Essay Examples

Understanding Healthcare Models: The Preeminence of the Clinical Model

Countries around the world are working within different financial, legal and physical landscapes to determine the best ways to achieve universal health coverage. Different countries have different forms of structure to initialize reforms in their healthcare systems. Some countries prefer allocating tax revenues used to subsidize the medication of the target population. In this paper, a critical analysis has been done on various healthcare models, with a special emphasis on the clinical model of health.

To begin with, the clinical healthcare model is a representation of pathological and physiological phenomena used by health practitioners in predicting a disease’s evolution or a patient’s progress (Valente 2010). To understand this, someone should think about a diagnostic class where we usually say that a patient has cholera, meaning that he has a bowel infection caused by a disease-causing organism known as vibrio cholera. This is used to predict the possible evolution of the patient and assess their condition with time. The understanding of this condition fosters medication or the noticing of spontaneous healing (Swanson 1997). In some instances, the patient may not progress, as predicted by the clinical model, because of a variety of reasons that could not be known to the creators of this model. The clinical model, therefore, refers to what the doctor thinks concerning the patient’s current condition and what is happening in the patient’s body (Reid 2009). The progress of medical practice has to do with improving the efficiency of this model. The clinical model comprises very old ideologies, but they have recently been labeled as possible objects of study.

The other healthcare model is known as the Beveridge Model. It was named after William Beveridge, a brave social reformer, and placed the interests of the National Health Service in Health. According to this model, the government should provide healthcare by using tax allocations the same way the police force and public libraries are run. This model describes that the government owns many hospitals and clinics. It also allows for private doctors in these hospitals who should collect payments from the government. The other doctors are public employees whom the government also pays. When this model is used, no one gets a doctor’s bill. This system has a low cost per capita. This is its greatest advantage since the government can control these doctors’ charges. When this model is compared with the clinical model, it appears inferior. This is because the clinical model gives more responsibility to the doctors and gives them the discretion to access the patient’s progress and sell them the recommended drugs without government interference.

The Bismarck Health model is named after Otto Von Bismarck, the Prussian chancellor. He invented the welfare state to unify Germany during the 19th Century. Even after having European heritage, this system provided healthcare that appeared familiar to Americans. This healthcare model uses an insurance system financed by employees and employers jointly using payroll deduction. The model created by Bismarck does not entail the insurance covers making a profit. In countries that use this model, doctors and hospitals tend to be private(Swanson 1997). This explains why Japan has more private hospitals than the United States. The government works within tight regulations to control medication payments to all citizens in Germany and other countries that have adopted this model. This model is commonly used in Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, Belgium, France and Latin America to some extent.

The National Health Insurance model is a model that is characterized by aspects from both the Bismarck and Beveridge Models. This model uses the private sector for healthcare, but insurance firms that the government runs pay the citizens’ medical bills, and every citizen pays for these insurance firms (Reid 2009). In this model, there is no need for marketing since no profits are anticipated. This model is cheaper and much simpler to administer compared to American insurance systems that aim at making profits. The insurance firm has a lot of power in negotiating lower prices among service delivery systems in the health sector. This model also limits the number of medical services that should be paid for, which controls the number of patients waiting to be treated. Compared to the clinical model, the clinical model still needs to be improved since the monopoly of one insurance firm to fund health services comes with greater loopholes and more malpractices (Downie 1990). The clinical model allows doctors to treat the patients, offer the required drugs, and decide the payment they require. This model does not have a lot of bureaucracies, and that is why it remains unique.

The last model of health is an out-of-pocket model. This model was established in the sense that not all countries in the world can take care of their population regarding healthcare. The most sickening rule about these nations is that the rich get medication while the poor die of illness (Downie 1990). In most of the world’s rural regions like Africa, India, South America and China, many people go for the whole of their lives without seeing a doctor. They only have access to a village healer who uses home-brewed traditional medicine (Valente 2010). This model of healthcare explains the struggle between the rich and the poor in the search for medication. Compared with the clinical model, it seems dysfunctional since it fails to explain how these poor people can be helped to help them get medication.

In conclusion, It is unequivocally clear that the clinical healthcare model is the most outstanding. All of the philosophies it stands for are outstanding and should be incorporated with other models. The clinical model also has a challenge, such as the doctors are likely to take advantage and increase medical fees when given a lot of power. The best model of healthcare in the world is yet to be created. This model should have the components of all medical models worldwide integrated to develop a super healthcare model.

📎 References:

1. Downie, R. S., & Tannahill, C. (1990). Health promotion: models and values. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2. Reid, T. R. (2009). The healing of America: a global quest for better, cheaper, and fairer health Care. New York: Penguin Press.
3. Swanson, J. M., & Nies, M. A. (1997). Community health nursing: promoting the health of Aggregates (2nd ed.). Philadelphia: Saunders.
4. Valente, T. W. (2010). Social networks and health: models, methods, and applications. Oxford: Oxford University Press.