Almost every industry in the country is suffering, including health care, meaning that there are specific areas of interest where budgets might have to be cut in order to stay within the given limits. The National Center for Health Statistics has established the Healthy People 2010 for tracking the nation’s health. There are 28 focus areas mentioned in Healthy People 2010, ten of which, being the most important to address if budgetary restraints limited the studies of these specific areas.
Implementing programs to ensure the budgets for each area are maintained, and to design a plan B if the budget was lowered, could help keep up with the need for improvements, regardless of limited budgets. If the program was to fail, the impact of the areas could prove detrimental, causing new areas of concern for the health care world. The first five areas that could be considered most important to address if budgetary restraints limited the study and research include: cancer, diabetes, HIV, heart disease and stroke, and medical product safety.
Cancer is one of the leading causes of death, accounting for 7. 6 million deaths in 2008 (who. int/mediacentre). If budgetary restraints limited this specific study and the ability to research for cures and ways to slow down the specific cancers, that number will continue to grow. When it comes to diabetes, 25. 8 million people in the United States (8. 3% of the population) have diabetes, and of these, 7. 0 million have undiagnosed diabetes (cdc. gov/chronicdisease).
If research was limited on how to prevent and maintain diabetes, the number of undiagnosed and untreated cases would continue to rise, resulting in a higher death toll, higher insurance rates (due to lack of payment from those who cannot afford to control their diabetes), and health problems associated with this preventable disease would increase. HIV, heart disease and stroke, substance abuse, and medical product safety are also other areas that would be affected tremendously if budget restraints limited the studies of each, decreasing the amount of research that is done to find a cure, prevent the disease or improve technologies that were designed to help with the specific area.
The next five areas that could be considered most important to address if budgetary restraints limited the study and research, include: nutrition/obesity, mental health/disorders, tobacco use, respiratory diseases, and substance abuse. Limiting the studies and research for each area listed could result in an increase of diseases brought on by these areas. For example, prolonged use of tobacco can cause heart disease, lung cancer, throat cancer, and many of conditions.
Research is necessary when it comes to tobacco use, by finding ways to help with addiction besides chewing on a piece of gum or wearing a patch. Technology is increasing every day, especially in the medical field, and that is only made possible by continuing studies and research to make sure that the product is safe and reliable; always ready for an upgrade. Without the research, how could health care facilities trust that the medical products are safe enough to use on or with their patients?
Mental health and mental disorders can be two very different things because certain mental disorders are a result of genetics, poor care of the fetus that results in developmental disorders, and accidents. Certain mental health sicknesses like schizophrenia and psychosis can be induced by drug abuse or a chemical imbalance. Whatever the case might be, mental health can be serious, and the need for continuous study and research to help decrease the illness is necessary.
All of these areas are important, and are always going to have the need for continuous research to conduct studies on how to cure the various forms of cancer, prevent diseases, and improve the quality of products and the overall health of individuals all around the country. In order to make sure that these areas could keep on with their research and studies, despite budget cuts, a program should be implemented to help theses specific areas maintain their ways of research and capabilities to come up with new studies pertaining to the area.
A team would be created that consists of different employees from facilities pertaining to each area of study. Basically, they would get together, crunch numbers, and find ways to make sure on how they can stay within the budget that was given to each area named. Once the team was able to configure all the numbers, and what it would take to maintain all their research and studies on a fixed budget, they would present it in a meeting that would include the CEO’s of major health companies around the country, government agencies, and other important people in the science world.
If the program proved unsuccessful, resulting in failures to achieve such goals, this could be a detrimental hit not only to the health care world, but to society as a whole. If research became limited due to budget restraints, the number of diagnosis’ stemming from a pre-existing condition, would continue to increase; resulting in more deaths and increased hospital visits. Individuals are already having trouble maintaining certain conditions such as diabetes, and without the proper research to help educate, prevent or treat this disease, other health conditions will arise, making the individual more sick than before.
More money would be spent on building bigger facilities to house more people with these certain illnesses, causing an even tighter budget for most companies. Almost every industry is suffering because of the economy including health care, meaning that there are specific areas of interest where budgets might have to be cut in order to stay within the given limits. Without the help of research, and conducting studies and experiments dealing with each area, death tolls will rise; the economy will continue to deteriorate because people already cannot afford most health care pertaining to their condition, leading to higher costs of health care.
Implementing programs to ensure the budgets for each area are maintained, and to design a plan B if the budget was lowered, could help keep up with the need for improvements, regardless of limited budgets. If the program was to fail, the impact of the areas could prove detrimental, causing new areas of concern for the health care world.
Reference Health People 2010, 2010. Retrieved on 10/26/2012 from http://www. cdc. gov/mentalhealth/information/dev-disabilities. htm Cancer, 2010. Retrieved on 10/26/2012 from http://www. who. int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs297/en/.