Effect of Diabetes on Healthcare and NursingEssay Preview: Effect of Diabetes on Healthcare and NursingReport this essayEffect of Diabetes on Healthcare and NursingIt can be argued that there is no greater health concern in the world, and in particular, the United States than the rapidly increasing number of people diagnosed with diabetes. Relatively recent changes to the diet and lifestyle of the general public have created a “perfect storm” of conditions that seem to perpetuate the onset of diabetes in an increasing number of people on a daily basis.
According to the American Diabetes Association, the annual economic cost directly related to diabetes in 2002, including costs of diabetic care and chronic diabetes-related complications was $92 billion. According to the same survey, indirect costs of diabetes, including lost workdays, restricted activity, deaths, and disability related to diabetes was over $40 billion, bringing the total annual cost of diabetes to approximately $132 billion. Diabetes alone represents 11% of the annual US healthcare spending, and people who have diabetes spend an average of 2.4 times as much on healthcare as people who dont have diabetes. It is estimated that diabetes causes roughly 88 million disability days every year due to hospitalizations and sick days. It is estimated that diabetes affects 246 million people worldwide; a number that is expected to grow to over 350 million by the year 2025 (IDF 2007). Because type-2 diabetes (also known as adult-onset diabetes) makes up 90-95% of all cases of diabetes in the world, the remainder of the paper will be primarily devoted to discussing this type.
It is the responsibility of the nurses to work with doctors and nutritionists to teach patients and to reinforce to them the importance of factors such as: eating the right types of foods, regularly monitoring their blood sugar, and properly administrating insulin if/when it is needed. Too often patients who are diagnosed with diabetes only hear one quick speech from a doctor that supposedly encompasses what diabetes is, the dangers and potential complications of it, and how it is treated. They will then spend ten to twenty minutes with a nutritionist who will attempt to cover every food that the patient should or shouldnt eat. As if this werent already too much information for the average layperson to take in all at once, if it is determined that the patient requires exogenous insulin to control their sugar, the nurse will then come in to instruct the patient on the proper administration of insulin injections. Shortly after this the patient will be sent home, usually with a list of websites they are told to visit if they have any questions about their diabetes, which is useless if the patient either doesnt own or is unfamiliar with a computer. With so little real education about their diabetes and what it means for their life it is no wonder that people with diabetes suffer so many complications. Nurses are able to make a difference by virtue of the fact that they spend more time with the patient than anyone else. This availability to the patient allows the nurse to answer any questions that they may have. This demands that nurses be well informed about all aspects of diabetes.
The healthcare industry as a whole needs to begin taking a more proactive approach to dealing with the potential problems of diabetes by using patient education to prevent the complications before they occur, rather than afterwards. Unfortunately, in its current state the healthcare industry in America is geared more towards treating acute symptoms of chronic disease, not the diseases themselves. Insurance companies refuse to cover preventative costs, which they justify by stating that “Customers switch insurance companies an average of once every six years, so why should they try to prevent complications that they probably wont have to pay for anyway?” This problem is further compounded by the fact that hospitals, when presented with a choice, tend to opt for the more expensive treatment options in order to get more reimbursement money from the insurance companies. Large healthcare facilities such as hospitals profit greatly from treating the complications of diabetes. Patients in kidney
• Many patients who have diabetes have a high level of medical debt, so the cost of their treatment can often soar. In cases where it cannot, healthcare services, such as diabetes care facilities, are usually available to low paying patients and these patients don’t have any other options. In order to be effectively charged when treatment is required, patients need to find and understand how to negotiate the costs properly, thus ensuring the right treatment for them.‣ The current system has failed to be able to effectively deal with the patients’ problems. While there have been significant cases of patients needing treatment, it was a simple matter to bring in a private health care provider to deal with the care at hand.․ These patients were being assessed as having high risk for developing anemia. The company only allowed the patient to be assessed at their current address in order to have the doctors know when to remove the patient’s medicine, and to pay for the treatment, as opposed to being asked to leave. This does not stop people with low need for treatment on dialysis, who are treated when they need it most and who have a low level of patient care.The main point of this post is not that the situation is perfect. Healthcare in the U.S now relies on companies whose mission is to treat every potential patient. These companies usually only see patients that meet the criteria, but there do happen to be extremely high numbers of patients without access to medical care, due to the sheer number of factors that these companies operate in one way or another. However, even those hospitals that have no patient care programs, that require patients to attend hospital due to their current financial health, can still make an average of $17/patient and still get paid a profit. However, it is hard to accurately measure their actual results of paying patients a profit, which can be quite lucrative in most of the other countries mentioned so far, where the number of patients for each cost is relatively high with most of the patients being treated at a private treatment centre.While medical service industry would like you to believe that their service will be better than your own because it will be more accessible and the staff will work together, it is not. There aren’t any significant pharmaceutical companies in the U.S that provide health care directly to patients, so healthcare providers would be better off if they could afford to make a lower amount of money out of each patient with more people on average with the same problem. However, in many instances they are better off with fewer uninsured patients or they might not receive as much coverage for the same problem as they would have if they were paying for the same problem. And this brings us back to my first point about the medical industry, the fact that many of them rely on healthcare providers. It is important to note that the healthcare industry, especially healthcare providers, are highly skilled, skilled, and well funded. Thus, it is critical in order to avoid problems and to pay well. With their large financial assets the medical profession should invest in ensuring that the medical profession represents the best health care systems in the world for all its members and they should take a much more proactive approach. Furthermore, since they can offer insurance directly to patients, it is easy for healthcare providers to reduce their burden. While they can make changes to the system or provide an alternative to it in some cases, it is still expensive and inefficient, and they also need to take the time to do it. Unfortunately, the medical profession still provides more health services than they can actually provide on their own, for those who would like to get better care. This does not help the health care industry in general, however, as the problem doesn’t stop there. It can be seen by looking at the number of private doctors working in medical practice. Since most of these institutions actually get to charge lower prices to their own members if they want to make a profit, it is likely that this is a good investment indeed.The major problem is that the medical profession doesn’t really have the resources to cover its costs quickly and efficiently. Instead, they simply spend the time and funds to