that receives many clients in a day will need to increase the number of trained workers to treat the patients to avoid overwhelming the available employees. As such, the number of employees is key factor influencing the labor cost. The aim increase or boost the productivity of the medical facilities is as well playing a significant role in increasing the costs. Additionally, the personnel benefits allocated to the healthcare employees to motivate them add much to the labor costs of a healthcare facility (Woolhandler, S., 2013).

Solutions

Current industry solutions that identify labor supply, technology, and productivity improvement are; for productivity improvements cutting costs, by making sure quality of services are achieved will help health care professionals. With technology medical equipment should not be thrown out but kept in good condition so medical professionals can use it for a longer period of time instead of getting new equipment. Lastly, with labor supply paying employees based on experience and nothing more or less will help cut cost for things like turnovers (Keehan, S. P., 2011).

Future Changes

Future changes in healthcare funding, and public support can be maintained or accelerated by Good governance ( GG ) in an effort to strengthen the functional magnitude of public bodies, and as a required prerequisite to receive donor funding. There is a lot of information concerning Good governance, yet there is little information on how to implement it (Houngbo, P.T., 2017). Organizations must first develop a strategy to implement a Good governance model that is in reference to lessons learned from past years of experience in policy development and implementation. This model should consist of six specific phases, 1) preparatory analysis, assessing the effects of previous policies, 2) stakeholder recognition, and problem analysis, 3) shared analysis and visioning, 4) development of policy instruments for pilot testing, 5) policy development and validation, and 6) policy implementation and evaluation.

Conclusion

In the work force it is known that sometimes the health care in it tends to be expensive and sometimes if they work it right it cannot be so costly. Facilities will have a increase in their numbers of the workers they trained to treat patients and to also avoid the outstanding number of available employees. Productivity is an objective to be increased and the goal to aim at. However, with the current industry solutions they have to deal with what to cut and making sure that the quality of services are still being kept to par.













References

Houngbo, P. T., Coleman, H. L. S., Zweekhorst, M., Cock, T. D., Medenou, D., & Bunders, J. F. G. (2017). A model for good governance of healthcare technology management in the public sector: Learning from evidence-informed policy development and implementation in benin. PLoS One, 12(1) doi:http://dx.doi.org.contentproxy.phoenix.edu/10.1371/journal.pone.0168842


Keehan, S. P., Sisko, A. M., & Truffer, C. J., et. al, (2011, August). National Health Spending Projections Through 2020: Economic Recovery And Reform Drive Faster Spending Growth. Health Affairs , (), . doi:https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2011.0662


Woolhandler, S., Campbell, T., & Himmelstein, D. U. (2013). Costs of health care administration in the United States and Canada. New England Journal of Medicine, 349(8), 768-775.