THE CHANGING FACE OF HEALTH CARE
Recent trends in health care, such as the shift to managed care, are increasingly transforming both the practice of medicine and the manner in which patients receive healthcare. Such a transformation presents challenges for health care professionals and patients alike, as they seek to adapt to the currently evolving health care system. The managed care approach, which is concerned with the economic aspects of health care, may make it difficult for physicians, nurses, and others to administer the standard of care they feel patients need, while patients consequently may receive a diminished level of care as a result of the economic constraints imposed by such an approach. Physicians may resent the intrusion of some managed care organizations into the very practice of medicine, which may result in the pressure to either overcharge or undertreat their patients. Patients, on the other hand, may be apt to suffer the consequences of receiving health care from a medical profession which functions increasingly more like a business enterprise than a healing art in which patients’ needs are of primary concern.
Despite the ethical problems associated with the managed care approach, this approach has many positive aspects, in that it can reduce overtreatment, encourage disease prevention, promote patient responsibility, and make health care available to those who previously would have been denied treatment. It is imperative that the managed care approach also be primarily concerned with the quality of health care administered to patients, instead of being overly focused on the cost of such care.
This summer’s conference, “The Changing Face of Health Care,” which will be held July 17-19 in Deerfield, Illinois (see page 4), will explore ways in which the healthcare system can provide all patients with the health care they need without overburdening those providing the care. As Center Board member David Schiedermayer notes: “While we do not expect to change the face of health care overnight, we look forward to gathering together to ask that the Lord lift up His countenance upon us and give us His peace so that with changed faces we can better work toward changing the face of health care in this country.”