Health Care

Health care (often healthcare in British English), is the treatment and management of illnesses of the elderly, and the preservation of health through services offered by the medical, dental, complementary and alternative medicine, pharmaceutical, clinical sciences (in vitro diagnostics), nursing, and allied health professions. Health care embraces all the goods and services designed to promote health, including “preventive, curative and palliative interventions, whether directed to individuals or to populations”.[1] The definition of to recognize, tough to define," Albany Times-Union November 12, 2009.

Before the term health care became popular, English-speakers referred to medicine or to the health sector and spoke of the treatment and prevention of illness and disease. The social and political issue of access to healthcare in the US has led to public debate and confusing use of terms such as health care (medical management of illness or disease), health insurance (reimbursement of health care costs), and the public health (the collective state and range of health in a population). The public health is related most to (clear communication/understanding medicine) economic development and wealth distribution, and health insurance is a business which both provides and restricts reimbursement for healthcare itself in the event of disease, or in access to of medical healthcare in individual health-seeking, -promoting or -maintaining behaviours.

The delivery of modern health care depends on an expanding group of trained professionals coming together as an interdisciplinary team.[2][3]

The health-care industry incorporates several sectors that are dedicated to providing services and products dedicated to improving the health of individuals. According to market classifications of industry such as the Global Industry Classification Standard and the Industry Classification Benchmark the health-care industry includes health care equipment & services and pharmaceuticals, biotechnology & life sciences. The particular sectors associated with these groups are: biotechnology, diagnostic substances, drug delivery, drug manufacturers, hospitals, medical equipment and instruments, diagnostic laboratories, nursing homes, providers of health care plans and home health care. [4]

According to government classifications of Industry, which are mostly based on the United Nations system, the International Standard Industrial Classification, health care generally consists of Hospital activities, Medical and dental practice activities, and other human health activities. The last class consists of all activities for human health not performed by hospitals or by medical doctors or dentists. This involves activities of, or under the supervision of, nurses, midwives, physiotherapists, scientific or diagnostic laboratiories, pathology clinics, ambulance, nursing home, or other para-medical practitioners in the field of optometry, hydrotherapy, medical massage, music therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, chiropody, homeopathy, chiropractice, acupuncture, etc.

Health economics is a branch of economics concerned with issues related to scarcity in the allocation of health and health care. Broadly, health economists study the functioning of the health care system and the private and social causes of health-affecting behaviors such as smoking.

A seminal 1963 article by Kenneth Arrow, often credited with giving rise to the health economics as a discipline, drew conceptual distinctions between health and other goals.[11] Factors that distinguish health economics from other areas include extensive government intervention, intractable uncertainty in several dimensions, asymmetric information, and externalities.[12] Governments tend to regulate the health care industry heavily and also tend to be the largest payer within the market. Uncertainty is intrinsic to health, both in patient outcomes and financial concerns. The knowledge gap that exists between a physician and a patient can prevent the patient from accurately describing his symptoms or enable the physician to prescribe unnecessary but profitable services; these imbalances lead to market failures resulting from asymmetric information. Externalities arise frequently when considering health and health care, notably in the context of infectious disease. For example, making an effort to avoid catching a cold, or practising safer sex, affects people other than the decision maker.

The scope of health economics is neatly encapsulated by Alan William's "plumbing diagram"[13] dividing the discipline into eight distinct topics:

What influences health? (other than health care)
What is health and what is its value
The demand for health care
The supply of health care
Micro-economic evaluation at treatment level
Market equilibrium
Evaluation at whole system level; and,
Planning, budgeting and monitoring mechanisms.