Paper Topic:

Resources and Operational Management in Health Care

Resources and operations management in health care essay Health care is the No . 1 domestic industry in the United States and one of the largest industries in the developed world . Health care systems present many complex problems that could benefit from operations research-type analysis and applications . OR professionals , however , have generally neglected the field Less than 2 percent of INFORMS members - about 180 - belong to the Health Application Section . Eighty of those are academics and another 30 are students . Twenty-two call themselves practitioners , 10 are consultants , and only two actually work at

a hospital . Many OR people have written at least one on health care or have been involved in at least one health care project - and then moved on to something else Very few OR people specialise in health care Why don 't more OR people work in health care ? The health care industry faces many of the same issues confronting other industries , but with some significant political differences . If you try working in the health care area without understanding the politics behind the issues , you are asking for some grief . At the same time , health care represents a huge segment of the economy , and it needs our help

In 1999 , the United States spent 1 .2 trillion on health care 662 billion in private money 549 billion in public money , primarily federal Medicare and Medicaid funding , according to the U .S . Health Care Financing Administration . The 1 .2 trillion represents 13 percent of the U .S . gross domestic product for 1999 (The percent of GDP devoted to health care in the United States has been dropping recently due in part to strong GDP in the past eight years ) In more personal terms , the per-capita annual expense for 1999 equates to 4 ,358 Typically , it takes two to three years to collect reliable information on health care spending . The system is large and not well integrated and reporting is slow . Hence , the figures for 1999 are the most recent real numbers . However , according to HCFA projections , the United States spent 1 .4 trillion in 2001 , which equals 13 .4 percent of GDP or 5 ,043 per person . The HCFA 's projection for 2008 is 2 .3 trillion or 15 .5 percent of the GDP Corresponding figures for Canada indicate that Canadian health expenditures of the GDP or 1 ,828 per ca pita . The figures are from the Canadian Institute for Health Information , which estimates that 2001 expenditures rose to 64 .2 billion , or 9 .4 percent of the GDP and 2 ,066 per capita (Note : All monetary figures are expressed in U .S . dollars and were reported as of December 2001 on the HCFA 's and CIMI 's respective Web sites . The conversion rate used 1US 0 .62633CN Most people are astounded by the per-capita expenditures . Individual health care costs are generally much lower than that , perhaps a few hundred dollars per year . In fact , the elderly consume the bulk of health care funds during the last few...

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