Health Care Delivery

Health Care Delivery

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Healthcare is one of the most crucial products offered on the market. The world is characterized by so many illnesses, and the human bodies are also very sensitive to diseases, and there are very many types of diseases that affect the human body. Some of these diseases are very lethal while others are treatable, and the patient gets well within some hours of treatment. Diseases that take a little time to cure are not given much attention in the society. It is because the diseases do not threaten to kill as many members of the society as the other that takes long to cure the diseases transmitted by bacteria (Watcher & Goldman, 2007). The bacteria get into the body of the human beings through many ways with some of the transmitted through foods and water. They mostly are transmitted when somebody eats food that is dirty. It can however, be avoided by ensuring that, food is washed before it is cooked. Food should also be cooked well to ensure that, these disease bacteria that transmit the diseases die. Food should also be cooked properly and under sufficient amount of heat to ensure that the bacteria do not survive such temperatures.

Waterborne and Foodborne disease are also common for people that have the behavior of eating cold food. When food is exposed to air and cools, it can attract bacteria, and when later taken, the bacteria enter the body of the individual and therefore, fall ill. Other types of bacteria found in stagnant water. For instance, bilharzia is conducted from stagnant water. It gets into the body of people when the water comes into contact with their body. It mostly finds its way through human feet. Other types of diseases are transmitted from one individual to another. It happens where, the two individual come into contact. Some of them are sexually transmitted. These include gonorrhea, syphilis among other sexually transmitted diseases. Diseases have different impacts on the human body. They also affect different parts of the body. Diseases are recognized from the symptoms they bring about. The symptoms include pains, fever, chills, fatigue, itches and many more. The symptoms re recognized at different stages. They also take different times to for the symptoms to start being seen (Watcher & Goldman 2007).

Once the symptoms are seen or suspected, the first step that one should do is to see a medical practitioner. The doctor then diagnoses the patient to ascertain the type of the disease that the patient suffers. This includes a medical procedure to test the patient for the disease. The medical examination includes taking the samples of the patient’s blood, saliva, urine of stool. It is then taken to the laboratory where, personnel that is qualified test for the presence of the disease. The laboratory personnel then give a report to the doctors that determine the kind of medical procedure appropriate for the patient.

The health care delivery system consists of both the private provision and public provision of health services. The private sector provides health services to their customers through private clinics, and hospitals. The private sector also provides health services through the sale of drugs. This happens in chemists and pharmacies that operate across the world. The private sector provision of health care has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages of the provision of health care through are many. For instance, the private hospitals are known to be faster in health provision.

The processes that the patients go through in private sector are relatively quick compared to those that take place in the public sector. For instance, the process of diagnosing the patients in the laboratories in the private hospitals is short. Similarly, the patients are quickly admitted to the wards and given the required health care (Watcher & Goldman 2007). In addition, private hospitals offer quality services compare to the public hospitals. Private hospitals are businesses just like other types of business. To keep the customers, the quality of the products and services that are offered must be of high quality. The private hospitals therefore ensure that, they give the very best service to its customers. One strategy of ensuring that the services that are offered in the private hospitals is by getting the very qualified personnel to be the practitioners in the hospitals (Watcher, Goldman, 2007).

Private hospitals also have disadvantages over the public counterparts. These include that the private health care is relatively more expensive compared to the one in public hospitals. Moreover, the quality of the service may sometimes be compromised because the private hospitals aim at maximizing the profits. Waiver and exemption mechanisms also do not work in the private sector as they do in the private sector (Iglehart, 2009).

The health care profession is a delicate profession it requires the competence of the highest orders as it deals with human beings and therefore incompetence could cost the life of a patient. The health care profession is also different from others by the fact that, it is guided by ethical considerations. There are many instances where the practitioners will be forced to offer free services to their clients since denying them the service is not only unethical but is regulated by legislation (Iglehart, 2009).

The quality of health care should never be compromised. There are therefore institutions that assess the quality of health care. They set measures and standards which the health care should have. An example of these organizations is government health systems. In the United States of America, we have government health systems that check the quality of the health care offered in the hospitals in the country. There are programs for accreditation that assess the quality of health care. They check the quality of health care against the standards. Examples are those for hospital accreditation (Watcher & Goldman, 2007).

The organizations in the united states that are mandated with health care accreditation are several. For instance, we have the center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It plans the quality evaluation process and then collects reports on the quality of health care that is given to the patients in the United States of America. The central government also has a health care evaluation agency called Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), (Iglehart, 2009), which gathers health quality reports from the public for the purpose of health care evaluation. A non-governmental organization known as Joint Commission is also a health care accreditation organization. The health care assessment of this organization has influences the government and therefore, it does regional based evaluation of health care quality.

National Quality forum is also a stakeholder in the United States of America health care accreditation. This organization specifically develops guidelines that are used in the health care quality evaluation. There are other organizations that do the consumer assessment of health professionals and systems surveys. They are conducted by getting the opinion of the patients on the quality of health care they receive from hospitals by interviewing them. It can also be done by administering questionnaires to the patients where the patients respond with their opinion on the quality of health care in the country (Iglehart, 2009).

Apart from the United States of America, other countries also have health care accreditation organizations. The United Kingdom for instance has organizations that are vested with the mandate. We have the Care quality commission; an organization that receives funds from the government. It works independently assessing the quality of health care in the country.

References

Bodenheimer, T. (2008) coordinating care –a perilous journey through the health care system. New England Journal of Medicine

Iglehart, J.K. (2009). The American health care system. New England Journal of Medicine

Watcher, R.M., & Goldman, L. (2007). The emerging role of hospitalists in the American health care system. New England Journal of Medicine

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