HM411 Healthcare Management For

1 .Imagine you are a student in healthcare administration who is doing an internship in a large primary care organization in an urban city in Florida. The organization has multiple locations and several types of services within a culturally diverse and underserved community. You are asked to prepare a brief about national issues related to eliminating healthcare disparities and improving wellness. Your brief will provide suggestions and initiatives that could improve patient outcomes in the organization and the community. 

2.An explanation of how health disparities, cultural competency, and health equality can impact health outcomes 

Answers:

The patient population in the USA has changed drastically; the aging population has increased from 8.1% to 15% in the last few decades (Anhang Price et al., 2014). The demographic of the patients have also included diverse racial backgrounds, with the concept of racial majority becoming steadily obsolete in the major part of United States. The chronic diseases that are prevalent in the United States in the current age are hypertension, coronary heart disorders and diabetes (Anhang Price et al., 2014). 

Cultural competence is the ability for a health care provider to articulate a care pattern that is socially, culturally and linguistically acceptable to the patient. Now health disparities and health inequalities towards a few communities based on racial or socio economic discrimination like lack of societal inclusion, unequal treatment for the lower socio-economic status, have decreased the standards of health care and has started deteriorating the inclusive health outcomes for all sectors of the society and creating immense inequalities in treatment standards for different sectors of the society (Lorenzoni, Belloni & Sassi, 2014). 

Cultural Linguistically Appropriate Services or CLAS has 15 different national standards devoted to improving the health care standards for all communities. Among all the standards there are 4 specific standards devoted for simplifying the communicational health care, ensuring improved and competent language assistance for the different ethnic communities not proficient in English language, either through in person assistance or through multimedia resources (Magill et al., 2014).

The first standards are offering language assistance to the families that are not proficient with English language without any expense, the second standard focuses on communicating succinctly about the language assistance to different groups both verbally and in written form. The third standard focuses on ensuring the competence of the individuals providing the language assistance, and lastly the fourth standard focuses on ensuring the language assistance group providing interactive and easy to understand multimedia material for the language assistance program (Hall, 2014). 

The national standards imposed by the joint commission and the National Committee for Quality Assurance have emphasized on patient centred communication. On The multitude of different policies demand effective communication between the patients and the physician and the rest of the health care team for the patient. For instance, the communication process in between the patient and the health care team should be succinct and documented. And from the year of 2012, the health care organizations are facing a lot of trouble with compliance to the emerging policies and protocols with accreditation process (Anhang Price et al., 2014). 

Top five causes of death in the United States:

Heart disease

Cancer

Chronic respiratory diseases

Accidents

Stroke (Hall, 2014)

Top five causes of death in Ontario, Canada:

Cancer

Heart diseases

Stroke

Chronic lower respiratory diseases

Accidents (Magill et al., 2014)    

Unhealthy products:

Many of the researchers have deemed the unhealthy food items to be one of the major reasons behind the increase in obesity and hike in the blood cholesterol levels of the residents of metro cities. For example, the acceleration in the rate of obese adolescents has increased considerably due to the excess intake of French fries and burgers (adsoftheworld.com, 2017). And the boon in the advertisements of unhealthy food items is the pivotal contributing factor behind the elevated levels of inclination in the mass towards unhealthy food. Furthermore, the increase in the amount of advertising has heavily heightened the inclination of the younger generation and school children significantly (Grol et al., 2013).

Healthy products:

However, the increase in the campaigning for the healthy food items have also been marginally successful in generating a level of awareness in the mass about the benefits of a healthier diet, alike the diet involving different salads at large.Many of the social and community service organizations have also taken up the responsibility of advertising the benefits of the healthier route to dietary intake. And it can be hoped in the near future the campaigning for the healthier food items will take over the unhealthier counterparts and the impact will affect the health outcomes of the millions (Anhang Price et al., 2014). 

PRM: The pharmaceutical industry through research in the manufacturing and delivery can significantly improve the present condition of the health care industry by reducing the price for the medicines and increasing the availability of the medicines to every sector of this society.

IT: Information technology can benefit the health care industry by centralizing the entire operational systems and enforcing a digital database system for the medical staff to access from anywhere at any time (Grol et al., 2013).

RM: It is the result of the translational research in the discipline of molecular biology and biomedical sciences. It has completely changed the scope of medical practice with tissue regeneration and organ transplant (Lorenzoni, Belloni & Sassi, 2014).  

PCC: Patient centred care is concerned with keeping the needs and preferences of the patients at the focal point of the care. This system can change the face of health care and in turn increasing the customer satisfaction rates through the roof (Drummond et al., 2015).

MSI: Medical supply industry has a major impact on the growth and prosperity of the health care industry. The impact of a good medical supply chain backing a health care industry is paramount (Shortliffe & Cimino, 2013).  

HM: Healthcare marketing is one of the pivotal pillars on which the entire health care industry is standing on. Without proper health care marketing the entire industry is going to fall apart (Drummond et al., 2015).

LTC: Long term care is prolonged care plan for patients that are critically ill for extended periods of time. Long term care is compassionate and perseverant; it resonates with the moral responsibility of the health care industry towards the citizens that they serve.

