What are the Impacts of Health Care Costs on Service Delivery?

Health care cost increases are the result of a number of factors. New treatments, high rates of chronic disease, technology, overuse of medical care and health care system inefficiencies all share part of the blame. Families are paying more out-of-pocket for their care than ever before. The average worker contributed $3,354 toward his family's insurance policy in 2008 compared to 2000 when he paid just $1,619 for the same coverage, according to Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit health care research organization. The increasing cost of health care has impacted the delivery of services in several ways.

Reduces Access to Care

• Rising health care costs make it difficult for families to pay their medical bills, and when they cannot afford to pay, they do not receive care. The Center for Studying Health System Change, or HSC, released a national study in 2008 that showed 57 million families reported medical bill payment troubles in 2007. The study discovered that of the families that had outstanding medical bills, 10 percent were denied care because of their debt. Patients reported that providers turned them away or referred them to another provider.

Limited Services and Increased Fees

• As health care costs continue to grow, publicly subsidized health insurance programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, become more expensive for government to finance. Medicare per enrollee expenditures grew by as much as 96 percent from 2000 to 2008, according to Kaiser Family Foundation. It reports that Medicaid per enrollee expenditures increased 15 percent from 2000 to 2006. The rate of growth has forced government to cut benefits and shift a portion of health care delivery costs to enrollees in the form of higher co-pays and deductibles.

Improvement of Service Delivery

• Perhaps one positive outcome of higher costs is the push for providers to adopt strategies to deliver services more efficiently. For example, providers in medical facilities and hospitals are beginning to use electronic medical record keeping. Electronic medical record keeping offers multiple providers access to patient records via a computer, so providers can develop a treatment plan without the need to duplicate tests and procedures. Providers also are employing other evidence-based medicine approaches, such as consumer-directed health care, disease management and provider pay-for-performance programs, in an effort to reduce costs and improve the delivery of services.