Hospitals, Hospital Medicine, And Health For All

In September 2015, world leaders convened at the United Nations Summit to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals. Goal three, to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages,” is ambitious, and many in the field are asking how nations can contribute to achieving this target. The world has made great health gains, but in order to ensure health for all, the current and highly successful strategies of investing in primary health care (PHC), outreach, and implementing vertical, disease-oriented programs must be integrated with a safety net of high quality hospitals. We believe that the field of hospital medicine—a clinical specialty that combines knowledge in acute care and inpatient medicine with expertise in hospital care delivery—can steward the valuable resource of hospital care toward high performance. Since the Alma Ata Declaration in 1978—the landmark declaration that affirmed the importance of primary care—the health care system strengthening strategy has emphasized PHC. With its successes in equitably delivering cost-effective health care services, the PHC movement has become a priority for achieving universal health coverage. Meanwhile, hospitals have either primarily served the well-to-do or catastrophically impoverished the poor, and have been seen as cost sinks for ministry of health budgets; hospital expenditures account for a quarter to half of total health expenditures in Organization for Economic Co-operation and D...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Global Health Policy Health Professionals Hospitals Organization and Delivery Quality health system strengthening Hospital Care hospital medicine human resources sustainable development goals Source Type: blogs