Access to quality healthcare and improving community well-being
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Institution
Introduction
Access to quality health in a community creates many benefits such as longer life span, more developments, excellent growth, and living a stress-free lifestyle. The role of public healthcare providers and partners in health initiative is to take care of the general health status of the community. Mortality rates, life expectancy, years of potential life lost, and the population statistics forms the common health assessment tools used in evaluating the state of health of the community are (Lewenson & Truglio-Londrigan, 2010, pp. 43-47). Delivery of quality health care services and well-being of people acts as a major challenge for many nations across the world, United States being the most affected. Despite the efforts by the health care sector to increase the quality of healthcare and improve patient outcome, most communities have never seen improvement in the health care sector. According to Winkfield (2014), the condition of healthcare facilities plays a significant role in determining the quality of health care services offered. In addition, the performance of the government in collaboration with the department of health plays a major role in influencing the quality of health of the U.S. people. Further, Healthy People 2020 have a list of health issues that affect people in U.S. (Healthy People 2020, 2014).
Key Factors Associated with Health
The Bradenton community in Florida faces many health care issues accelerated by many factors associated to society, ethics, politics, and economy. Access to quality health care services and patients well-being is the main issue affecting people from this community. The problem affects a large number of people in the community, calling upon health care experts’ intervention improve the health status of Bradenton community. Healthy People 2020 focus on ensuring every person in the United States has access to quality health care services and enjoys a healthy lifestyle by introducing many beneficial innovations to the health care sector (Healthy People 2020, 2014).
The background of Bradenton
Bradenton is a city found in Manatee County, Florida. It stands as the largest city in Florida with an approximate population of 50,000 people according to 2012 statistics. The people of Bradenton demonstrate the modern lifestyle living model because of the presence of a comfortable and civilized environment.
Social factors
The Bradenton community upholds unique social and cultural practices distancing them from other communities in the Florida. The community is governed by a democratic mode of governance where they democratically elect their leaders. Most people in the area speak English language, although some speak Spanish, and French. The community values education and most of its members have attained higher levels of learning.
Health consideration
The community promotes a healthy lifestyle by pursuing health and life fulfilment activities that promote the quality of life and well-being of every person. Moreover, the community has a number of economic activities that give them revenues and help them acquire their basic and secondary needs. The city has numerous health care centres and hospitals where people receive treatments depending on their location. The high standards of living experienced by the people of Bradenton contribute to the high spread of chronic kidney disease because they lack proper nutrition education programs. The rate of employment is moderate with 30 percent of the adult population working in formal sectors. U.S. financing has a strong relationship with the current economy. The high growth rate of health care spending in U.S. exceeds the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the population, and inflation rates. Lack of adequate financing because of the current economic status affects the provision of healthcare services in major cities like Florida. The health care cost has raised because of the dramatic increase in health care spending bearing in mind only a small amount of GDP share is devoted to health care. Lack of adequate health care facilities and workforce in some communities like the Bradenton community in Florida promotes increase in chronic disease prevalence (Florida Health, 2014HealthH).
Relationship to Florida as a Whole as well as the USA
Florida Department of health puts all the necessary efforts in ensuring every person has access to improved healthcare services. The Healthy People 2020 objective aids in achieving the goal and objectives for the health sector. They involve in communities in healthy practices and push the government into making health available to people in rural areas. Survey from Florida health charts on the quality of health care and well-being reveal the following. Firstly, the sector identified strategic health as the priority area of concern for the 67 county-level community health assessment and health improvement planning processes. Secondly, chronic diseases are very common in the area. The most common health issues affecting people from the community include diabetes, obesity, tobacco use, and overweight. Another issue that emerged as a concern to the Florida Department of health is dental problem. Finally, poor public health infrastructure and policies hinder achievement of quality health care services. The city has been on the move to introduce health policies and laws governing health care providers in the area. Florida Department of health has introduced many solutions to health problems facing communities in the city. One of the most significant solutions is the introduction of local networks that promote easier communication between people in the rural areas and urban areas (Florida Health, 2014).
