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ARELLANO UNIVERSITY
2600 Legarda St. Sampaloc, Manila 1800
www.arellano.edu.ph

COLLEGE OF RADIOLOGIC TECHNOLOGY

Course Subject: INTRODUCTION TO HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY

HAND-OUTS/LEARNING MATERIAL
Prelim Topics:

TOPIC 1: OVERVIEW OF THE HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY

LEARNING OBJECTIVE:

At the end of the topic, student should be able explain the health care industry, its key segments, its
importance, the need, its classifications, its delivery to the to the community and the world, understand the
history and the role of health care professionals and industries.

Learning Outcomes:
▪ Define the terminologies related to the Health Care Industry.
▪ Discuss the impact of health care industry in medicine and health.
▪ Explain the impact of health care industry in today situation.
▪ Recognize the role of health care professionals and providers.
▪ Determine how the health care industries affects the over health of the country and the world

Lesson Discussion:

Overview of Healthcare Industry

The health care industry is tremendously important to people around the world.
This industry comprises of different players including hospitals, doctors, nursing homes,
diagnostic laboratories, pharmacies, medical device manufacturers, and other components of
the health care system.

Health care (or healthcare)

➢ is the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and
mental impairments in humans.
➢ is delivered by practitioners in medicine, chiropractic, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, allied
health, and other care providers.
➢ It refers to the work done in providing primary care, secondary care and tertiary care, as well
as in public health.

Healthcare Industry Also known as Medical Industry

➢ is a sector that provides goods and services to treat patients with curative, preventive,
rehabilitative or palliative care.

The healthcare industry is composed of establishments devoted to prevention, diagnosis, treatment,

and rehabilitation of medical conditions. Such treatment may be through providing products or services and
may be provided privately or publicly.

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Curative Care- Curative medicine: Is a type of healthcare aimed at curing a disease or promoting recovery from
an illness, injury, or impairment

Is used when healthcare providers believe it is possible to cure a medical condition.

Primary goal: Is to eliminate the disease or condition and restore the patient’s overall health.
Types of Curative Treatments:
1. Medications
2. Surgery
3. Radiation Therapy
4. chemotherapy
5. Physical therapy

Palliative Care – is a specialized form of medical care that focuses on providing relief from the symptoms and
stress on a serious illness.

Primary goal: Is to improve the quality of life for both patient and their family.
Key Aspects of Palliative care:
▪ Symptom Management
▪ Patient and Family Support
▪ Holistic Approach
▪ Coordination of Care
▪ Applicable at Any Stage

Rehabilitation - refers to anything related to the process of rehabilitation, which involves restoring someone
to health or normal life through training and therapy.
Involves:
▪ Medical treatment
▪ Physical therapy
▪ Social Reintegration

Preventive medicine focuses on maintaining and promoting health by preventing the onset of diseases and
injuries.
The primary goal is to identify and mitigate risk factors before they lead to health issue

Importance of Healthcare Industry:

the fundamental drivers creating demand for expansion of lifestyle medical procedures and healthcare
industry.
▪ Aging populations
▪ increasingly prevalent chronic diseases

Chronic diseases are long-lasting conditions that often require ongoing medical attention and can limit daily
activities
Most Prevalent Chronic Diseases:
1. Heart disease 6. Arthritis
2. Cancer 7. Chronic Kidney disease
3. COPD 8. Stroke
4. Diabetes 9. Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia
5. Hypertension 10. Obesity

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key aspects of the healthcare industry:

▪ Sectors and Services
▪ Products and Equipment
▪ Healthcare Financing
▪ Economic Impact
▪ Trends and Challenges

Impact of Healthcare Industry on Economy:

The health care industry is tremendously important to people around the world as well as to the
national economies. It is one of the fastest growing industries in the world.

▪ Consuming over 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) of most developed nations, a correlation
exists between income levels and expenditure on health care in various countries.
▪ plays an important role as being the largest employer in the global economy
▪ highly fragmented and divided among many different companies and different players.
▪ No single firm/corporation has large enough share/monopoly of the market to be able to influence the
industry's direction or price levels.

