Everyone should prioritize their health because it affects their ability to be productive and how much they can participate in daily activities. Individuals who are in good health are disease-free and have effective bodies. Individuals need direction on how to maintain their health. To assist people in managing their health, researchers and medical professionals conduct studies and create guidelines. A health care delivery system is a group that offers resources and medical care to those who are ill or injured as well as promotes their continued health through preventative care. A health care delivery system is defined as all the facilities, groups, personnel, and assets that support a certain population in maintaining their health.
The United Nations (UN) established the World Health Organization (WHO) as a global agency in 1948. A coalition of 193 nations, the UN was established in 1945 with the goal of promoting global tolerance, peace, justice, and respect for human rights. The WHO was established to encourage collaboration in the delivery of healthcare internationally. The WHO gathers information about medical services and results on a global scale. The start of the Covid-19 pandemic in late 2019 served as a fantastic illustration of how the WHO strives to manage global health.
The WHO gathered data from across the globe on the treatment given to individuals with Covid-19 and its results. The WHO was able to offer advice and information on “best practices” because to the worldwide data. The resources that a particular country has to offer must be taken into account when the WHO advises a nation. The WHO provides indirect patient care by offering recommendations and data that health care delivery systems utilize to create standards and protocols for providing direct patient care. The WHO lacks the authority to compel nations to provide health care to their citizens because their primary function is to provide health care guidelines, not direct health care services.
Each nation has a distinct system for delivering healthcare, as well as a variety of resources at its disposal to do so. The US health care delivery system is relatively unique in that it does not have a single organization that offers health care to its population, making it more difficult to deliver healthcare there than in other nations. Health care provided by a single organization is referred to as universal health coverage (UHC). Other than the US, other nations also frequently do this.
A Health Care Delivery System Consists of Four Parts
Four main parts or functions can be found in healthcare delivery systems:
Services: Assistance with healthcare is available.
Consumers: Individuals in need of both curative and preventive healthcare.
Personnel (providers): Those who deliver medical care. This covers all healthcare professionals, including physicians, nurses, physical therapists, nursing assistants, hospitals, nursing homes, providers of medical equipment, and others.
Payment: The means of paying for medical treatments. Payment arrangements are a crucial component of any system for delivering healthcare because it can be expensive.
How to pay for the services is a crucial component of any system for delivering health care. There are several ways to pay, including by the patient themselves, by a single government agency (universal health coverage), or by insurance companies. Both individuals and businesses can obtain insurance on behalf of their employees.
Delivery: Service providers must be compensated.
Insurance is a way to pay for potential future medical expenses in advance. In the US, an individual who purchases insurance from an insurance company is referred to as a subscriber. In return, the insurance provider will cover medical expenses for the subscriber. There are additional initiatives that the government oversees and funds using tax dollars.
Processing payments on behalf of both the payee (who is paying for the health care) and the payor requires personnel (organization receiving health care payments).
American healthcare delivery
In America, healthcare is delivered differently than in other nations. Unlike to many other nations that use a single payer system, often known as universal health coverage, the US uses a variety of mechanisms to pay for the delivery of healthcare. In the past, local, independent doctors in the US supplied healthcare as needed as the foundation of the country’s health care delivery system. Family members or members of the community, such as midwives who delivered newborns, supplied the majority of the healthcare. Frequently, the small town or traveling doctor had to train the family member to administer care.
Patients and their families made what they could to pay the doctor. Frequently, families used trading of goods and services to pay for medical care. A family would not receive medical care if they were unable to pay. By the Civil War in the 1860s, nursing care and hospitals had become more widespread. As the US became more urbanized in the early 1900s, access to health care also improved. As more hospitals opened, doctors started collaborating to deliver care. For the services they rendered, healthcare providers were compensated. The phrase “price for service” applied to this. As in the past, a family had to go without health care if they couldn’t afford it.
Public health improved as the nation became more urbanized and vaccinations were created.
