How Is Healthcare Improving?
December 3, 2018 by Staff
Filed under Health, Tech/Internet, Weekly Columns
(Akiit.com) We’re prone to thinking that the world is much worse than it is. While, of course, the world isn’t perfect, or anywhere close to it, it’s also true that we’re doing much better in certain fields – education, healthcare, and crime – than virtually any point in history. Healthcare is especially great. It’s not so long ago that it really was 50/50 whether you’d made it to the age of five, and now we have more people than ever reaching one hundred and beyond. And the good news is that healthcare will continue to improve in the coming years, too. We take a look at a few reasons why this is happening.
Easier Access To Records
The internet and digital revolution have done a lot of good, and nowhere has this positive side been felt more sharply than in the world of health care. And it couldn’t be for a simpler reason. Because the body is so complicated, and one condition that a person has may influence the severity of their next illness, and so on, it’s imperative
that doctors have as much information as possible about a patient’s history. In the olden days, this just couldn’t happen. Pages would go missing, and if that happened, then there wasn’t much you could do. Now, it’s all recorded down, and a doctor can get all the necessary information about a patient within minutes.
Patient Feedback
You’d have to feel sorry for patients in the past, who were at the mercy of the doctors who were treating them. If they did a bad job, then what could they do? Now, patients have a voice. HCAHPS scores – which show customer satisfaction – are released publicly, which means any medical organization has to take the quality of care their providing seriously. If they don’t, their scores will be impacted, and they’ll quickly develop a reputation for subpar care.
New Technologies
If you ever long to have been born in a different era, you might want to check out some of the medical instruments from days gone by, which often look more like torture tools. Today, doctors are able to provide much better care thanks to improved technologies. Surgeries have never been safer than they are today, and they’re only going to improve, too, with the rise of AI and robots, which will make take much of the guesswork out of using tools to get under the skin.
Better Aftercare
Sometimes, it’s not what happens in the hospital that matters, but what happens after the patient has left. In the olden days, those concerns, well, were not concerns. The patient just left. Now, more and more hospitals are spending the time to follow up with the patient, either by asking them to report the state of their health via an online portal, or by asking the patient to come back for a checkup. Increased knowledge has also made it easier for patients to be given lifestyle advice to prevent future issues from arising, too.
It’s a good time to be – and stay – alive!
Staff Writer; George Hall