The Market For Generic Drugs - 1663 Words

Introduction The market for generic drugs has been increasing recently, with a large share of total prescriptions being dispensed in the United States. At the wholesale level, the generic drug market has typically been viewed as very competitive, such that prices approach marginal costs1. Therefore the availability of generic drugs is perceived as beneficial to consumers who have to pay for these drugs. However, at the retail level, generic drug prices seem to exceed marginal cost even by a wide margin1. In the last few decades, â€Å"the fraction of drug spending paid for by public and private payers has grown from 34% in 1980 to nearly 80% in 2000, and 92% in 2010. Thus cash-paying consumers currently account for only 8% of payments†1.†¦show more content†¦However, because the AWP is somewhat ambiguous and does not really provide a true drug-by-drug average price across major wholesalers, there is a lack of trust from the government and private payers regarding its validity3. Th e federal government, in an effort to establish a more equitable and uniform pricing platform for Medicare Part B drugs, elected to utilize pricing based on ASP3,5. Background Before the introduction of the AWP-based reimbursement by California s Medicaid program in 1969, its predecessor, the cost-based reimbursement was first used. This reimbursed pharmacies the exact amount they were charged by manufacturers to purchase the drug plus a fixed dispensing fee to cover labor and capital costs1. This resulted to multiple reimbursements amounts for identical products. More importantly, since pharmacies would receive the same profit margin from reimbursement regardless of their acquisition costs, drug manufacturers could in turn set high prices without reducing pharmacies demand for their product. This led to the introduction of the AWP-based reimbursement at a time when public and private insurers were just beginning to pay for prescription1. The AWP is a publicly available list price used as the basis for setting payment rates to pharmacies. The AWP is reported by generic producers themselves, and until recently has not been subject to any independent verification. Consequently, the AWP â€Å"is neither an average nor a price

Customer Service Vs. Technology - 1161 Words

To examine how customer service is linked to technology, it is important to define customer service and explore what comprises customer service. As there have been many attempts to explore customer service to specific industries, it is important to explore common trends among varying industries, quality of service, trust, and loyalty. These common trends among varying industries allow for a clearer understanding in defining customer service. Quality in Customer Service Lee and Lin 2005 explored what a consumer finds to provide them with a quality shopping experience. They discovered that consumers target businesses that have already created an online marketing strategy that focuses on trustworthiness, reliability, and responsiveness†¦show more content†¦1177). The concept connects to the dimensions of trust, which explores the confidence the consumer has in the business and the confidence the business has in their product (Muhkerjee Nath 2005 p. 1177). This leads into to the idea of trust-commitment and antecedents of trust, which looks at the commitment of the consumer to the product based on their level of trust and this is expressed through sharing the same values of the business. Together these give a dimension of the complexity of trust within a customer service experience. Hwang 2014 expanded on these areas to include five dimensions of customer service, as the consumer is concerned. The first is res ponsiveness; the timely response of the business to the consumer’s needs (Hwang 2014). The second is assurance, the continued promise of the business to have a relationship with the consumer. The third is reliability, the ability for the consumer to continue to rely on the business to provide in the manner that they have done so in the past (Hwang 2014). The fourth is tangibility, the continued actions of the business to make itself visible to the consumer. The final dimension is empathy. Empathy is the area of customer service that address when something goes wrong with the consumer’s experience, how the business handles the situation will determine whether the consumer will continue to trust the business. Each of these five dimensions helps to continue the

