Globalization and the Health Care Delivery System of the Philippines

When you speak of globalization and health care often time's people are unclear of exactly what it means. Globalization is the tendency of the world's economies to act as a single interdependent economy. It can be described as the increased movement of people, knowledge, ideas, goods and money across national borders to make the world more unified in a sense. Globalization is often thought of in economic terms but as we know there are other components with this idea like, economics, and cultures. There is a huge debate of whether or not globalization is positive or negative. While in Health care, it is simply defined as the deterrence, treatment, and management of infirmity and the safeguarding of psychological and physical comfort through the services offered by the medical and allied health profession.

Globalization is a complex, multidimensional phenomenon that has already influenced the way hospitals operate and will increasingly impact the healthcare landscape and patients' experience worldwide. Hospitals, particularly in large urban centers, are gradually learning to care for patients from very diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, with a range of different expectations. They have to be constantly exploring innovative solutions to the problem of recruitment and retention of human resources, adding international professionals to the formula, while responding to the need for continuous training created by the adoption of modern technologies. Hospitals also have to deal with diminishing public funding and identify new and alternative sources of revenues, from ancillary services to the revenues created by intellectual property. They have to effectively manage the increasingly complex web of links with the private sector that pervade virtually all aspects of their activities, from ensuring research funds to acquiring equipment, supplies and services. Soon, they will have to radically rethink the design of their infrastructure and the way health service