On the other hand, the issue not only affects Florida community but also the whole of United States. The 2010 National healthcare Quality and Disparities report evaluates the quality of healthcare in United States by the year 2010. The major areas studied are; patient-centeredness, timeliness of services, patient safety, and effectiveness of care. The NIMHD and the Department of Health Human Services (HHS) helped generate the report. The nation plays a significant role in ensuring progress and change in the healthcare industry because they are responsible for providing the needed infrastructure and financial support. The report developed many alternatives to resolving the issue of healthcare disparities in the United States. The most recommended areas that needed more support included patient and family engagement, safety, care coordination, palliative care, and population health (U.S. Department of Health & Human Service, 2011).
Access to Health Care
Access to quality health care services plays a major role in improving the outcomes of a community. The Bradenton community should live a happy lifestyle free from health problems such as cases of chronic kidney diseases. Community assessment process helps in identifying and determining solutions to problems affecting a population in the community. The health care sector has a duty of ensuring health-related quality of life and well-being of every person in the world regardless of their age, gender, race, ethnicity, financial status, or political affiliates. Government initiatives like the Affordable Care Act aimed at improving quality of health in the community and ensuring people stay a healthy lifestyle. The Affordable Care Act helps in reducing health costs.
The community complains of dissatisfaction with the current health care policies. The cost of health care in U.S. averages 175 percent and most of the population lack health care insurance while other developed countries offer quality healthcare services. The Affordable Care Act helps reduce the rising costs of healthcare; improve the quality of healthcare services and effectiveness, and cover more of its people with insurance would help reduce the number of complaints from citizens (Menzel, 2012). The relationship between the Affordable Care Act and the Brisbane community in Florida continues to grow as more people enrol in Health Insurance Marketplace. The health care act demonstrated justice and fairness for all people representing one nation.
Drivers and roadblocks
The creation of reforms in the health sector requires a combined effort from the various stakeholders. Individuals can aid in promoting health reforms through having group meetings. During such meetings, they can discuss the challenges they face in acquiring health services and how to solve these challenges. They can even make individual contributions to raise funds for purchase of certain medical equipment that are unavailable at the area medical centre. Furthermore, individuals ought to make their voices heard by the government in situations whereby a health care facility is non-existent. It is their right to demand for such facilities without fear of reappraisal.
The government plays a crucial role in health reforms. Any changes that occur in health reforms usually go through a vigorous scrutiny by the parliament. This body comprises of representatives of the people who discuss on development matters. The government, through this body can ensure adequate allocation of funds to each constitution to ensure development of health facilities in each constituency. Furthermore, it should ensure adequate control of these funds by ensuring auditing of the use of the funds and physical checks on the existence of supposedly complete projects. The government, as a major employer of health workers, should ensure adequate compensation for their effort. They should ensure that they train them well on new programs that are due for implementation.
Health care providers and the community play a major role in promoting health reforms by ensuring they educate their employees on possible benefits of enrolling for new health reforms. In some instances, such reforms are compulsory and it is the onus of the employers to make the necessary deductions from employees’ salaries for purposes of subscription to medical cover. Health care providers ought to work hand in hand with the government in the implementation of new reforms. They should also implement utmost professionalism in their delivery of services and compliance with new standards that are by the reforms.
Communication
The Medicare policies do not address costs in policy decisions. The room for ambiguity occurs. Medicare does not consider costs in coverage determinations. In practice, the costly new technologies undergo much scrutiny than other devices and services. Conditions of coverage involve sifting through the complicated evidence base, evaluating the benefits and risks. Moreover, the coverage depends on the determination of the right time for implementation and under what conditions favourable.
