Is the healthcare industry a business

Nursing

Healthcare = Business

Yes, the healthcare industry is a business. It has evolved into a business for a number of reasons, from nationwide healthcare reforms to rising medical and prescription costs. In fact, for many analysts and experts, questioning healthcare as a business does not exist. To most experts today, healthcare is a business, and to think of it as anything else is simply shortsighted. Some experts write of managing risk in the healthcare industry, noting it is vital to manage risk in order to manage opportunity and profit. They write, "To take advantage of the opportunities, risk must be treated as a core business activity for which responsibility is taken at senior level, rather than as a technical skill to be handled by specialists" (Mulligan, Shapiro & Walrod, 1996, p. 94). Thus, the most important roles in healthcare are now management and risk assessment, rather than treatment specialists, and this indicates a shift to business rather than medicine in the healthcare field.

These three experts illustrate this again in another analysis. They note, "By understanding care provision in terms of risk as well as average cost, a payor or provider can evaluate all the available risk management roles and strategies to optimize its performance. The winners will be those that excel at this and integrate risk management thinking into all aspects of their operating strategy" (Mulligan, Shapiro & Walrod, 1996, p. 94). Thus, risk management and assessment of each "payor" (rather than patient) are at the core of a successful healthcare business. Thus, the focus and the face of the healthcare business has changed dramatically from the time when most healthcare facilities were non-profit, to a time when they are for-profit, money making endeavors. Healthcare has evolved into a business, and it seems there is little way to nudge it back to its roots in this industry-oriented age.

Another aspect of the growing healthcare business is the rising cost of the uninsured. A healthcare facility cannot keep its doors open to anyone if they cannot afford treatments, medical personnel, and medications. Add to this the growing costs of the aging baby-boomers and Medicare, and healthcare facilities must struggle to stay afloat. That is why there is so much advertising in healthcare today, it indicates healthcare organizations, from hospitals to pharmaceutical companies are businesses, competing for clients just the way another other business would compete. They hire PR firms, develop ad campaigns and brands, and use common business practices because they are businesses, rather than service organizations (Elliott, 2004).