A Retrospection into the Untreated US Healthcare Issues 2022-2023

I had gone through four medical articles today. One is from 2022 by Wolters Kluwer titled, “Five key barriers to healthcare access in the United States “. Second is from Healtcareexecutive.org , headlined:? Top Issues Confronting Hospitals: 2022”. Third is from Medifind in their 2023 article, “8 Major Problems with the U.S. Healthcare System Today”. Lastly, Advisory, “The 6 challenges facing health care in 2023—and how to handle them” [Mar 2023].

I was interested in how the US healthcare industry is doing from the previous year compared to this year. My Google search was centered on my curiosity to find out about the current challenges of the industry and see if they had overcome the previous challenges.

WIFM – What’s in it for me?

Shockingly and disconcertingly, the issues of the past had not yet been remedied. Although the industry that I belong to is not in its entirety in the medical field, we have been partnering successfully with several Australian medical organizations already [SkinCheck WA, Duff Street Medical Clinic, Wyndham Ultrasound]. It’s not to say that I’m not familiar with the medical industry as I had once pursued a career in nursing, and a number of my siblings are nurses overseas. It is worth noting that the Philippines is the world’s leading provider of nurses abroad and remote medical transcriptionists. No wonder I’m so passionate about bridging our corporate successes in one region of the global spectrum to North America, Canada, and the UK as well. It just pains me to read that the industry that my organization is continuously synergizing is still struggling.

Back on the four articles, the 2022 and 2023 reports/studies/articles, all say the same challenges -- staffing shortages, stigma/biases/uneven care, lack of efficiency, high cost of care, and limited clinic hours.

Scope

For now, in this article, I’ll focus on the North American market, particularly on the topic – of staffing shortages, uneven care, and lack of efficiency. In succeeding articles, I’ll discuss the other pain points, and the other medical markets, so I hope you’ll continue to follow, and I’m eager to hear about your thoughts as well.

Problem and Proposal

They said that staffing shortages are not limited to doctors. Nurses, technologists, and other roles will be scarce as well, according to the study conducted by the Association of American Medical Colleges. My question is: Why not outsource roles that can be done remotely such as receptionists, and other back-office tasks? Then offer opportunities to one’s existing receptionists to upskill and take up studies to become nurses or become technologists who are better off for face-to-face patient interaction. In addition, many outsourcing companies specialize in customer care and service. What we’ve noticed in the decades that we’ve been in business is that many of the clinics, healthcare facilities, and insurance companies that we are currently working with started with a lack of the “umpf” factor that wows consumers. This is the reason why patient satisfaction as mentioned in the above articles is still at an all-time low, hurting potential financial gains that the industry could achieve. Secondly, the articles brought up language barriers that hinder a satisfying patient-provider interaction. Even if most outsourcing companies have operators/agents who are mainly English speakers, the beauty in them is their natural ability to be patient and their relentless attitude to understand the patient no matter what their English communication competency is, allowing smoother interaction from the get-go, and giving better healthcare provider recommendation and guidance of the whole consultation journey. Lastly, in our practice, we have proven that the approach of Customer Service mainly used by e-commerce and other commercial brands can be successfully implemented in the medical industry, too. Many patients are familiar with this level of customer service due to the fact that they interact with these businesses more often than they do with clinics and the like. This is the edge in getting into your fold an experienced outsourced Virtual Assistant company like Synergist Corporate Solutions.