Economic Contributions

Employment: The healthcare sector is a major employer.

In the United States, it employs about 11% of the workforce1. This includes a wide range of jobs, from doctors
and nurses to administrative staff and support services.

GDP Contribution: Healthcare spending constitutes a significant portion of the GDP.

For instance, in the U.S., healthcare accounts for approximately 17.7% of the GDP. This high level of spending
reflects the importance of healthcare services in the economy.

Government Spending: A substantial part of government budgets is allocated to healthcare. In the U.S.,
healthcare accounts for 24% of government spending

Economic Growth and Stability

Innovation and Technology: The healthcare industry drives innovation, leading to the development of new
medical technologies and treatments. This not only improves health outcomes but also stimulates economic
growth through the creation of new markets and industries2.

Productivity: Healthier populations are more productive. Investments in healthcare can lead to a healthier
workforce, reducing absenteeism and increasing productivity2.

Economic Resilience: During economic downturns, the healthcare sector often remains stable or even grows,
providing a buffer against economic instability3.

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Challenges and Costs

• Rising Costs: Rapidly increasing healthcare costs can strain both public and private budgets.
This can lead to higher taxes, increased insurance premiums, and out-of-pocket expenses for individuals.
• Access and Inequality: Disparities in access to healthcare can exacerbate economic inequalities.
Ensuring equitable access to healthcare services is crucial for social and economic stability.
• Aging Population: As populations age, the demand for healthcare services increases, putting
additional pressure on healthcare systems and economies.

Global Perspective
Medical Tourism: Countries with advanced healthcare systems often attract medical tourists, contributing to
their economies.
➢ This includes spending on medical services as well as travel and accommodation3.
International Collaboration: Global health initiatives and collaborations can lead to shared advancements in
medical research and public health strategies, benefiting economies worldwide.

Future Directions

Digital Health: The adoption of digital health technologies, such as telemedicine and electronic health
records, can improve efficiency and reduce costs2.

Preventive Care: Emphasizing preventive care can reduce the long-term costs of healthcare by preventing
diseases before they require expensive treatments2.

Policy Reforms: Ongoing policy reforms aimed at improving healthcare access, quality, and affordability are
essential for sustaining economic growth and stability.

Classification of Healthcare Industry:

For purposes of finance and management, the health care industry is typically divided into
several areas.

As a basic framework for defining the sector, the United Nations International Standard Industrial
Classification (ISIC) categorizes the health care industry as generally consisting of:

▪ Hospital Activities
▪ Medical and Dental Practice Activities
▪ Other human health activities
▪ Hospital Activities: This includes inpatient care, surgeries, and emergency services.
▪ Medical and Dental Practice Activities: Outpatient care provided by doctors, dentists,
and other healthcare professionals.
▪ Other Human Health Activities: Services provided by nurses, midwives, physiotherapists,
diagnostic laboratories, and other allied health professionals

The Global Industry Classification Standard and the Industry Classification Benchmark further distinguish the
industry as two main groups:
• Health care equipment and services
• Pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and related life sciences

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Products and Equipment

Pharmaceuticals: Development and commercialization of drugs and medications.
Medical Devices: Manufacturing of equipment used in diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of
patients

Healthcare Financing
▪ Insurance: Health insurance plans that cover medical expenses.
▪ Government Programs: Public Health Programs

Economic Impact
10% of the GDP

Trends and Challenges

▪ Technology Adoption
▪ Aging population
▪ Cost management

Healthcare Providers and Professionals:

A health care provider is an institution (such as a hospital or clinic) or person (such as a physician,
nurse, allied health professional or community health worker) that provides preventive, curative, promotional,
rehabilitative, or palliative care services in a systematic way to individuals, families, or communities.

➢ The medical industry is also supported by many professions that do not directly provide health care
itself but are part of the management and support of the health care system.

➢ The incomes of managers and administrators, underwriters and medical malpractice attorneys,
marketers, investors, and shareholders of for-profit services, all are attributable to health care costs.

