No one plans to get sick or hurt, that is why Rovich Diagnostics Service Health Care in Nigeria has come to stay because most people need medical care at some point. Health coverage helps pay for these costs and protects you from very high expenses. Having health coverage can help protect you from high and unexpected costs.
Medical care has several important functions other than restoring or maintaining health. These other functions are assessment and certification of health status, prognostication, segregation of the ill to limit communication of illness, and helping to cope with the problems of illness.
Why we need good Health and Health Care
Every health care system is an engine for innovation that develops and broadly disseminates advanced, life-enhancing treatments and offers a wide set of choices for consumers of health care. The current health care system provides enormous benefits, but there are substantial opportunities for reforms that would reduce costs, increase access, enhance quality, and improve the health of Americans.
An individual’s health can be maintained or improved in many ways, including through changes in personal behavior and through the appropriate consumption of health care services.
While there is substantial health care spending in the Nigeria, the importance of health does provide a strong rationale for this level of spending. But because health care financing and delivery are often inefficient, there are opportunities to advance health and access to health care services without further growth in spending. To improve the efficiency of health care financing and delivery, the Administration has pursued policies that would increase incentives for individuals to purchase consumer-directed health insurance plans.
Important fact about Health and Health care in Nigeria
- Health care has enhanced the health of our population; greater efficiency in the health care system, however, could yield even greater health for Nigerians without increasing health care spending.
- Health care growth, improving quality, and expanding access to health insurance through an emphasis on private sector and market-based solutions are the order of a modern health care in Nigeria.
- Rapid growth in health care costs and limited access to health insurance continue to present challenges to the health care system.
- Health can be improved not only through the consumption of health care services, but also through individual behavior and lifestyle choices such as quitting smoking, eating more nutritious foods, and getting more exercise.
Health and the Demand for Health Care
The demand for health care is unlike the demand for most consumer products and services because while the desire for consumer products and services comes from direct consumption, the desire for health care is not derived directly from the consumption of the medical procedures themselves; rather, it comes from the direct value of improved health that is produced by health care. For example, demand for an Air-condition is based on the enjoyment and comfort that an Air-condition brings to a consumer, but few would choose to get a laparoscopic cholecystectomy for the same reason. Rather, a consumer’s desire to have her gallbladder removed is directly related to the positive impact the operation is likely to have on her health.
Understanding how health is produced, demanded, and valued is a useful starting point for evaluating the health care system and health care policy. Demand for Health People demand health because of its role in facilitating and providing happiness. Health can be defined along two dimensions: the length of life (longevity) and the quality of life. A person derives value from the quality of life directly and indirectly: directly because one’s level of health affects the enjoyment of goods and leisure and indirectly because one’s level of health enhances productivity.
Enhanced productivity can be rewarded in the labor market through higher wages. The indirect effect of health on productivity suggests that health is an important component of human capital investment. Consistent with the basic principle of our economic system, consumers exercise choice in purchasing health care and other goods and services.
The Production of Health Health care is only one of the factors that determine health. Other factors include individual behaviors, environmental factors, social factors, education, income, and genetics. If we think of an individual as a producer of health, the key production inputs are the time and money spent on health-improving activities and health care.
Health-improving activities can include individual choices regarding exercise, nutrition, and lifestyle. Health care can include hospital care, outpatient visits to medical providers, nursing home care, and medication. Because health can deteriorate from accidents, sudden disease, and the effects of aging, health care inputs are needed not only to maintain current levels of health but also possibly to restore health following an illness or injury.
Studies of trends in health-improving activities show a mixed picture on whether Nigerians are investing more in their health. A recent study finds that Nigerians are smoking less and controlling their cholesterol and blood pressure better (through a combination of health-improving activities and medical inputs). In disparity, there has been a dramatic increase in obesity in the Nigeria in both adults and children during the past few decades. Obesity has more than doubled since the late 1980s, from 15 percent to 34 percent among adults. Among children ages 6 to 19, the incidence of Box 4-1.
Health Effects on Job Productivity
Health Effects on Job Productivity Health can affect job productivity through absenteeism and presenteeism. Absenteeism, not being present at the place of work as a result of injury or illness, prevents an individual from contributing to output, and may also affect the ability of coworkers to be productive when tasks require collaboration.
Presenteeism is the loss of at-work productivity caused by a lack of physical or mental energy needed to complete tasks, increased workplace accidents, and the possible spread of illness to fellow employees. There is evidence that both of these factors are costly.
According to the Current Population Survey (CPS), 2.3 percent of workers will have an absence from work during a typical week due to injury or illness. Several studies estimating the extent to which presenteeism affects productivity indicate that, on average, the productivity loss caused by some of the most common conditions (such as allergies, depression, musculoskeletal pain, and respiratory disorders) is between 5 and 18 percent.
Investment in improving and managing health offers opportunities to mitigate some of these costs. An increasing number of employers are instituting at-work wellness programs that provide targeted health management. These programs range from monetary penalties for those with unhealthy lifestyles (such as smoking or uncontrolled diabetes) to subsidizing access to exercise facilities. The benefits are shared by the worker (higher earnings, better quality of life) and the employer (enhanced productivity and decreased health care expenditures).
Evidence of the success of these programs, while incomplete and variable, suggests that at-work wellness programs can improve worker health outcomes and provide a positive return to employers. One long-term study of a particularly comprehensive wellness program shows that health care expenditures fell by an average of N92,592 per employee per year (mostly due to fewer doctor visits and hospital stays), but it took several years to realize these benefits.
Hope this was helpful!
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