Health Wellbeing and Social Care (Contemporary Issues)

Health Wellbeing and Social Care (Contemporary Issues)

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Health Wellbeing and Social Care (Contemporary Issues) in UK

The effort to improve the quality of health care services requires sustainable, long-term health care reforms in UK, in fact, entail setting three strategies. This objective involve extension of the health insurance to these who are insured, facilitating a reflection of the value of health care services and the cost, formulating and implementing policies aimed at enhancing quality of health care services (Athena S., 2013, 1). Nevertheless, there is a need to establish whether the UK policies have an element of compatibility with the settings in the health care system and whether they set objectives are achievable. On the other hand, the health care system can use policies, which are applied in the in the local benchmarks in order to improve the quality while maintain the cost in a way that is feasible and effective through achievement of the set objective. This paper focuses of presenting a contextual discussion on welfare and policy by drawing evidence, strengths and weaknesses of policy measures, which have been formulated to address delivery of healthcare services in UK.

Strengths of policies in UK relates to a strategy for increasing the value of coverage as a way of improving the level of health care services in a system attributed to numerous benefits. Furthermore, there is a need to deal with the disparities identified in the local practice, which is presented through the challenges and opportunities in the health care system. However, there are chances where improvement of services quality can be associated with a spillover effect emanating from other hospitals (Chandra and Staiger, 2007, 20). This is facilitated by offering a chance for the hospital staff to interact and learn some practices from each other. Therefore, in this way the performance of the hospital’s staff is increased by avoiding to lagging behind other peers, thereby resulting to improved health care services and reduction of disparities (D’Souza1 and Sequeira, 2011, 88).

In UK there are policies to promote relationship between the utilisation health care services and the numerous visits and application of various technologies in health care systems, such as imaging and diagnostic technologies. Moreover, these services have proofed beneficial to numerous patients, despite insignificant guidance offered by various sources in the medical field (Baicker and Chandra, 2004, 54). Therefore, there is a need to deal with the disparities identified in the treatment of parties associated with a life expectancy, whereby there should be a spending measure for the end of life patients, which is attributable to the numerous modes of treatment. A great variation of the cost incurred in offering quality health care services that are based on the geographical regions (Milstein, 2004, 5). Therefore, there should be approaches aimed at saving the cost and improving the quality of health care services, which are achieved through approaches of medical staffs. In this case, the lower-performing hospitals can achieve good performance levels in their geographical location; hence reduce the disparities based on the geographical location of the hospital is a health care system (Rushton, 2007, 149). Moreover, this strategy would contribute to the establishment of a significant share of achievement through national benchmarks, and expunge the variations experienced in the quality of care offered to patients.

Health care policies in UK are aimed at facilitating expansion of coverage and control costs; in fact, these reforms are likely to be successful in situations involving conversation on the way finance is can be developed and applied in delivering effective care (Buttell, Hendler and Daley, 2007, 64). On the other hand, the reforms focused on long-term objectives, aimed at saving on the costs that are more significant to emphasis appropriation of resource to improve the quality of health and civilian’s lives (Reinertsen and Schellekens, 2005, 36). These policies are applied as strength for improving clinical education through research to develop and establish innovative solutions.

The first priority of UK policies involves integration of mental and behavioural health care into principal care and other health care services to the public during their lifetime. In this case, this has requires collaboration with psychologists, who are considered crucial components of interdisciplinary health care systems. Therefore, integrated health care regards an approach, which is attributed to increased level of interrelationship among health professionals. Besides, there coordinated care requires integration of psychological care within primary care services that lead improved access to quality health care services, thereby lowering care expenditures.

The second priority of UK policies also involves development of new models regarding primary care in order to expand accessibility to quality care despite decreasing supply of physicians (Athena S., 2013, 1). For instance, this priority focuses on medical home model that depends on multidisciplinary care groups that are coordinated by communication facilitated by proactive care focusing on the needs of the parents. Therefore, this facilities management of medical care programs, which enables coordination of the care for Medicaid patients. There are policies that considers the second priority to be involving fund partnership between public health agencies and provides aimed at meeting shared goals. In fact, this is considered a measure of decreasing or preventing chronic diseases (Dzau and Duke, 2009, 50). On the other hand, this priority involves collaboration with public employers, thereby offering them favourable condition of working. Therefore, this involves application of necessary effort to promote unity among communities with an aim of improving health.

The third of priority of this policy involves maintenance of psychological workforce through competence with aims of developing and applying evidence-based behavioural and psychological assessment. Therefore, intervention has been applied in addressing public needs brought about by altering demographics of the population (Lipson and Dibble, 2005, 22). In fact, this priority involves overwhelming evidence in mental and behavioural state of health workforce, which is increased through sufficient response of health care needs in increasing diverse population. On the other hand, this priority focuses on collaborating with psychologists, which are researchers and practitioners directly associated with health care systems for approximately fifty percent of the UK citizens. Nonetheless, the mortality of U.K citizens is associated with traits of mental health issues that are significant to public health concern.

There are policies that focus on identifying the third priority as supporting comparative effectiveness through research, which facilitates improvement of quality and value of care. In this case, this involves identification of intervention, which works best (Rhydderch, Elwyn, Marshall, and Grol, 2004, 213). On the other hand, this reforms focuses on significant important which can focus on reinforcing ability to conduct a study results on population. These reforms offer collaboration between communities and academic health centres, thereby offering a perfect way of tracking information regarding patients (Dzau and Duke, 2009, 23). Moreover, these reforms has been facilitating on ways of assessing effectiveness of clinical care.

