Kasey Oetting ’15 – The first day of the Health Care Immersion Program (HCIP) was an informative day and a great experience to start off the program. First, we heard from Mr. Barney Niezer, the practice manager for NE Indiana Urology in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In his seminar, he discussed an overview of the Fort Wayne healthcare system. The second speaker of the day was Dr. Frank Kolisek, the President of OrthoIndy. He talked to us a lot about the Affordable Care Act which was recently put into place by the government.
A common theme that we discussed dealt with for profit and not-for-profit hospitals. A for-profit hospital tends to work with physicians more effectively by incorporating them into the everyday decisions and strategic planning of the hospital and tend to be run in a more efficient manner. That is because the physicians are able to have more say in what the hospital should do and the finances associated with those decisions. A not-for-profit hospital is more worried about the ethical issues with their decisions which regard the hospital well-being. Not-for-profit hospitals tend to have missions that deal with offering healthcare to the community and the people in the community who can’t afford it.
A second reoccurring theme dealt with the recent legislation, Affordable Care Act. The effect of this legislation on the income and overall money brought into the hospital and the private practices resulted in a drastic cut. One of the biggest problems with the ACA is that no one really knows what is in it and what all the parameters are that it offers up. That leads to both sides starting to really worry about the effects of the ACA on every industry, not just the healthcare system. The problem the country must solve regarding healthcare is that the patients want everything, the providers want to offer everything, and the insurance companies don’t want to pay for anything.
One suggestion was to make the patient more responsible for the costs associated with healthcare. By doing so, they would not want to get extra tests done that the doctor tells them they do not need because they realize that the brunt of the cost will fall on them and not the insurance company. In the healthcare system today, people spend so much money because in all reality those people are not spending their own money. The money they are spending comes from insurance companies, forcing the costs to land mostly on the hospitals and the businesses offering the insurance.
Overall, today was a very informative and eye opening day as to how the healthcare system in America truly operates. I am looking forward to the rest of the week with our visit to Eli Lilly and also the Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital.