Healthcare providers are professionals and organizations that offer medical services to individuals
and communities.
o play a crucial role in maintaining and improving public health.

key types of healthcare providers:

o Physicians: Doctors who diagnose and treat illnesses. They can be general practitioners or
specialists in fields like cardiology, neurology, or pediatrics.
o Nurses: Registered nurses (RNs), nurse practitioners (NPs), and licensed practical nurses (LPNs)
provide patient care, administer medications, and assist with surgeries.
o Dentists: Professionals who specialize in oral health, including the diagnosis and treatment of
dental issues.
o Pharmacists: Experts in medications who dispense prescriptions and offer advice on drug
interactions and side effects.
o Therapists: Includes physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech therapists who
help patients recover and improve their physical and mental functions.
o Technologists and Technicians: Radiologic technologists, laboratory technicians, and other
specialists who perform diagnostic tests and procedures.
o Mental Health Providers: Psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors who offer mental health
services and support.
o Allied Health Professionals: Includes dietitians, respiratory therapists, and paramedics who
provide a wide range of supportive healthcare services.

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Healthcare Facilities
Hospitals: Provide comprehensive medical care, including emergency services, surgeries, and inpatient care.
Clinics: Offer outpatient services for routine check-ups, minor procedures, and preventive care.
Long-term Care Facilities: Include nursing homes and assisted living facilities that provide care for individuals
with chronic illnesses or disabilities.
Home Healthcare: Services provided in a patient’s home, often for those who are elderly or have chronic
conditions.

Delivery of Healthcare Services:

The delivery of health care services - from primary care to secondary and tertiary levels of care - is the most
visible part of any health care system, both to users and the general public.

The place of delivery may be in the home, the community, the workplace, or in health facilities.

Models of Healthcare Delivery

Primary Care: The first point of contact for patients, providing preventive care, treatment for common
illnesses, and management of chronic conditions. Primary care providers include general practitioners, family
doctors, and pediatricians.

Secondary Care: Specialized medical services provided by specialists after referral from a primary care
provider. This includes services like cardiology, dermatology, and orthopedics.

Tertiary Care: Highly specialized medical care, often involving advanced and complex procedures and
treatments. Examples include neurosurgery, cancer treatment, and organ transplants.

Quaternary Care: An extension of tertiary care, involving even more specialized and experimental
treatments, often provided in research and teaching hospitals.

Key Components of Healthcare Delivery

Healthcare Facilities: Hospitals, clinics, long-term care facilities, and home healthcare services.
Healthcare Professionals: Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, therapists, and technologists.
Health Information Technology: Electronic health records (EHRs), telemedicine, and health information
exchanges that improve the efficiency and quality of care.
Public Health Services: Programs and initiatives aimed at improving community health, such as vaccination
campaigns, health education, and disease prevention efforts.

Innovations in Healthcare Delivery

Telehealth and Telemedicine: These technologies allow for remote consultations, monitoring, and treatment,
making healthcare more accessible, especially in rural and underserved areas1.

Integrated Care: Coordinated care across different healthcare providers and settings to ensure seamless and
comprehensive patient care2.

Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI is being used to enhance diagnostic accuracy, predict patient outcomes, and
streamline administrative processes.

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• face-to-face delivery, where care provider and patient see each other 'in the flesh'.
• modern telecommunications technology “absentia health care”
o This could be when practitioner and patient communicate over the phone, video
conferencing, the internet, email, text messages, or any other form of non-face-to-
face communication.

Challenges and Future Directions

Access to Care: Ensuring that all individuals have access to necessary healthcare services, regardless of their
socioeconomic status or geographic location.
Quality of Care: Continuously improving the quality and safety of healthcare services.
Cost Management: Balancing the cost of healthcare with the need to provide high-quality services.

Medical Tourism:

Medical tourism (also called medical travel, health tourism or global health care)

Involves travelling to another country to receive medical car, often a lower cost or with access to treatments
not available in one’s home country.

