Patient Care Problems and its Financial Implications (Essay Sample)

Patient Care Problems and its Financial Implications
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Common Patient Care Problems
In the health care sector, the most important goal is offering the best care possible to the patient. However, this does not always happen, as there are cases of patients complaining of not receiving the best care. (Nardi, 2013) The hospitals are doing their best to deal with what they have and help the society. Some of the patient care problems are brought about by the lack of a good financial foundation. The main challenge is that one may want to offer help to all the needy individuals but at times it is not financial feasible.
The main challenge I am going to look into is the lack of enough staff. Most of the time the hospital needs some specialized skills or even at time a higher number of the general personnel but cannot afford to get this due to constraints in the budget. This results to patients not receiving the much needed care or having to wait for long hours before they get the medical attention they need.
The generally smaller hospitals will often transfer the patients with the need of specialized skills to larger hospitals and there is a risk that the patients may not make it to the hospitals. This means that the few with the skills are overworked and leaves them prone to making mistakes that could not have normally happened such as healthcare associated infections, surgical complications, handoff communications, medication errors, general fatigue, etc. (Nardi, 2013)
The main aim remains as issuing health care to everyone that needs it but it is becoming quite challenging. The government is doing its best to help with the situation such as the Obamacare in the USA. This is increasing the number of people receiving medical care but does not clearly help with the conditions in the hospitals staff.
The Impact of Poor Staffing
Not much can be done in the short run to solve the issue of specialized skills but on the issue of general staff such as nurses is paramount to the good health of the patient. It is a fact that hospitals with a ratio of 1:8 nurse to patient ratio experiences and average of five more additional deaths for every one thousand patients as compared to those hospitals with 1:4 nurses to patient ratio. The probability of a patient’s death increases by seven percent with each addition to a nurse that has to take care of them. (Nardi, 2013)
When a hospital has efficiently staffed its nurses then it reduces the cost it has to incur due to high nurses turn over that is directly correlated with over worked poorly staffed nurses. With u...