American Healthcare Trends in Hospitals

As major legislation passes through Congress in the latter part of the 21st century, health care reform is in the forefront of the American consciousness. Due to a radically changing health care landscape, American health care trends alter the very foundations of hospital operation. These important and evolving trends continue to change American health care on fundamental levels.

Hospitalism

• A hospitalist is a medical professional who provides treatment to patients while they are in the hospital. Hospitalists specialize in all aspects of patient care during the patient's hospital stay and do not maintain private practices. A 1996 report by R.M. Watcher and L. Goldman, of the University of California Department of Medicine, notes the rise of hospitalists in place of community-based physicians or academic health care specialists. The report concludes that the cost pressures of health care plans, increasingly complex inpatient medicine and time pressures on primary care physicians are causing this shift. The rise of hospitalists continues to rapidly increase in the second decade of the 21st century.

Clinical Integration

• Clinical integration facilitates patient care by unifying all of a patient's providers. Under clinical integration, hospitals and physicians share responsibility and information about patients, even as the patient's care evolves and she moves from one facility to another. Clinical integration improves hospital efficiency and patient-centered care, but it faces legal hurdles such as antitrust and kickback laws. According to the American Hospital Association, clinical integration emerged as a major hospital trend in the late 2000s.

Cost Control

• According to Hospital Review Magazine, Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) began to lose control of the hospital and health care industries in the late 1990s. Dick Clarke, president of the Healthcare Financial Management Association, says "The negotiating power slipped back into the hands of the providers." Power continues to shift and cost control loosens as health care costs continue to increase faster than inflation rates, thus pressuring providers to contain prices.

Patient Safety

• A highly influential 1999 Institute of Medicine report concluded that 44,000 to 98,000 people die annually as a result of inpatient hospital treatment errors. Since these findings, hospital concerns focus squarely on the quality and safety of inpatient treatment. According to Thomas Dolan, president and CEO at the American College of Healthcare Executives, this continuing trend toward safety improves quality while potentially lowering costs, due to its tendency to reduce waste within hospitals. As costs continue to increase, this move toward efficiency is a valuable trend.