Hospital Investment: A Key to Save Lives and Money

January 2015, a doctor in Jamaica admitted citizens receive poor health care due to the hospital’s lack of resources. According to the report, one of the main concerns was the shortage and malfunctioning of equipment which results in the cancellation or postponement of a number of occasional surgeries. In addition, there are insufficient medical supplies that caused the number of patients on the waiting list to grow.

The Jamaican acting permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health said that an investigation would be conducted to alleviate the problems that the doctors are encountering. He also said that the primary care and health services system is in dire need of an upgrade to manage the number of patients and health care distribution.

This is just one of the many cases that show how hospital investment can greatly improve healthcare services globally.

According to a report by the Center for Global Development, hospitals are essential for building and maintaining healthy populations worldwide. They are the frontliner for acute care, access to a specialist treatment and basis for national health systems.

However, hospital policy remains a global health issue due to the focus of the national and international policymakers on primary health care access and control of specific diseases.

The CGDev also reported that only small minority of hospitals in emerging economies meet global standards and they are mostly private facilities serving higher income groups. Even low-performing hospital systems still require significant resources and, as a result, they are consuming up to 70 percent of the government health budgets.

A great example would be Mexico’s Ministry of Health. They are one of the other low- and middle-income countries that need hospital improvement, but lack information to initiate change.

To address this problem, the ministry launched its first-ever hospital performance report.

The report assesses the overall performance of each hospital, identifies areas of improvement in terms of quality and efficiency across states and facilities, and suggests areas for enhanced investment to improve patient outcomes and value for money.

The results are astonishing. They found out Mexico could prevent nearly 5,000 unnecessary deaths annually if hospitals from the worst-performing states will improve its performance and match that of the average states. If hospitals will be improved further and matched the performance of the best-performing states, Mexico can avoid 25,000 unnecessary deaths per year.

Not only does hospital improvement can save lives, it can also save money. Tons of money.

Still based on Mexico’s hospital performance report, if all hospitals in the country will be of the same efficiency and effectiveness as that of the best performing states, it could avoid 195,000 hospitalizations which is a savings of more than $260 million every year.

At this point, it is undeniable that hospital investment, as well as medical innovations, is the key to keeping people healthy and saving money. They can lessen the need for expensive surgeries, expensive hospital stays, doctor visits and most importantly, unnecessary deaths in the hospitals. This is something that every nation should look at and give utmost attention to help people live longer and healthier.