NHS FPX 6008 Assessment 1: Identifying a Local Healthcare Economic Issue
Jennifer McGoran
Capella University
FPX 6008
Prof Name
March 05, 2026
Submission Date
Identifying a Local Health Care Economic Issue
The quick uptake of advanced medical technologies has brought about changes in the way healthcare services are provided in the United States. The introduction of technologies such as electronic health records (EHR), artificial intelligence (AI), and telehealth solutions has become an inseparable part of modern health systems. However, the economic impacts of the cost of adoption and maintenance of these technologies are a significant issue (Butt & Alghababsheh, 2025). The given issue is particularly relevant, taking into account the growing expenditures and the necessity to offer quality care to all. The economic impact of adopting medical technologies is thus an important healthcare concern.
Healthcare Economic Issue
The uptake of medical technology is a complex economic issue due to the enormous amount of money that must be invested to implement such technologies into effect. That is, healthcare facilities will have to pay high costs in respect of constructing a sufficient infrastructure, acquiring special programs, and training employees. The issue is that, although they are good in terms of delivering services, these innovations are very expensive and, therefore, they can be unaffordable to healthcare organizations (Donovan et al., 2023). Recently, there have been studies that have demonstrated the potential of technology as well as the gap that exists in this sphere. First of all, the 2024 research on the introduction of the EHR proved that these systems are quite effective yet costly and need long-term resource commitment (Modi et al., 2024). The statistics show that about 71% of all U.S. hospitals had introduced predictive AI technologies by 2024 (ONC, 2025). At the same time, the rate of technology adoption is significantly lower in small and rural healthcare facilities. The problem should be addressed immediately to successfully embrace technology.
The Rationale for Selecting the Healthcare Issue
This issue has been selected due to its significance in the quality of health care, safety, and sustainability. Professionally speaking, the use of new technologies in health care practice has become crucial nowadays since it provides better treatment coordination, decreases mistakes, and makes it possible to make more sound decisions (Thacharodi et al., 2024). However, there are problems related to the financial aspect of such practices. Individual values associated with health care provision have contributed to making this decision. It is critical to discover whether innovations can help enhance the well-being of patients or result in inequalities. Thus, the contemporary subject is to be investigated to avoid the adverse effects of technologies on accessibility and safety of health care services offered to various people.
Significant Impacts of Healthcare Economic Issues
The introduction of new medical technologies has had significant impacts on clinical practice, management of the organization, other health professionals, and society as a whole. The process of adoption can also result in increased workload on the side of professionals who have to go through the process of training, navigating various systems, and adjusting to new processes within the organization. These activities may decrease efficiency and create stress among clinicians and other healthcare personnel (Jeilani & Hussein, 2025). The considerations on the organizational level encompass a major financial strain due to the investments in the costly equipment and the maintenance costs. Health professionals who work in organizations that have limited funds will have an extra burden due to the absence of integration. The use of medical technologies has far-reaching consequences on a variety of less wealthy and more diverse groups (Thacharodi et al., 2024). Medical institutions that provide health care services to such populations may not have enough resources to implement the recent technologies, thereby denying the patients the quality health care
Gap to Address the Healthcare Economic Issue
The environmental factors give a direct cause-and-effect relationship, which can either result in the successful realization of evidence-based practice guidelines in healthcare settings. It will lead to the lack of the proper staffing ratios, hence, the lack of the relevant discharge education and medication reconciliation, which in turn, will result in the patient’s bafflement, as well as in non-regulation of medicine and patient readmissions (Moges et al., 2022). Unless enabled to use electronic health record functionality, inconsistent protocol utilization and lack of coordination in care will occur, due to failure to provide automated notification on high-risk patients and provide standardized documentation templates. The seven-day gap in the outpatient cardiology follow-up in this case necessitates scheduling delays to exceed evidence-based time intervals, and it is impossible to keep the protective effect of an early follow-up (Bilicki and Reeves, 2024). The detection of these causal pathways will enable the resources in a strategic way, minimize the barriers to the maximum effectiveness of the policy, and offer a fair implementation process.