LU: The labor union health care workers unit the entire staff of the health care industry. it helps to safeguard the rights and works towards the best interest of the health care professionals (Anhang Price et al., 2014). 

The specific chronic disease selected is coronary heart disease that mainly targets the middle aged and aging population. In the recent years there has been a significant surge in the mortality rates for the heart disorders, increasing 44 % within a few decades jumping from 12.3 million to 17.3 million in a few decades (Drummond et al., 2015). The expense for availing a standard treatment for heart disorders have increased exceptionally with the rapid surge in the cost of health care in general. The financial impact of such a chronic disease is significant that many middle class families cannot survive. There is need for a change in the legislative policies reducing the costs for the treatment and mandating the usage of performance pay (Anhang Price et al., 2014). 

Remote monitoring:

Remote monitoring will allow the health care professionals to monitor a patient from a considerable distance. This in emergencies can be exceptionally beneficial (Shortliffe & Cimino, 2013).

Example is home based nocturnal dialysis (Shortliffe & Cimino, 2013).

Real-time interactive:

 This can eliminate the need for face to face clinical visits, which can be instrumental for the patients that have restricted mobility. It can be heavily cost effective as well (Hall, 2014).

Example is video calling softwares (Drummond et al., 2015).

Barriers:

Two potential barriers include the confusion and replacement of actual and safer clinical care for remote monitoring.

The restricted visibility and other contact in such situation can compromise the quality of the diagnosis (Drummond et al., 2015). 

The lack of PCPs in the rural and intercity provision is mainly due to transportation issues. The lack of commodities is another reason that might contribute to it. Lastly the personal reluctance to move to or commute to such areas in the staff can be a major contributing factor too (Grol et al., 2013). 

Close to 30 million people are being benefitted by the affordable care act. The workforce shortage however has facilitated restriction in the process. The new pressure from the ACA act and patient protection act are enforcing more workforces to every corner steadily (Hall, 2014). 

Offering provisional licences to qualified and deserving medical graduates can be beneficial in solving the shortage issue. This program is encouraging fresh graduates to work in a real world scenario for their professional development in a controlled environment and allowing the unattended regions to have a medical guidance (Hall, 2014). 

It cannot be overlooked that the shortage of the physicians and registered nurses in the rural areas are significantly affecting the standards of health care and this fact is affirmed by the rapid increase in the mortality rates, especially in developing countries with 30% higher child death rates (Magill et al., 2014).  

TB occurrence is tracked by regular tests and diagnostic programs, for the prevention programs like vaccination and isolation by CDC has helped in preventing the spread. Educational and prevention campaigns are enforcing promotional prevention in United States (Magill et al., 2014). 

One of the basic reasons behind the accelerated spread of the disease is considered to be the infusion of resources. The national prevention strategy utilizes all means possible to avoid the infusion. The first action is prompt detection and cure all individuals contacted with TB. The second strategy is to prevent close contact, and establishment of specific localized preventative awareness programs. Global vaccination programs are also an important step in the decrease of TB incidence among the mass (Anhang Price et al., 2014).  

The USA citizens are travelling to different countries in order to avail quality care in lesser expense. This fact is contributing to the growth of the medical tourism sector. The exponential shortage of medical staff in USA is another big reason the majority of the health care needs addressed by foreign countries as a part of medical tourism includes cosmetic surgery, dental problems, cardiovascular problems, cancer and fertility disorders. 

The majority of the medical tourism is carried out in the Asian countries, from different states of USA. For instance, in case of India, the individuals can save 65 to 90% of medical expense. However in case for Brazil, the profit of the USA residents seeking medical services is lowered to 20 to 30%, for which it receives minimum influx in terms of medical tourism (Patientsbeyondborders.com., 2017). 

References:

Anhang Price, R., Elliott, M. N., Zaslavsky, A. M., Hays, R. D., Lehrman, W. G., Rybowski, L., ... & Cleary, P. D. (2014). Examining the role of patient experience surveys in measuring health care quality. Medical Care Research and Review, 71(5), 522-554.

Drummond, M. F., Sculpher, M. J., Claxton, K., Stoddart, G. L., & Torrance, G. W. (2015). Methods for the economic evaluation of health care programmes. Oxford university press.

Grol, R., Wensing, M., Eccles, M., & Davis, D. (Eds.). (2013). Improving patient care: the implementation of change in health care. John Wiley & Sons.

Hall, R. (2014). Patient flow. AMC, 10, 12.

Lorenzoni, L., Belloni, A., & Sassi, F. (2014). Health-care expenditure and health policy in the USA versus other high-spending OECD countries. The Lancet, 384(9937), 83-92.

Magill, S. S., Edwards, J. R., Bamberg, W., Beldavs, Z. G., Dumyati, G., Kainer, M. A., ... & Ray, S. M. (2014). Multistate point-prevalence survey of health care–associated infections. New England Journal of Medicine, 370(13), 1198-1208.

Patientsbeyondborders.com. (2017). Medical Tourism Statistics & Facts | Patients Beyond Borders. [online] Available at: https://patientsbeyondborders.com/medical-tourism-statistics-facts [Accessed 9 Jun. 2017].

Shortliffe, E. H., & Cimino, J. J. (Eds.). (2013). Biomedical informatics: computer applications in health care and biomedicine. Springer Science & Business Media.