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The Impact Of Gatekeeping On Health Care Systems Essay

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Gatekeeping is a concept that is often applied to health care systems. This disquisition will discuss in depth the role of gatekeeping in health care systems. The key aspects discussed will be gatekeeping and, how it operates in the New Zealand (NZ) health system. Along side that another key aspect that will be explored is the absence of gatekeeping systems in countries such as, the United States of America (USA). And, how this effects the primary and specialist care sectors of the health care system in that country. In addition to gatekeeping systems, this disquisition will also comprehensively compare and contrast a few of the repercussions of having a gatekeeping system as well as the repercussions that arise from the absence of one. Gatekeeping can be defined as, the ability of a primary health care professional to authorize or restrict the access of a patient to specialists, hospitals and other such medical facilities that require primary care physician (PCP) referral (Bodenheimer and Grumbach, 2009). Thus, a patient can only gain access to secondary or tertiary care if they have initially been referred by their PCP. The purpose of gatekeeping in a health care system is to control the number of laboratory tests, therapist as well as specialist referrals (Malcolm, 2004). Gatekeeping occurs predominantly in the primary care sector of the health care system and, the gatekeepers generally tend to be the primary care physicians or qualified nurse practitioners (Cummings,

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