The fourth priority involves ensuring that there is quality mental and behavioural health care and access to psychologists, who focus on plans and lifetime. This priority focuses on mental and behavioural health problems, which have serious effects physical health (Manojlovich, 2007, 1). The priority focuses functional ability and emotional welfare of the public. Therefore, effective treatment of mental and behavioural health focuses on prevailing problems, due to the need by numerous individuals in the care of received services. Some policies focus on supporting personalisation medicine through funding research, thereby supporting clinical interventions (Dzau and Duke, 2009, 24). There reform focuses on facilitating advancement in genomic research that yield, which would yield unexpected information regarding treatment that can be of great benefits (Curristine, Lonti and Joumard, 2007, 12). On the other hand, the third article identifies the second priority to be a focus on prevention, personalisation and prospective, that can be applied in changing treatment for diseases.

Weaknesses of the policy seeking extension relates to insurance coverage, which is not an assurance of high value of health care services; thus, there is a need to focus on those who are not insured in order to eliminate the perception that high quality health care services are offered to those who are insured (Baicker and Chandra, 2008, 30). Therefore, this create equality in the cost incurred in offering health care services, and chance of improving the quality of the services is increased based on the geography, instead of the status of insurance or expenditures (Manojlovich, 2007, 1). On the other hand, there are disparities that have been identified concerning the quality and cost of services offered to patients, who have the same insurance cover. Moreover, a negative relationship has been identified in the quality of the health care services received and the health insurance. Nevertheless, the relationship contributes to increased or decreased spending on the quality of health care services, whereby the labour force has been attributed increased specialist, instead of generalists (Buttell, Hendler and Daley, 2007, 64).

Cost of the health care services and the quality are intimately related; though, there is a certain quality of the health care can lead to lower costs, and this is because of the failure of the process to bring a series of high costs (Butts, 2010, 34). The unit output of the healthcare services is scrapped while the resources used in the production are wasted (Bandyopadhyay and Coppens, 2005, 20). In order to recover the scrapped units additional resources have to be reallocated to the appropriate deficiency. These allocations involve those aimed at replacing the customer who is lost due dissatisfaction in the organisation.

The lower the quality will eventually result to higher costs for the healthcare organisation. The additional costs arise due to the liability of the process failure caused by the low quality of the services offered to the customer. This situation is termed as Quality waste, which is a representation of the consumption of the resources for repairing the output unit that does not satisfy customers (Buttell, Hendler and Daley, 2007, 68). The waste is traced through identification scrap and rework as way of managing and eliminating quality wastage from within the organisation aimed to improve the quality of the services. However, UK government is cooperating with other state and boards in order to establish recommendation for a national process of public reporting and monitoring of care (Rushton, 2007, 149). They are also focused on developing the reporting analysis and methods for the adverse happenings; in fact; this is in order to increase responsiveness to the occasions of adverse events (Leatherman, Berwick, and Iles, et al., 2003, 30).

The government has actively engaged in the pursuit of establishing accreditation standards. The other initiative that they are taking is to develop a board recertification to the physicians and the health care organisation, and focus on their reporting of the public performance information. These organisations and the physicians are to be licensed via multispecialty group practices (Brent, 1989, 34). An independent agency is established with the roles and responsibilities to review the usefulness via the public and private partnership; in fact, this is aimed at establishing guidelines with standards for provision of better health care services. Through these agencies, parameters are set about the care that is anticipated to all the customers.

These parameters include access to medical records, reasonable waiting duration, and regularity source of care. These government agencies are focusing on establishing a performance standards aimed at gauging the meeting of the standards to regulate the performance of the medical services quality provided to the customers (D’Souza1and Sequeira, 2011, 88). The agencies are also aimed at separating the cohort of the substantiation of the translation guideline and the anticipated standard; in fact there are initiatives that are focused at improving the quality of services and at the same time incorporating costs control (Crigger, Brannigan and Baird, 2006, 15). By the nature of the health care being a process that comprises of series to effect the operations of an institution that provides health care services, the organisation should seek to establish a process. This process an involve admission, the process of billing, blood testing, and it facilitates the way of being organized. The commencing process is to establish the area that needs improvement and price control.

The institutions can also decide to form teams that have proficiency in the certain areas in order to execute the process in the desired way. The individuals that are able to perform well in certain areas and should perform in daily basis. The group members should be made to understand the significance of the improvement in the institution; in fact, they should focus on things like accessibility to management and data management systems that will facilitate the operation in the organisation (Casey, 2007, 5). In order to facilitate the provision of quality services, the organisation should seek to identify the customer’s expectation of the services to be offered to them (Lipson and Dibble, 2005, 23). They should seek to establish the process of output that can meet process. This will be through the focus on meeting the identified customers’ expectation in terms of the quality of the services. Apparently, teams should be focusing on determining relevant resources that should be deployed in order to meet standards of customers’ expect.

This measure of the output that is required in order to ensure that there is no wastage of resources in the organisation; in fact, the team of health care providers has to focus on the cost of the services that they are providing the customers (Crigger, Brannigan and Baird, 2006, 15). There are implications that are involved in the staff nurses and practices that are related to the cost and quality of services (Milstein, 2004, 5). Nurses should focus on having personal integrity in terms of safety and quality of health care services; in fact, nurses should have the enthusiasm to listen to the patients. They should also have the ability to develop a given practical objective to every individual in the organisation. This is in a way to generate an achieving strategy in the organisation.

References

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