Health Care Market Paper

Health Care Market Paper

ECO/HC561

Primary health care clinics are one of the most in demand commodities in the health care industry. When a commodity is in such high demand problems can arise such as limited resources to satisfy the ever growing needs of patients. Jacobs and Rapoport give a great example of this situation by stating, “Scarcity can be defined as a deficiency in the quantity or quality of available goods and services as compared with the amounts that people desire” (Jacobs and Rapoport). With this being said when product or service scarcity starts to effect business a primary care clinic adjustments must be made to provide the customers the best service possible. For example is a doctor is so overwhelmed with the high flow of patients he may start to drop on high quality of service and may miss diagnose patients. The stakeholders must be able to identify the drop in quality of work and take this into account and fix the problem by employing supporting staff to properly analyze patient’s symptoms.

The economic flow that can affect the market of a primary health care clinic is the flow of timely payments on services. In the health care industry the flow of payments can be complex since there are more parties involved which include the patient, insurance company, and service provider. Jacobs and Rapoport said that, “When a consumer uses services that are covered by the insurer, the insurer reimburses the provider for the services” (Jacobs and Rapoport). With the extra party involved of the insurer the health care provider’s payments could take longer than a normal out of pocket payment. Since this timely process could hold back health care providers from receiving timely payments added resources may be needed to make sure their transactions go smoothly. With the added resources and issue of driving up costs and eventually causing an effect on the health care facilities bottom line.

A big issue that a primary care clinic could...