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Health care is evolving. Despite the fact that we are hearing and reading of new diseases coming up among the population, such as the dreaded SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), and others, health care is also improving. The new trend is that it is getting more patient centered and more close to nature. Here are some of the changes that we will continue to see in the following years.1. The new trend in health care is that it will get more and more patient centered. More and more rooms in the hospitals are now air-conditioned for the convenience of the patient. More and more chemicals have been invented to fight off pain from the patient. Most injections are now administered no longer to the body directly but through the intravenous connection bringing liquid from a plastic container to the patient. The anesthesiologists have become experts in deadening the pain of an operation. The hospital building, rooms and surroundings are now cleaner than ever. Each room, even in the wards, have now a comfort room and bath facilities. In the 1980s there was a large government hospital for a million population which had only one comfort room for all the patients. This is no longer true today. Mercury-based thermometers and sphygmomanometer are now being replaced by digital ones, for the safety of the patients against mercury poisoning or contamination. Headrest in hospital beds can now be raised with a few turns of a handle. More wheel chairs are now available to move patients around with little discomfort for them. Ambulances are available to transfer patients from homes to hospitals and back to their homes or other hospitals. Indeed more and more conveniences are now given to the patients. We will see more of these as the years go by.2. Another new trend in health care is that there will be more and more return to nature, particularly herbs as curative agents. After all people are discovering that these herbs are as effective as the synthetic drugs and there are no or less bad side effects. People are getting more and more conscious of the food they eat. The number of vegetarians is increasing. More and more people are taking food supplements. As a result food supplements have multiplied. In one report we have 639 pages of listing of food supplements, each page containing around 40 names of food supplements. Food supplements, especially, the ones based on herbs will continue to multiply.3. We are going to see more people taking control of their health, especially in the area of preventing diseases. This is clearly now the new trend in health care. Perhaps this is just logical since the cost of consulting a physician is getting higher and higher, to cover up, some say, for the more and more expensive education the medical doctors are going through.4. As a result of people returning to herbs, governments are pressing for cheaper medicines. We will have cheaper medicines. An example is the sale of dextrose which has become cheaper with the use of plastic containers rather than glass. Medicines will continue to be more generic and less expensive. There are more and more drug stores selling only generic drugs.5. In general people will be getting more and more into alternative medicines. These are medicines that do not fall within the category of conventional medicine, the medical practice most of us are accustomed to because of our western culture. These include natural cures, chiropractice, herbs, traditional Chinese medicine, pranic or energy healing, meditation, hypnosis, etc. The new trend in the use of alternative medicine will continue in the years ahead.6. The diversification and specialization of health care personnel will continue to increase. Forty years ago it was the physician himself who put on the fluoroscopy machine, took the x-ray picture of his patient, analyzed it. Now we have medical technicians to do this. They even have a high sounding name now, medical technologists. Besides the ever growing group of medical specialists we now have the physical therapists for exercising the movements of the body, the nutritionists for the food of the patient, the health insurance company and the social worker for the payment of hospital bills, the hospital administrator for the management of the hospital facilities, let alone the chaplain for the anxious and dying patients. More specialized services will continue to appear.7. If there is distance education there is also distance health care. This is the last new trend in health care that I see. We will have more of this in the future. It is very rare now for us to experience being visited by the doctor at our homes, as this was done 50 years ago. This happens now only among very close friends or relatives of the doctors. There was a time when a doctor would go around town treating current and would-be patients. That is gone now. We have now consultation by cell phones. A doctor has a radio program. The audience listens. The doctor gives his cell phone number. By and by he is inundated with text messages about this and about that ailment experienced by his radio listeners. And he gives advice on his cell phone too by text messaging his listeners. Who knows, later on we can have doctors analyzing their patients from a distance with the aid of electronic equipment.Indeed health care has evolved. Now that you know these are the directions health care is going to go, the new trends in health care, be more conscious of your own health. You owe it to yourself to be healthy.But these are just predictions. Be prepared to be surprised with newer developments in health care. But we are very far from the one tablet that cures all diseases.

Home health care is just what the name suggests – health care services that can be taken care of in your home. There are quite a number of these possible home-based services, and they can be cheaper, as useful, and more convenient than the services you could get in a hospital or other nursing facility.The point of this is to take care of an illness, injury, or other ailment. The idea is to get your independence, confidence, and self-sufficient behavior back on target as quickly as possible in your own environment.Potential home health service options include caring for wounds, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech-language therapy, patient and care-giver education, intravenous and nutrition therapy, injections, and monitoring serious illness and unstable health status. There is also health aid, to help with things like getting into and out of bed, getting dressed, baths, eating, and bathroom activities. This is also considered things like housekeeping duties, laundry, shopping, and cooking.There are lists of agencies that do home health care work. Check your local phone book, or look up information on the internet to find local places and check what services they actually provide. Some health insurers like Medicare will only cover the costs of this if the home health agency has been certified by them.When present, the staff will check what you’re eating and drinking, check things like blood pressure, temperature, heart rate, and breathing, make sure that you are taking your prescriptions, drugs, and other treatments appropriately, check if you’re in pain, be aware of the safety in your home, teach you to care for yourself over time, and coordinate your care with you, your doctor, and others who treat you.It’s very important that you understand how your plan of care works. An agency member will consult with you and your doctor to make this happen. The plan of care includes what services you need, which care professionals should give those services, how often those services are required, what medical equipment is needed, and what results you expect. All involved will review this plan as often as required to do the job properly.If you are getting home health care, you should ask yourself questions regularly to make sure you’re be treated appropriately. For instance, if the staff is polite, if they explain everything to you in a way you can understand, if they respond quickly to your requests, if they check in with you physically and emotionally with each visit, and if they regularly suggest changes to improve your situation.With all these things in mind, now you know enough to get started researching to determine if home health care is the right decision for you and your family.