➢ is a term initially coined by travel agencies and the mass media to describe the rapidly growing practice
of traveling across international borders to obtain health care.

Benefits: Risk
▪ Cost Saving Quality and Safety
▪ Access to treatments Follow-up care
▪ High Quality care Legal and Ethical issues

Benefits
Cost Savings: One of the primary motivations for medical tourism is the potential for substantial cost savings.
Patients can save anywhere from 25% to 90% on medical procedures compared to costs in their home
countries1.

Access to Specialized Treatments: Some patients travel abroad to access treatments that are not available or
are restricted in their home countries.
This includes procedures like stem-cell therapy and certain types of cancer treatments.

High-Quality Care: Many countries have world-class medical facilities and highly trained healthcare
professionals. Countries like Thailand, India, and South Korea are known for their advanced medical
infrastructure

Risks
• Quality and Safety: The standards of medical care can vary significantly between countries. It’s crucial to
research and choose accredited facilities to ensure high-quality care3.

• Legal and Ethical Issues: Different countries have varying regulations and standards for medical procedures.
Patients should be aware of the legal and ethical implications of receiving treatment abroad.

• Post-Operative Care: Follow-up care can be challenging when the patient returns home. It’s essential to have a
plan for post-operative care and potential complications4.

• Travel-Related Risks: Traveling for medical procedures can pose additional risks, such as exposure to infectious
diseases and complications from long flights.
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History of Healthcare Industry

Home Remedies:

Home remedy is a treatment to cure a disease or ailment that employs certain spices, vegetables, or other
common items.

➢ may or may not have medicinal properties that treat or cure the disease or ailment in question.

Healthcare began as a purely reactionary, medicinal practice, in which people learned the medicinal properties
of plants through trial and error, and then passed on that knowledge to others.

Traditional Healthcare:

❖ emulation of the behavior of fauna a medicinal knowledge base developed and was passed
between generations.
❖ Humans have long recorded their secrets for curing sickness, but sickness has not always been
well understood.
❖ Medical knowledge in the ancient world was accumulated over centuries of experiment and
experience - an exercise in trial, error, and success, the result of which began to be recorded by the
second millennium B.C.
❖ It later became a subject of purposeful study by many different cultures, including the Persian,
Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Indian, and Chinese cultures.

Ancient Pharmacology & Medical Practitioners:

Ancient health care providers gained an extensive knowledge of local flora and devised the principles and
practice of the ancient pharmacology.

“Treatise of Medical Diagnosis and Prognoses,”

❖ One of the oldest and most extensive examples that comes from Mesopotamia
❖ where some forty tablets were comprised of prescriptions and treatises that outlined treatments
based on rational observations of the body.
❖ As tribal culture specialized specific castes, Shamans and apothecaries performed the 'niche
occupation' of healing.

Technological, Chemical & Biological Advances:

• 19th century, there were numerous technological, chemical, and biological advances that
gave physicians the means to better understand, diagnose, and treat ailments.

➢ The discoveries included anesthetics, syringes, antiseptics, x-rays, and penicillin.

• 20th century, modern healthcare began to evolve.

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▪ Doctors started to initiate prepaid arrangements for their services, foreshadowing the medical
insurance and administration field that is in place today.

Some phases in healthcare history that had an everlasting impact on the modern shape of
the modern healthcare industry.

Impact of Colonialism on Healthcare:

o The advent of infectious diseases and tropical medicine was a direct consequence of
colonialism in the 19th and early 20th century which resulted in evolution of public health in
British colonies for disease prevention.
✓ Infectious diseases had an enormous effect on health, through the transfer of new
diseases.
✓ Urbanization and increasing population densities made indigenous people vulnerable to
incoming diseases.
✓ National governments started working towards protecting their citizens against outside
threats, including infectious diseases.
✓ It resulted in development of surveillance systems to respond to epidemics and
establishment of health systems for disease control.
o This gave rise to development of new trends in medical systems and a transition from surveys
to microscopic studies in medicine, which led to huge advances in vaccinations, preventions,
and treatments.

