Forecasting health futures and health costs (journal article)
by Philip Davies
from ATSE Focus, March 2010
"So, 50 years into the future, there are good grounds to question the need for the conventional hospital, as we know it. Remember, we are talking 50 years into the future here. The other group that I think may be vulnerable are our traditional primary care practitioners or GPs. As we move into a world where healthcare becomes more technologically dependent and multi-disciplinary, will the small business model of General Practice be viable? Paradoxically the same technologies that may call the business model of the hospital into question could also challenge the business model of general practice.Looking at the future of healthcare provision, I wonder whether the hospitals and the primary care providers will actually merge and collapse into some new sort of high-tech connected clinic that we can access remotely and that provides the hub for delivering community-based services.What we spend on healthcare is actually the result of individual choice plus societal views. We live in a democracy and we are not necessarily slaves to demography. We have the power of democracy to help us make decisions about how much we are going to spend on healthcare. Healthcare expenditure is not out of control. We control healthcare expenditure as individuals or as a society. We have to make those decisions. "