The health plan that President Obama is proposing is going to be efficient and effective. In order to be efficient it would have to be streamlined and working well, for example, there couldn’t be loads of bad debt sitting on the books. In order to be efficient, the bad debt would have to be collected and always try to be up to date or very minimal. Currently 5% of hospitals gross revenues are written off to bad debt and charity and this is before the implementation of the health care plan.Some collectors have told me that they are worried that third party collectors or collection departments receiving payments through the proposed plan may take longer than an outside insurance agency or a personal payment could take to get paid. As debt collectors we are used to slow payers but always working on new ways that payments can be obtained more quickly rather than slower. With this new program, many collectors are worried that payments will be slower which we will be forced to accept since it is a government program. On November 25, 2008, InsideARM said that “Debt collectors who currently specialize in medical receivables shouldn’t expect fewer accounts, but the balances forwarded to them by clients may be smaller.” According to Kaulkin Ginsbergs Health Care Analyst Michael Klozotsky, “Just because you insure more people, it’s not going to drop people’s co-pays and deductibles”.According to Paul B. Ginsburg, Ph.D, “For payment reform to reach its potential, Medicaid programs and private payers of medical care such as insurance companies should participate in developing new Medicare payment methods and follow them to the extent possible. Many health care providers have substantial market power and the ability to offset Medicare payment reductions with increases for private payers, so creating payment structures that are uniform across payers can increase the potential of payment reform to change provider behavior. If a public health insurance plan is a part of health reform, then an all-payer rate-setting structure could help establish a level playing field for all health insurance plans.”The White House.gov website says, “The President has vowed that the health reform process will be different in his Administration – an open, inclusive, and transparent process where all ideas are encouraged and all parties work together to find a solution to the health care crisis. Working together with members of Congress, doctors and hospitals, businesses and unions, and other key health care stakeholders, the President is committed to making sure we finally enact comprehensive health care reform.”The Administration believes that comprehensive health reform should:o Reduce long-term growth of health care costs for businesses and government
o Protect families from bankruptcy or debt because of health care costs
o Guarantee choice of doctors and health plans
o Invest in prevention and wellness
o Improve patient safety and quality of care
o Assure affordable, quality health coverage for all Americans
o Maintain coverage when you change or lose your job
o End barriers to coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditionsWhat does it mean for your business if this health care plan protects families or consumers from bankruptcy or debt due to the costs of maintaining their health. How will consumers avoid the debt of health care costs to stay healthy when they cannot afford it? I am all for helping consumers stay out of debt, but have concerns about how this new bill protects consumers from the debt of medical bills and how will this affect third party collectors.Small businesses are an important source of job growth in the United States. Firms with fewer than 20 employees accounted for approximately 18 percent of private sector jobs in 2006, but nearly 25 percent of net employment growth from 1992 to 2005. Many collection agencies are small businesses, and have many questions on how this plan will affect how they collect debt, how much debt they are able to collect and how much time they will have to wait to get paid if they get paid at all. Recently, during my consulting calls I was working with someone who is considering starting a medical collection agency and is worried there won’t be a demand for his services or any debt out there to collect based on this healthcare plan. In my opinion medical collectors should not worry about repercussions of the Universal Healthcare plan, there will still be plenty of work.You can take steps now to prepare for this new plan, consider how you accept other government payments or deal with their offices and this may be similar. Set up policies and procedures now to use when the plan goes into affect. Once you start working with your policies when the plan is in place, you can tweak it to fit your billing and accounting practices. Just talking about it with your employees will help everyone to feel more comfortable with the plan once it is in place, everyone will have heard about it and will have an idea on how to handle those accounts immediately. The more efficient and effective you can be, the quicker you may get paid. Agencies can also assist with the insurance collections and will find an increase in that line of business, the providers will find it hard to educated, train and hire staff to deal with the additional follow up and if they move or shift workers from dealing with self pay accounts this would not compensate for the increased workload of collecting from the insurer. As one reader stated, “Anything the Government gets involved in becomes more complicated and complex, clients will need their collection agencies to help them deal with this even more.”Free enterprise will always prevail. The insurance companies that are out there now, aren’t going to go away once we have this new healthcare option. The biggest impact I have found that debt collectors foresee with this new plan is how slow they may be paid or how slowly their clients may be paid. Start working with your medical clients and help them work with their patients so that they can serve as an advocate and show empathy for each individual situation and help them to work on a realistic payment plan – your job as the collector – enforce that payment plan. The longer you wait, the worse off you are – catch accounts that need help early and you will be ahead of the game.