Introduction to Evaluation of Health Services

With the existing trend of shortages in healthcare providers and professionals, the recruitment and retention of this type of staff in a rural area may

M2 Discuss how the practitioners and agencies involved in the care pathways work together to provide the care needed for both physiological disorders

The debate continues as to whether or not America is really experiencing a healthcare workforce shortage. This debate continues to rage as commercial areas experience an overflow of healthcare professionals with the option to offer per diem employment to job seekers in these areas. However, rural areas continue to suffer from a lack of professional healthcare workers; specifically, those who specialize in specialist areas. The Alliance for Healthcare Reform (2011) has highlighted the following points as the factors which will be deemed responsible for this shortage:

Today, many Americans are affected by health care decisions made without their prior knowledge. More than likely most Americans are unsure how those decisions are decided and who is responsible for making those decisions that ultimately affect how health care is administered. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is the United States government’s principle agency for protecting the health of all Americans and for providing essential human services, especially to those who are unable to help themselves. HHS administrators over two hundred programs and it accounts for almost forty percent of all United States federal government spending. HHS mission is to keep Americans safe and healthy through effective health and human service programs. The department has five strategic goals: strengthen health care, advance scientific knowledge and innovation, advance the health, safety, and well-being of the American people, increase efficacy, transparency, and accountability of HHS programs and strengthen the Nation’s health and human service infrastructure and workforce (Department of Health and Human Services, (n.d.).

According to McBride morbidity and mortality are due to the following disease pro-cesses amongst the Filipino community: cardiovascular disease and diabetes, breast cancer, dementia, depression, elderly abuse, gout, TB and HIV. (McBride, 2001)

Healthcare has been an every changing service as different leaders have tried to find better ways to streamline the system as costs continue to increase on an annual basis. One thing is becoming clear as Healthcare continues to evolve in that Healthcare is moving to a performance based system in which higher performing plans will get financed a lot quicker than low performing plans.

In 2002, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projected that the United States would be 800,000 registered nurses short of the national need by the year 2020. Recently, this number has increased to over one million RNs short of the need by 2012 (BLS, 2004). Although there has been some indication that the entry of older nurses into the profession, along with efforts to recruit foreign-born nurses, have helped to ease the shortage, scholars project that the predicted trends are likely to continue (Auerbach, Buerhaus, & Steiger, 2007; Buerhaus, Donelan, Ulrich, Norman, & Dittus, 2006; Larkin, 2007). As such, the need for understanding the factors contributing to the nationwide shortage has never been greater.

The WHO report (3) estimates there are slightly more than 59 million health care workers in the world. Of the 4.3 million shortages, India appears as one of the dozens of countries with a critical shortage of health care providers (4-6). A Critical shortage of health care providers means for every given birth, less than 80 percent have skilled birth attendants present. The data further suggests that a country must have between 2.02 and 2.54 skilled birth attendants (doctors, nurses, or midwives) per 1000 population to support growth and maintain a strong health care system. Estimates place India at 1.87 skilled birth attendants per 1000 population (7).

XV seeks healthcare for her annual health assessment. XV denies any concerns or health complaints at time of visit except for “occasional left sided headaches.” She states “I have no current medications other than a multivitamin everyday and 2 tablets of Excedrin migraine as needed.” XV believes “health is very important.” She added “for someone to be healthy there must be a balance between physical, mental and spiritual.” XV expresses being pro-active in obtaining her yearly routine physical, gynecologic, dental, and eye examinations.

Key messages: every country does their effort to make their citizen healthy and productive. In order to make citizen healthy, there should be enough health care workers to meet the increasing healthcare demands. Nowadays, not only in the USA but also all over the world facing nurse shortages which make difficult to provide appropriate health care to their citizens. Therefore, the Robert wood Johnson foundation and institute of medicine collaborate together and conducted the two-year long research aiming to find the solution of the problem and ways to reform the health care in order to provide quality and affordable care. In 2010, their report came out as a “ Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health”. In this report the

Through statistical analysis, there were ten AHRQ inpatient quality indicators that are statistically different from that of the reference population. To determine which ones were significant, the reference population was compared to the risk-adjusted confidence interval. Those whose reference population was outside the risk-adjusted confidence interval were deemed as significantly different. These ten indicators are listed below in Table 1.

Due to their poor economy Puerto Rico’s Public Health system has been severely affected. There are three main areas of problem that affect the countries public health system: economic and social conditions affecting the Puerto Rican health care system, federal and commonwealth policies affecting the Puerto Rican health care system, barriers to health and health care services in Puerto Rico. 24 As far as economic and social conditions that affect the healthcare system there are four main issues that can be identified. In the 1970s Puerto Rico’s private sector began to grow increasingly driving doctors who once worked apart of the public health system to move into a private practice. By 1990s Puerto Rico shifted from a public health–based health

The number of physicians in the country has been decreasing at such a great rate that the government and other stakeholders in the health care sector are trying to camouflage this by increasing the number of foreign doctors practicing in the country. The American Medical Association has been trying to promote these re-entry programs designed for physicians since the year 2009 to help curb this problem. There are many people who can see what the problem is, but it is not possible for them to do much about it. Physicians also see this problem, and they are well aware of why the shortage is arising, but they are also unable to do much to prevent the issue. There are many problems that lead to the shortage of physicians, and unless something is done, it will continue escalating ADDIN EN.CITE Lynch19721573(Lynch, 1972)1573157317Lynch, MichaelThe Physician "Shortage": The Economists' MirrorAnnals of the American Academy of Political and Social ScienceAnnals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science82-88399ArticleType: research-article / Issue Title: The Nation's Health: Some Issues / Full publication date: Jan., 1972 / Copyright © 1972 American Academy of Political and Social Science1972Sage Publications, Inc. in association with the American Academy of Political and Social Science00027162http://www.jstor.org/stable/1040122( HYPERLINK l "_ENREF_6" o "Lynch, 1972 #1573" Lynch, 1972).

Sa ibat-ibang sector ng pamahalaan maraming mga workshops, at seminars ang pinapatupad ng Kagawaran ng kalusugan sa pagpigil ng pagkontrol ng tabako sa bansa.Sa Kagawarang misyon,ang National Institute of Health ng Unibersidad ng Pilipinas Manila na nangunguna sa pakikipagnegosasyon sa teknikal at pinansyal na aspeto sa WHO. Ang kanilang sentro ng pag-uusap ay sa pamamaraan sa pagsugpo ng tabako.( Lorenzo,M. Phd.2009)

Sa Pilipinas, naiulat  na rin sa balita na ayon kay Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, mayroong halos 82,000 na mga batang pinoy na namamatay bago ang taun-taon. Ang ibig sabihin nito ay mayroong 42 na namamatay na bata sa bawat 1,000 live births. Karamihan sa kanila, ani Duque, ay namamatay dahil sa neonatal related factors, preventable pneumonia at diarrhea, mga injuries at measles. Ngunit ang malaking bilang ay namamatay ay dahil sa malnutrisyon.