Efficiency
In my opinion (and unfortunately also based on personal life experiences), there is a lot of inefficiency and duplication of costs in our healthcare system. If a family doctor “hesitates” to order an extended blood test, the patient ends up in the emergency room where the test is done, and then the patient is sent back to the family doctor, who now orders another blood test. The family doctor system needs to be revised, and this profit-oriented approach should be stopped! The same goes for disability assessment – if a person has a permanent disability (such as loss of vision, kidney failure, etc.), the eye won’t recover, nor will the kidney grow back. Maybe we should stop this unnecessary hassle and free up the time of so-called expert doctors, who often consider themselves “smarter” than the doctors who regularly deal with patients.
I also highly recommend reading Niklas Modig’s book “This is LEAN,” where he describes how it is possible to shorten the so-called “Throughput time” in healthcare, i.e., how to optimize processes in medicine as well. This didn’t receive much enthusiasm in Estonia, as every clinic, hospital, and doctor here tends to act like a king of their own domain. Perhaps it’s time to start focusing on the patient and efficiency?!
Recently added ideas
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7 thoughts about the healthcare sector’s main problems
- Health concerns are not solved by the healthcare sector alone in the big picture, but rather by the economic success of society and the understanding at all levels of society that investing in health is worthwhile.
- Considering the current state of healthcare in Estonia, the idea of a mega-hospital …
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Emergency services for a fee
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Additional suggestions
I agree that there is a lot of duplication that could be improved through a unified information system and common agreements. The family doctor is a specialist, a medical professional (studying for 10 years to become a family doctor), who decides on the need for tests based on the patient’s complaints. The family doctor does not keep the money allocated for tests, and primary care is the most cost-effective system. Investing in it helps save money and reduce costs because 80% of people’s problems can be solved at the primary level.
Disability must be regularly applied for because the focus is not on assessing the person’s health damage but rather on their ability to cope. A person with one eye does not automatically mean someone is incapable of working. Living with one eye is certainly more challenging, but if that person manages just as successfully as a ‘healthy’ person, then why additional money? Of course, people can be supported even better, so perhaps disability support is not needed—more funding for services, assistance, and personal helpers, for example?