Emerging Disease Trends

People use health care services for many reasons: to cure illnesses and health conditions, to mend breaks and tears, to prevent or delay future health care problems, to reduce pain and increase quality of life, and sometimes merely to obtain information about their health status and prognosis. Health care utilization can be appropriate or inappropriate, of high or low quality, expensive or Inexpensive. The study of trends in health care utilization provides important information on these phenomena and may spotlight areas that may warrant future in-depth studies because of potential disparities in access to, or quality of, care. Trends in utilization may also be used as the basis for projecting future health care needs, to forecast future health care expenditures, or as the basis for projecting increased personnel training or supply initiatives. The health care delivery system of today has undergone tremendous change, even over the relatively short period of the past decade. New and emerging technologies, including drugs, devices, procedures, tests, and imaging machinery, have changed patterns of care and sites where care is provided. The growth in ambulatory surgery has been influenced by improvements in anesthesia and analgesia and by the development of noninvasive or minimally invasive techniques. Procedures that formerly required a few weeks of convalescence now require only a few days. New drugs can cure or lengthen the course of disease, although often at increased cost or increased utilization of medical practitioners needed to prescribe and monitor the effects of the medications. Over the past decade, both public and private organizations have made great strides in identifying causes of disease and disability, discovering treatments and cures, and working with practitioners to educate the public about how to reduce the incidence and prevalence of major diseases and the functional limitations and discomfort they may cause. Clinical practice guidelines have