Meddling in Healthcare delivery through undue bureaucratic Red Tapes is contrary to Personalized Healthcare.
Personalized healthcare and medical delivery systems are some of the many subjects that the administration is advocating. Amid the merit-based healthcare reimbursement model, medical agencies within the United States and beyond have initiated supporting patient engagement in their personal care and allegedly personalizing medical service. Nevertheless, this model faced a conflict once the COVID-19 pandemic was announced by the world health organization (WHO). For example, there was a delay in testing coronavirus, while many countries had already started doing so.
Today, many scholars seem to blame the sluggish response to COVID-19, at least partly, on the" government red tapes" that have utterly paralyzed the U.S. healthcare system.
The Concept of Government Red Tape and its Chronological Evolution
Red tape is an idiom citing legislation or conformity to legal statutes or rules contended to be unnecessary, rigid, or redundant. As part of a bureaucracy-driven system, it impedes or prevents effort or decision-making. It usually applies to governments, companies, and other large institutions.
Items referred to as "red tape" comprise filling out paperwork, reaping licenses, having multiple people or committees ratify a decision, and various low-level statutes that make the process of completing tasks slower and more complex.
The red tape was used initially by the ancient Spanish monarchy to bind the most crucial administrative files that compelled immediate dialogue by the Council of State. It merely served to separate particular issues treated in an ordinary organizational means, bound with typical thread.
Today, amid modernization of the administration process utilizing computers and information technology, we can discern an inheritance from the Spanish Empire's administration.
Some parts of the Spanish council's higher levels continue the tradition of utilizing red tape to bind important dossiers that need to be examined and keep them wrapped in red tape when the dossier is shut. One can easily recognize, not only in the United States but also across the globe, the obstacles of the practice that once may have been just but today turn out to be counterproductive.
The manifestation, "the cutting of red tape," commonly relates to lessening bureaucratic impediments to the particular procedure.
Healthcare Red Tapes and the existing Impediments
The Healthcare system has been poorly affected by overzealous red tapes, probably more than any other industry. It has slowed down medical care delivery to the ground, rising healthcare costs and lowering the distribution of quality care amongst various geographic and socioeconomic boundaries. Few well-recognized examples of the modern red tapes in U.S. healthcare are; starks law, value-based reimbursement system, and strict licensing practices.
One most recent impediment of the red tapes is rural healthcare and the implementation of public health efforts amid COVID-19 pandemics, which merely delayed timely response to the evolving crisis.
Reducing the regulatory obligation of practicing medicine is critical to reducing the already escalating healthcare costs. That is particularly important concerning the fee imposed by physician and healthcare services consolidation practice.
Government programs have hampered competition across many fronts, which have played a fundamental role in forming healthcare consolidation. The consolidation practices have served as a significant player in developing red tapes, hence raising costs. Another considerable problem besides raising healthcare costs is that they are driven by large hospital networks entertaining anti-competitive behaviors, such as mandating payers to include in their policies, preventing the inclusion of rivals in payer structures. They also engage in practices that would minimize price transparency.
Congress does not uncommonly listen to red tapes; however, this term is often dismissed about things like the Medicare program.
COVID-19 and Government Red Tape
Undoubtedly, government administrations worldwide have cut various red tapes to enhance proper response to the Coronavirus pandemic. However, this response is merely based on immediate requirements to prevent the novel virus infection from spreading.
An open letter to the congress from 83 participants in the Health Policy Consensus Group and other healthcare leaders- petitioned major yet continual reforms to government red tape on healthcare affairs. Within the request- articles included demanded that policymakers:
- Make it simpler for patients to access personal, "portable" health insurance" that travels with them between jobs.
- Provide better opportunities for patients to link with their physicians of choice, including by phone, email, and video meeting.
- Relax the option for patients to own and control accounts to reimburse for their medical care.
- Furthermore, patients should be protected from receiving surprise medical bills through the proper establishment of information and cost transparency structure and access to prior cost estimates, so patients don't face unexpected out-of-network tolls.
Today, there is an argument between those who want to exert even more government control over our health sector and those who favor giving patients more choice and control and allowing the creativity we have seen in this crisis.
The Covid-19 pandemic was one of many wake-up calls that alerted the administration that we must cut the red tapes before a similar crisis happens if they intend to prevent future delays and malfunction in the healthcare system. But. The question is not whether reducing red tape is necessary but if the government is willing to take such a step out of an emergency.
Government Red Tape is a Monopoly
The government red tape is a monopolistic endeavor. It follows the rules of paternalism that limit an individual's autonomy and option intending to promote the interest of a few others. Any Red tape represents a control stopcock against market and system sovereignty, even though it is often conveyed as an assurance measure by the bureaucrats. It assures the interest of the selected few in exchange for the potential options of the populace.
Individuals may perceive different levels of red tape founded on the casual institutional context, particularly those implemented by those in the role to create rules and regulations. Informal institutions change gradually, if at all. Suppose we accept that rule‐makers are unable to alter informal institutions that are mainly driving perceived red tape. In that case, it may be challenging for moving regulatory reform programs at the organizational and national levels to deliver persuading conclusions.
Government organizations' red tape is conveyed due to the emphasis on government accountability or the absence of a bottom line. In other words, red taping is the government's bureaucratic means of expressing regrets or accepting responsibility to take preventative action, notwithstanding the potential consequences of limiting the outcome of such decisions.
Among the numerous discourses of the COVID-19 pandemic, we can realize how one‐size‐fits‐all laws, governed by bureaucracy, impede an abrupt and creative response to an unfolding public health emergency. For instance, On March 30, the naval hospital ship U.S.N.S. Comfort docked in New York port, holding 1,000 hospital beds and 1200 staff, ready to help treat the epidemic afflicted patients who have taken a heavy toll on New York municipal area citizens. Yet, as of April 3, only twenty patients were treated on the navy hospital ship. Because according to the navy protocols, no patients (civilians) are allowed to be directly admitted to the vessel. They must first be seen at civilian hospitals for triage and be tested for the virus before being transported to the ship. If one thinks intelligently, the latter policy does zero to unburden packed emergency rooms and overworked staff.
The flawed covid19 response by the federal administration is not one of a kind regulatory inflexibility that has blocked the way of naval hospital ships offering care in times of calamity. Puerto Rico also suffered similar problems when the Comfort arrived in San Juan in 2017 to help sufferers of Hurricane Maria.
Individualism and Red Tape
Administrative red tapes are one size fits all, hence against individual autonomy. Furthermore, since the latter is the most fundamental factor in establishing personalized healthcare, red videos are counterproductive to their personalization.
In recent months, federal and state administrations have yielded many redundant cookie-cutter regulations that hinder the rapid response to this emergency.
The centrally plotted regulations with its attached red tapes cannot work because the central government does not have enough information about an individual's local communities and supply and demand; therefore, it will inevitably slump.
Regulations have their place and are still crucial to ensuring quality, integrity, access, and safety in our healthcare system. But, if rules are misguided, outdated, or overly complicated, they can have an overpowering effect on healthcare conveyance by shifting the physician's emphasis away from the patient's needs and directing it toward unnecessary paperwork, eventually increasing the cost of care. That is why any burdensome red tape undermines the attention of patient care.
#redtape #government #healthcare #policy
This is original content from NewsBreak’s Creator Program. Join today to publish and share your own content.
Comments / 0