Blue Cross Case Study
The author of this report has been asked to select a healthcare organization that has a network spans multiple state. With that in mind, the author of this report has chosen Blue Cross Blue Shield. With that organization in mind, the author of this report will engage in a few points of analysis. Those points will include an assessment of the readiness of the healthcare organization or network to address the healthcare needs of citizens over the next decade, an assessment of a strategic plan that the organization should engage in over the next ten to twenty years and an assessment on how the organization can deal with issues like network growth, nurse staffing, resource management and patient satisfaction. While Blue Cross Blue Shield has done very well for itself over the years, the healthcare landscape is ever-changing and the last five years has been a perfect example of that in action.
Analysis
There have been many seminal moments over the course of healthcare history in the United States. Two of the major ones would be the passage of Medicare during the 1960's and the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) in 2010. While certainly not a single payer system like other countries have, the latter of those two has created a paradigm shift in the healthcare market....
Indeed, one of the linchpins of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is what is known as the
individual mandate. This is the provision in the
law that requires people to buy healthcare or face a financial penalty unless they can prove financial hardship. This requirement has ostensibly led to a huge surge in the
number of people that are enrolled in healthcare programs and a lowering number of people that are uninsured.
When it comes to a firm like Blue Cross Blue Shield, this may seem like an unmitigated boon for them given that they are in the
business of insuring people for healthcare and there are now more customers. However, premiums are actually going up for a lot of people and the massive change in the regulatory and legal landscape at both the state and federal levels has certainly created a large amount of busywork and extra costs for Blue Cross to absorb. Even before the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act came about, Blue Cross (not to mention the federal healthcare apparatus itself) has had to concern itself with a looming population shift in the United States in the form of the
Baby Boomers retiring. Due to the huge surge (in the late 1940's and 1950's) and then drop (starting in the 1960's) in the United States birth rate, there is a glut of people that are at or near retirement age as compared to other demographics in the United States. Concurrently, it is the oldest of Americans that cost the most when it comes to the dispensing and reimbursement for
healthcare services (Orlovsky, 2015).
Another issue that will impact Blue Cross at least indirectly is the looming nursing and doctor shortages that are ostensibly on…