Practitioners in Emergency Department - Free Samples to Students

Question: Discuss about the Practitioners in Emergency Department. Answer: Introduction: After the author had taken a deeper look in the given dataset he decided to choose the Patient Services and Emergency of cost centre group. These are the largest and the next largest cost centre group according to the number of employees working in these groups. These groups will pay highest impact on recruiting employees and payroll. More reasons to add on the selection of these two cost centre groups is if you look at the other groups compared to these groups you will find that number of employees in other cost centre groups is low compared to the concerned two groups. So even if you want to employ new employees to the other group apart from the chosen it would hardly matter to the governing body. Why it would hardly matter. Not only resolving employment issues the HR also looks at the payroll issues. Even if you employ some new people to other group they will not contribute much to the revenue generation of the hospital. So why should the HR? So he wants to add employees to that p articular group which is contributing much to the revenue generation. Why these two groups are going to contribute much to the revenue generation? Since the emergency is facing over crowdedness and patient services is the most important job role. These two cost centre groups are going to impact on the reputation of the hospital. Reputation of the hospital what every patient seeks before admitting into the hospital. After all the HR has to look at the payroll also not only employing people. Ultimately job satisfaction and job security are the two key factors what every employee looks after. So the HR has to take care of the payroll and the training of the new employed. If HR employs more to these concerned groups the author has chosen it will be easy to meet his job. That is why the author has decided to take these two cost centre groups from the human resources perspective as the author wants to resolve the issues faced by human resources. The most important work is to take the deepest look at the present situation to resolve the issues faced by the HR. As a HR the author has provided best possible ways to resolve the issues present in the current scenario. The first and foremost work is to compare the total number of employees in these two cost centre groups, Emergency and Patient Services. As shown in Graph 1 the total number of employees in Patient Services is doubles that of Emergency. Here as an HR the author wants to include more employees in the emergency since the number of emergency cases are increasing with time. To handle the overcrowded emergency hospital needs emergency departments to include more number of employees in order to take care of the highly injured, critical conditioned patients so that they can be passed onto the concerned department. The emergency department of most hospitals are open 24 hours a day and the number of employees vary depending on the pressure in ED. Here in this current scenario the strength of patient services is enough to tackle the situation. This is the reason why the author wants to include more employees to the Emergency Division only. As from the graph 2 the author had seen that there was more number of female employees in both the department. As a HR the author wants to include more number of male employees to improve services in the Emergency department. Because from the graph it is clear that number of males is less than 50% of Female in the Emergency Department. Many researches have been made on the efficiency of female and males in terms of cleanliness, punctuality. According to the researchers males are found more efficient in these areas. Many surveys made against the topics and it reveals the same. Keeping these points in mind the author has taken this decision. The author had seen (in Graph 3) more number of full-time employees in the emergency department which is strength to tackle the overcrowded situation in emergency. The patient services showing more part time employees but the difference between the part time and full time employees is not that much which is strength to handle the situation of over crowdedness in the hospital.HR must employ new part time employees in the Emergency department. Why thus so? See the emergency has different workloads at different points of time. So engaging part time employees at different time schedule in the emergency will ease the pressure at the emergency department. Full time employees earn more than the part time employees. So if the HR thinks of recruiting part time employees he has taken the right decision. Because the governing body will have to spend less on the part time employees. Accordingly his purpose will be solved that is taking the overcrowded situation under control. As we have observed over crowdedness in the emergency departments are increasing with time this is the right decision taken by the HR. As the author had seen in Graph 4 that in Emergency division there are lot of employees with less than 2 years of experience and the HR wants to hire employees in that division. He must hire employees with 2-5 years of experience so that the employees are already well accustomed of handling over crowded emergency. See if the employees recruited by the HR is having less than 2 years of experience they are almost compared to fresher so the skills they have gained by working is not up to the mark. So it will be better if the HR recruits employees from 2-5 years of experience so that the employees are almost well aware of the hospital compliances and can take actions when needed in emergency. Also thinking in respect of payout if you hire employees of more experience you have to pay them more since pay by experience has positive trend. So the best will be if you hire employees who are having 2 to 5 years of experience. So employee strength is increasing as well as your payout is justifie d. Now comes the payroll of the employees. As a HR the author has decided to include more employees in the emergency division the FTE will increase accordingly. So he has to pay the new employees. The decision must be taking part time employees so that FTE does not increase that much and the HR can pay accordingly. The reason behind this is ultimately achieving revenue. If the HR employs more full time employees he has to spend more on them even if the generation of revenue has improved a little. If the HR employs part time employees he has to spend less as the employees are working lesser in time than the full time employees. So ultimately FTE is lesser in case of part time employees. Therefore as a result payout will be lesser. Most of the hospitals are non profit organization. They generate the revenue from the patient services and contributions and donations. So improving the services for the patients at emergency will result in the reputation of the hospital .Since the reputation o f the hospital plays a great role into the admission of the patients they must take care of the patient services. Improving quality of the patient services does not mean increasing the number of employees in that cost centre group. It also requires well skilled staffs who are playing role in taking care of the patients. Here comes the HRs role training must be of that quality to the staffs so that quality of the patient services improve. Not only providing training to the staffs in the initial stages but also update them with training on day to day basis as the requirements of the patient services is changing day by day. That is why the revenue generation after meeting all the necessities is important because payout is what everybody waits for. Recommendations: To handle the overcrowded emergency hospital needs emergency departments to include more employees. These employees must be part time employees as the FTE will increase if the HR hires fulltime employees. If the HR hires full time employees payout will be high whereas if he hires the same number part time employees the payout will be less. Again emergency is facing different rush at different points of time so engaging part time employees at different time will be meaningful. So the author engages more part time employees during the rush hours to take care of the critical cases what emergency division takes care of. The author has also suggested not employing in the patient services. Since increasing the number of employees will not improve the quality of the services. Providing best to best training to the employees of the patient services will improve the quality of the services. The HR should adopt advanced training methods to improve the quality of the patient services. Again the author has suggested to higher employees with 2 to 5 years of experience. Because pay by experience has a positive trend in the market. So hire people with moderate years of experience and good working capability. Keeping these points in mind the hospital will be able to improve the quality of the services and keep a good track of reputation. Referrences: Gareth, I. [2014]. 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The effect of crowding on access and quality in an academic ED.Am J Emerg Med.2006;24:787794.[PubMed] Pay Scale Human Capital Retrieved from https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Emergency_Department_Technician/Hourly_Rate Administration and Finance Retrieved From https://www.mass.gov/anf/employment-equal-access-disability/hr-policies/alt-work-options/alternative-work-options.html Revenue Recognition Health Care and Life Sciences Industry https://www.revenuerecognition.com/industry/healthcare-providers