Hospital Outsourcing

As industries and technologies continue to innovate, in-house production has been becoming more challenging and expensive. There has been a shift from keeping all production in-house to outsourcing certain suppliers. Often outsourcing comes from not having the proper equipment to produce, making the processes impossible. Thus, outsourcing allows companies to gain an advantage and, in most cases, spend less for more efficient work.

As of 2013, there has been a trend towards more outsourcing in the hospital sector. With health care costs increasing, hospitals have turned to outsourcing to control their costs. In an article from Becker's Healthcare, Heather Punke describes the trend towards outsourcing in hospitals, but believes this trend will not last. As costs continue to increase, keeping everything in-house can be difficult. Thus, hospitals have begun outsourcing certain short-term areas of care, such as IT and clinical services. However, with the great change in healthcare due to the Affordable Care Act, the article states that hospitals may begin to create certain groups of physicians and providers and keep everything in-house.

I believe outsourcing could go either way in certain industries. In healthcare, I think outsourcing is common and could be a good way to reduce costs. However, there are other implications that come with outsourcing providers. With the complicated nature of healthcare, this could be difficult to have everyone on the same page with insurance and policies. However, by bringing in different providers for certain procedures, policy standards could become more uniform.

Discussion Question: Could outsourcing cause more uniform policy implications in health care, or would this increase the variety of procedures?


Website: http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/workforce-labor-management/outsourcing-is-exploding-in-healthcare-will-the-trend-last.html