- Are traditional market forces necessarily the best way to manage healthcare allocation?
Market forces.
Market forces imply the demand and supply, which dictate the prices of products in the economy’s markets and the distribution of resources. These forces influence the producers’ and consumers’ behavior. Other than demand and supply, there are other forces like emotions that influence consumer/producer behavior plus the pricing signal.
The answer.
Traditional market forces are the best methods of distributing healthcare in a region. Qualitatively, traditional forces in the market do not influence the allocation of resources, but quantitatively, they have a great significance. A study indicates that high quality hospitals with reported and assessed risk-adjusted survival, adherence to well-set up clinical practices, and threat-adjusted re-admissions attract a more significant market share at a given point to higher growth with time.
A significant number of patients flooding a healthcare institution require an entity to have better healthcare resources to take care of the numbers. Patients tend to get drawn to institutions with better resources in terms of equipment, and medical practices need reassurance that their lives are almost risk-proof. For example, estimates indicate that AMI patients are willing to travel an extra 1.8 miles to hospitals with a one percent adjusted survival rate.
Conclusively, market forces are necessary for the distribution of healthcare in a region. Other allocation methods, such as adherence to policies, should be incorporated to have other regions with established healthcare services.