Technology in the Health Care Sector (Essay Sample)

Healthcare Services
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Abstract
Human services ensure that the quality of life in the society is maintained or improved to ensure comfortable living. Healthcare is a human service that ensures that people in the society are healthy. The barriers to efficient health care services include inadequate funding in the public sector, planning to ensure resources are efficiently used and communication between the players in the industry. Using technology improves the quality of services provided in any human service.
Human services can be defined as those services that meet human needs and are crucial in the society. Human services can be provided by the public sector or the private sector where the costs to the individual varies. The services provided by the public sector are usually cheap and meant for the general public. Services offered by the private sector are usually expensive and are afforded by the rich few in the society. Human services are affected by barriers that affect the delivery of the crucial services. Adequate planning, inadequate funding and empowerment are some of the challenges affecting the human services. The use of technology has been identifies as a good way to ensure that some of these barriers are reduced. Technology refers to the use of available technological resources to make work easier.
The human service under evaluation in relation to these barriers is the healthcare sector that provides health care services. Healthcare is an important human service as it ensures that the quality of life in the society is improved through the provision of quality services. Public healthcare facilities are faced with many challenges due to the high population of people in the community that depend on the centers. This causes a strain on the facilities that needs to be handled to ensure that the human services are efficient. The government needs to address the issue to ensure that the population benefits from quality healthcare that will enable the quality of life in the society to improve (Van, 2004).
Funding is one of the barriers to human services that need to be improved to ensure that the society is comfortable. Public health institutions get their funding from the government through insurance firms and contributions by donors. The health institutions also derive their funding from services paid for by the patients. The barriers affecting quality healthcare with regards to funding is collection of payment from patients and following up the patients to pay for the medical services provided. The health centre end up serving many patients, but their cash flows reflect low amounts of revenue. This affects how the health centers go about their business of providing health services.
The hospital has bills to pay and equipment to maintain thus the inadequate collection of revenue will affect service delivery. Community development incorporates society to ensure that the community living standards are improved. Community development enables the community to concentrate on practices that will improve the quality of health care and provide adequate funding for healthcare facilities. The activists and professionals involved in community development can formulate methods or propose programs that will ensure adequate collection of funds and generation of revenue.
Technology is one of the elements that may be incorporated into the healthcare centres to improve revenue collection. Introduction of electronic health records in the healthcare sector will enable the organization to collect revenue in the medical centre. Electronic health records enable the medical team to collect medical information about the patient and ensure that it is easy to tract the patient. Electronic health records reduce the paper work stored by the medical institution and enable the organization to automatically track payments and its debtors. Electronic health records enable the organization to monitor its payments and ensure that funds are spent for the right resources. Electronic health records enable detection of fraud and ensure that the quality of health care in the society is improved.
Information storage in the healthcare is crucial to ensure adequate communication in the organization and security of the stored information. Information storage and communication will affect the quality of health care if information storage and communication is not adequately planned. Conventional methods of information storage and communication in the healthcare sector involve the use of documents which resulted to large amount of paper work. This information was stored in physical stores that take up space. Collection of physical documents is prone to mix up with other documents from other patients and damage. Providing back up for documents is expensive, thus many institutions lack back up documents.
Community development has enabled the healthcare sector to improve communication and information storage. Community development will facilitate communication between the professionals in the healthcare sector. Communication and information sharing in the healthcare sector enables the doctors to diagnose ailments easily and effectively saving time and money. Communication between the medical professional to facilitate provision of quality health services and enables the organization to avoid unethical medical practices (Westbrook, 2007).
Technology has been incorporated in information collection and storage to ensure provision of quality health care. Video conferencing has enabled medical teams to operate over long distances and provide consultation services. Doctors have been able to perform surgery over long distances and provide medical advice through teleconferencing which has been facilitated by technology. Technology has also enabled doctors to identify diseases in time, enabling the patient to save on medical expenses and heal in time. Effective use of technology will enable the organization to reduce the barriers to communication and information storage.
The use of technology also ensures that the information is stored safely in such a way that information will not be lost. The mode of information storage is cheap and is not exposed to physical damage. The medical centers can use software acquired from Microsoft to manage the information in the organization. Database collection software like Microsoft access or excel can be used by the medical organization to store and manage patient information effectively.
Another barrier affecting the efficient use of resources in the healthcare sector is the lack of adequate planning in the organization. Plann...