Three areas that present challenges include achieving the aims of making healthcare effective, timely, and efficient. These challenges are more evident in the way information and communications are managed in nursing (ANA, 2010). Failure to manage information and communications appropriately may result in unnecessary costs, reduced quality of healthcare and inefficiencies. These challenges may be overcome by using nursing informatics. This is the specialty which integrates computer science, information science and nursing science to manage and transmit communication data, knowledge and information in nursing practice. This is useful because it supports nurses, patients and other healthcare providers. Documentation is a major aspect in nursing informatics. This is because quality care is dependent on effective communication. Nursing informatics can improve the accuracy and timeliness of patient charting. Nurses can be involved in the process of improvement by ensuring that patient notes are taken and recorded in the relevant systems in a manner that improves the timeliness and effectiveness of healthcare delivery.
Alternatives
Communities like Brisbane experiencing the problem of quality healthcare should consider promoting wellness and introducing a healthy lifestyle especially for racial and ethnic groups. The federal government should be on the first lane in promoting the public to preventing disparities in healthcare. Many researchers have developed many mitigation measures to the problem as discussed below. According to Baldwin (2003), healthcare providers are the most influential people in preventing the problem. The issue raises a bigger concern considering that such professionals would help eliminate the problem. The future of nation healthcare needs is at risk because presence of minorities in the healthcare sector would help them offer effective services to other racial and ethnic minorities. Increasing the number of professional doctors and implementation of health informatics would increase access to health for the people in the community. Technology helps bring reliable and effective clinical practical guidelines that help improve the health of a community (Savel and Foldy, 2014).
Recommendations
Application of health care innovation in Bradenton Florida helps in increasing the quality of life and well-being among people in the community. The availability of resources such as money and skilled work force would help the community implements all the program strategies and promotes quality patient outcome. Moreover, the programs will create an enormous impact in the health care industry by reducing mortality and morbidity cases through decreased cases of chronic kidney disease. As healthcare sector continuous growing in Florida, healthcare experts introduce new implementing health care informatics.
Nurses help in implementing healthcare reforms introduced by the healthcare sector and the government. Healthcare providers require frequent problem-based education in order to increase the quality of patient care and provide services to all citizens. Such programs should not only focus on physicians but also nurses because of their role in improving the healthcare sector. Nurses easily interact with patients, and they are responsible for most home-based and bed-manner services. The seminar given by White on NIH Health Disparities in October 2011 focused only on physicians. White ought to have included nurses and healthcare providers in the seminar because they too interact with patients and are more likely to improve patient outcome. Some of the issues and strategies proposed by White such as developing programs for evaluating the relationship between patients and healthcare providers would also work with nurses (White III, 2011).
Conclusion
The Brisbane community and health care officials should focus on implementing health care reforms capable of improving the quality of health care and well-being of the community. The government and health policy makers must take part in generating rules and regulations guiding the implementation of the program in all healthcare institutions across the country.
References
ANA. (2010). Health System Reform: Nursing’s Goal of High Quality, Affordable Care for All. ANA Issue Brief, 9(6), 1-10. Retrieved January 7, 2014, from http://www.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/Policy-Advocacy/Positions-and-Resolutions/Issue-Briefs/Health-System-Reform.pdf
Florida Health. (2014). Florida Vital Statistics Annual Report 2013. Florida: State of Florida
Department of Health. Retrieved from http://www.flpublichealth.com/VSBOOK/pdf/2013/Intro.pdf
Healthy People 2020. (2014). About Healthy People. Foundation Health Measures. Health-
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Menzel, T. P. (2012). Justice and Fairness: A critical element in U.S. health system reform.
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Savel, T. G. and Foldy, S. (2014). The Role of Public Health Informatics in Enhancing Public
Health Surveillance.” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), 61. 3, 20-24
U.S. Department of Health & Human Service. (2011). National Healthcare Quality Report,
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http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/qrdr10.htm
White III, A. (2011, October 13). NIH VideoCast – What Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Would
Want Us to Know About Health Care Disparities. NIH VideoCast – What Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Would Want Us to Know About Health Care Disparities. Retrieved September 11, 2014, from
http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?Live=10685&bhcp=1
Winkfield, E. (September 2014). LAmerica’s Healthcare Crisis: Is There a Solution?
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