Paper specification Min. 10 pages Max. 15. (1.5 line spacing 11 pt. font) Your proposed research topic or question should be roughly outlined in a brief paragraph due on week 5. The completed paper should be submitted on week 10. Your topic should be an economic analysis of an issue in health care. The issue can be from an article you read in the newspaper or online. Summarize the article and then analyze the economic ramifications of the article using the economic concepts you have learned in the class or from prior economics classes you have taken. Or, you can draw from the text, lecture, and outside sources, identify an area of the economics of healthcare that merits further investigation. Identify key policy levers and how the concepts of economic theory apply or have had unintended consequences. Your discussion should be well rounded and supported by evidence. This is not an op-ed, but rather a scholarly examination of how healthcare is impacted by economic theory. Support your conclusions with data or research. Proposed research topic is: The article which inspired the initial idea for this paper is “Report: Telehealth’s economic impact could have broad reach in rural communities”. Rural hospitals and patients have unique challenges. Hospitals in these areas are serving a much smaller population and dealing with large budget constraints due to lower volumes and often times higher percentages of Medicare and Medicaid patients whose reimbursement rates are low. Hospitals can also have a difficult time in recruiting physicians to their areas and often do not have the volume to support specialist or a large pool of full-time providers. Patients can have difficulty in accesses the care they need due to lack of specialists in the area and having to travel great distances to urban areas. Data suggests that Telehealth can help to reduce costs for not only hospitals, but also patients. The goal of the paper is to look at how Telehealth has economically had an impact with a focus on rural areas.
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