Denmark and the U.S. Health Care System

Traveling has always been one of my many passions. I have been fortunate enough to travel all around the world including places like Mexico, Belize, Puerto Rico, Grand Cayman, the Bahamas, St. Maarten, St. Thomas, Aruba, Spain, France, and Denmark. Of all the places that I have been Denmark has been the most recent and one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.
I was privileged enough to be able to travel with my school as an exchange student for ten days where I stayed with a host family in the town of Haslev, Denmark. My family has had exchange students from Spain and England in the past, but being on the other side of the situation was a true eye opener. There were four people in my host family, one girl who was my age, her younger sister, and her parents. I was extremely nervous to meet them all to begin with, and then I quickly realized that both the mother and younger sister did not speak English, and the father’s English was broken. It became obvious to me that communicating in my usual manner would not always be appropriate and I could have been put into a few awkward situations. In my experience I also learned of how kind and generous the people of Denmark are. My host family tried so hard to accommodate me, even though they did not speak my language. They went out of their way to make me feel at home and like I was a part of their family. I learned from other students that this was not just happening at my home, which made us all realize that the Danes truly are outstanding and incredible people. I got to see the beautiful sights of one of the happiest countries on Earth. Denmark will always hold a special place in my heart and because I am still in contact with my host I hope to be able to visit again.
All this talk about Denmark reminded me of the issues that are going on in the United States health care system right now. Experts have really been asking a lot of questions lately about what the Danes do right with their health care system that we (The United States) aren’t doing. An article from triplepundit.com entitled, “What the U.S. Can Learn From Denmark About Health Care”, discusses the fact that President Obama is just now talking about how the United States began to computerize health care records last year when Denmark has been doing this for over a decade now. This simple act can save billions of dollars, jobs, and cut down on medical errors. President Obama has pledged $19.5 billion dollars to have medical records computerized by the year 2014. Since Denmark has been mostly using a computerized health care system for over a decade a Commonwealth Fund study published last month said the Danish information system is the world’s most efficient. This is said to save Denmark over $120 million dollars a year. With America being one of the world’s highest spenders in health care, saving $120 million dollars a year would go a long way. The article also states that U.S. family physicians have the highest administration cost in the developed world, and paperwork really puts a lot of stress on them. If the paperwork was eliminated due to all of the medical information being put into a database, then doctors’ offices would run much more smoothly. Having all of a patient’s health history in a database would improve instant access to that critical health information and improve the quality of service a patient would get.
With all of the turmoil in the U.S. health care system right now, little actions like digitalizing our health records would be a step in the right direction toward a better working setup in our country. For what may seem like obvious reasons, this won’t solve all of our health care system issues, but it will certainly improve them. So maybe the United States should take a few notes from the country I have grown so fond of.