Impact of Therapeutic Revolution:

In the early 19th century, the focus of medical research changed from a generalized pathology to a localized
pathology concerned with physiology and disease transmission.

This transition, known as the “therapeutic revolution” occurred during the 20th century when research
came to focus on specific diseases.

THERAPEUTIC REVOLUTION is generally understood as the moment when medicine began to work.

❖ It led to the growing effectiveness of medicine.

o Pasteur, father of germ theory, unraveled the mysteries of many diseases and contributed to the
development of the first vaccines.
o He debunked the widely accepted myth of spontaneous generation, and set the stage for
modern biology and biochemistry, the therapeutic revolution
❖ improved medicine and vaccine development.

There were great advances in relation to diseases such as leprosy, anthrax, tuberculosis, plague, and
malaria.

❖ created a new understanding of disease and illness and began the trajectory of Western biomedicine and
fired the trend for globalization of medicine.

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Impact of Eradication Campaigns:

The most aggressive effort against malaria was the Global Malaria Eradication Program.

o This program was launched by the World Health Organization in 1955 and depended on drug
chloroquine for treatment of infected individuals and the chemical DDT for mosquito control.

Smallpox was the first disease to be eradicated owning to the success of the Smallpox Eradication
Program.

Smallpox eradication efforts began in 1967, the last endemic case appeared in 1977, and eradication
was declared in May of 1980.

Eradication campaigns of the 20th century were able to reduce diseases such as malaria and
tuberculosis in industrialized countries, but these diseases continue to haunt developing countries.

***Despite over 100 years of control efforts, malaria still caused a large number of deaths in
children in developing nations.
Eradication campaigns have made people in the health care industry aware of how vulnerable they
are, in spite of modern developments and technology.

Impact of Primary Healthcare Movement:

The perceived failure of postwar disease eradication and infrastructure development led to
realization that the delivery of medical care was a limited part of improving health and social
conditions and non-health sector services were vital to population health and well-being.

This created interest in primary health care in the 1970s realizing that health involves far more
than the health sector alone can accomplish and called upon governments to build national plans for primary
health care infrastructure.

The primary health care movement was fueled by a desire to build basic health care services from
the bottom up. Countries like China and the Soviet Union promoted models that differed from that
of the United States and western medicine.

Health care was promoted by organizations:

• World Health Organization
• World Health Assembly.

The International Conference for Primary Health Care in 1978 was a landmark event in the movement. The
conference was attended by delegates from over 130 governments.

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Impact of Development Movement:

The health care development movement coincided with the post-World War II era and centered on
the belief that increasing economic development would benefit the entire world, despite
inequalities that might result.

The development ideology held both the implicit and explicit goal of a globalized, modern world that left
behind ancient philosophies in pursuit of economic progress.

Neoliberalism, a market-driven approach to economic and social policies, argued that aggregate economic
growth would benefit the impoverished majority as well as wealthier minority in developing countries, and
presented the “free-market” as a better tool for growth than government intervention.

Structural adjustment policies:

o emphasized the market allocation of resources
o decreased public sector spending
o liberalization
o deregulation
o privatization.

These specific growth-oriented policies are believed to have failed to improve living standards and health
outcomes among the poor.

Globalization of Healthcare Industry:

The notion of a global health care industry is a recent phenomenon and although the modern
healthcare industry is becoming more global day by day but because health care has always
traditionally been considered a local industry, specific to individual countries, the practices and development
of healthcare as an industry across countries vary.

In each country, the health industry has its own history and cycle of evolution. Now globalization of
the ancillary healthcare industries, recent technological developments, and standardization of
various aspects of the industry is driving the trend towards globalization of healthcare industry.

Source/Reference:
http://www.technofunc.com/index.php/domain-knowledge/healthcare-industry/item/history-of-
healthcare-industry
Article is made and published by the www.technofun.com
This hand-out for Intro to HCI is prepared by: Ma. Glenda Ang-Mondiguing, RRT, MAHSE
First Semester, SY 2024-2025

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