Ethical, Evidence-Based Practice Guidelines and Stakeholder Impact
One of the reasons for this problem is an uneven distribution of financial and other resources needed for implementing new technologies among healthcare organizations. It implies that more financially endowed and larger healthcare organizations deploy technological innovations, whereas the other healthcare organizations, particularly the small ones, are unable to invest in such innovations due to a shortage of funds. As revealed by the literature, it was found that adoption of AI and machine learning technologies was significantly higher in big and funded hospitals than in small and rural hospitals (Huang et al., 2025). Moreover, the disparity in adoption does not decrease even with increasing levels of usage, which means that there are issues related to money and structure that do not allow applying the technology equally (ONC, 2025). This gap means that there should be relevant policy interventions to enable the equal spread of medical technology. In addition, there is an issue with training and support that could disrupt the use of the medical technology implemented. The lack of training and support can lead to failure to properly use the system, therefore, eliminating any potential economic benefits of using the system.
Conclusion
The issue of the economic effects of adopting medical technology is one of the greatest and most complex challenges in the healthcare setting in the United States. Although medical technologies are useful in the enhancement of the lives of patients and the operations of hospitals, they have their own major problems, including high cost and unequal distribution. It is one of those issues that can be found among healthcare professionals, medical establishments, and even those communities where many medical services are not available.
References
Butt, A. S., & Alghababsheh, M. (2025). Exploring the barriers and enablers of technology adoption for managing social sustainability in supply chains. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 126(3), 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1108/imds-01-2025-0014
Donovan, T., Abell, B., Fernando, M., McPhail, S. M., & Carter, H. E. (2023). Implementation costs of hospital-based computerised decision support systems: A systematic review. Implementation Science, 18(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13012-023-01261-8
Huang, H., Lyu, W., Hasan, M. M., & Houser, S. H. (2025). Adoption of machine learning in US hospital electronic health record systems: Retrospective observational study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 27, e76126. https://doi.org/10.2196/76126
Jeilani, A., & Hussein, A. (2025). Impact of digital health technologies adoption on healthcare workers’ performance and workload: Perspective with DOI and TOE models. BioMed Central Health Services Research, 25(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-025-12414-4
Modi, S., Feldman, S. S., Berner, E. S., Schooley, B., & Johnston, A. (2024). Value of electronic health records measured using financial and clinical outcomes: Quantitative study. Journal of Medical Internet Research Medical Informatics, 12(1), e52524. https://doi.org/10.2196/52524
ONC. (2025, November 26). Hospital trends in the use, evaluation, and governance of predictive AI, 2023-2024. ASTP Health IT Research & Analysis. https://healthit.gov/data/data-briefs/hospital-trends-use-evaluation-and-governance-predictive-ai-2023-2024/
Thacharodi, A., Singh, P., Meenatchi, R., Ahmed, Z. H., Kumar, R. R. S., V, N., Kavish, S., Maqbool, M., & Hassan, S. (2024). Revolutionizing healthcare and medicine: The impact of modern technologies for a healthier future—A comprehensive review. Health Care Science, 3(5), 329–349. https://doi.org/10.1002/hcs2.115
FAQs
Q1: What is a local healthcare economic problem?
A healthcare economic problem is a financial problem associated with a particular community or healthcare facility, for instance, increasing expenses for care provision, shortage of finances, or ineffective management of financial resources.
Q2: What is the significance of recognizing economic problems in healthcare?
Understanding economic problems allows organizations to achieve greater financial effectiveness, manage resources more efficiently, and deliver a higher level of patient care.
Q3: What are common examples of healthcare economic issues?
Examples of economic problems in healthcare can be high costs of providing patient care, shortage of staff, insufficient amount of medical equipment, and disparities in access to health care among community members.
Q4: What are the ways in which data can assist in analyzing an economic problem in healthcare?
Data, for example, can be related to financial reports, patient outcomes, and rates of services delivery.