Changing Landscape of Health Care Essay

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Changing Landscape of Health Care Essay

It is difficult to imagine any modern developed society without properly built and developed healthcare system. Generally healthcare system is a kind of organization of people, institutions, and services with the aim of delivering health care support to all individuals, who need it. There are a lot of health care systems in various countries of the world. Usually they are organized and formed on the basis of actual resources and conditions. “In some countries, health system planning is distributed among market participants. In others, there is a concerted effort among governments, trade unions, charities, religious organizations, or other co-ordinated bodies to deliver planned health care services targeted to the populations they serve. However, health care planning has been described as often evolutionary rather than revolutionary.” (Collins,  Rasmussen, Doty, 2015, p. 2). There are also international organizations, such as for example the World Health Organization, which was created with the aim of granting of health care help to all people in need. An important aspect in proper organization of the health care system functioning is management, which is based upon set of policies and regulations, supported by government and private businesses. Nowadays most of the governments do recognize the importance of timely and sufficient health care support for their citizens and do the necessary steps to improve the situation further; still there are a lot of challenges, existing for modern health care system and there is a strong need to work out the measures to overcome them.Changing Landscape of Health Care Essay

A lot of governments work over reorganizing of their existing health care programs and policies, in order to make the whole system more effective. For example in the United States there is the National Prevention Strategy developed, which should serve the means for reaching the level of healthy lifestyle. There are four separate directions worked out, which are all integral parts of the preventive strategy. First of all it is necessary to work over creation of healthy and safe community environments. These environments should be universal, they should be created not only at homes, but also in educational institutions, as workplaces. Separate attention needs to be paid to environment, including air, land, water resources, which are important for normal functioning of individuals. Important is that all citizens should have equal opportunities for healthy living, disregarding their financial resources or any other characteristic. Prevention is one of the most important strategies, thus the role of community preventive services should not be underestimated. As soon as all people are able to access preventive measures, such as vaccination for example or cancer screenings, they would for sure have better state of their health and would have to spend less money for health care. It is also necessary to contribute to promoting of the preventive strategies, so that all people be aware of the potential risks and necessity to use preventive services.Usual people should be made strong enough to be able to make their correct choices about healthy living. The strongest tool here is provision of information along with numerous options to maintain their health. It is necessary to work over elimination of the health disparities, as in all societies, there are individuals, who suffer disproportionally from chronic or other serious diseases, like HIV/AIDS, asthma, obesity and so on.

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Apart of these general strategic directions, the National Prevention Strategy has pointed out the priority areas, which need to be focused upon in order to secure better state of health for people, living the country.

  • “Tobacco-free living
  • Preventing drug abuse and excessive alcohol use
  • Healthy eating
  • Active living
  • Injury- and violence-free living
  • Reproductive and sexual health
  • Mental and emotional well-being” (Collins,  Rasmussen, Doty, 2015, p. 4).
One of the most important documents is the Affordable Care Act (ACA), as it was already mentioned that all citizens should have regular and equal access to health care services. In addition healthy workplaces should be created, as one of the factors contributing to development of prevention and wellness initiatives. The major challenges and problems, which are defined for most employers, are the increase of health care costs and development of greater number of chronic diseases.Changing Landscape of Health Care Essay “The group of workers aged 55 or older, which comprised 13% of the labor force in 2000, is projected to increase to 20% by 2020 and account for 19% of the labor force by 2050. Employees are older, and the numbers of employees with chronic conditions, including depression, anxiety, and diabetes, are increasing. Many have multiple chronic conditions, complicating medical management and making wellness interventions potentially more valuable because they affect multiple conditions at once” (Collins,  Rasmussen, Doty, 2015, p. 4). It is true that some of the workplace conditions are changing, however the changes are not one-sided, as along with reduction of the cases of acute traumatic injuries, there is the increase of chronic illnesses, depressions, stress disorders. According to the current forecasts of the WHO, depression is going to be the worst health problem during the next several decades. “Self-reported data from more than 1.3 million employees indicate that 30% experienced some depression or were in treatment. Depression symptoms affect productivity and work time, and many people with depression may have other health problems” (Collins,  Rasmussen, Doty, 2015, p. 5).

Another important estimation about the future in the health care is related to rising health care costs. The researchers states that within the coming 30 years, the health care costs would rise much faster, than other costs. They would consequently have impact upon aging population. This means that there could be a serious crisis in health care environment. Taking into consideration the fact that people nowadays are less eager to accept changes in the health care system and managed care is associated with some negative consequences for them, it is possible that this future crisis would be even more severe, than before, because the reaction of consumers towards growing costs would hardly be positive. This means that governments are to be able to work out the systems and ways to better control the health care expenditures in the future.

A rather successful strategy nowadays is involvement of the community into improvements of health care system. Any individual is an integral part of his community, the state of health of the community is important for the state of health of the whole nation. Thus community engagement to promoting of health is correct. Community programs and policies could be rather useful for individuals and families for making correct healthy choices and getting all the necessary information about them. “One example includes the partnership between the Johnson & Johnson Health Care Institute and the University of California, Los Angeles, which provided materials and training to Head Start parents to enhance health literacy related to diabetes prevention and nutrition. In Detroit, DTE Energy developed a Gardens Project that enlisted help from schools, community, and religious groups; project gardens yielded more than 44,000 pounds of fresh produce.” (Anderko, Roffenbender, Goetzel, Millard , 2012, p. 262).Changing Landscape of Health Care Essay

Overall, health care system and its proper functioning is utterly important for all spheres of human lives, for development of business, for building personal relations, for community and national states of health. Certainly there are a lot of challenges, faced by modern health care systems all over the world, which need proper treatment and corresponding solutions. Governments of all countries are to secure healthy environments for their citizens at their homes and work places, they need to develop special programs and regulations for better management of health care issues, and finally they need to consider the future challenges to be ready to face them.Changing Landscape of Health Care Essay