Research on Analysis of Current Health Care Problem

Research Methodology Skills

Healthcare of individuals involves enhancing individuals’ physical and mental well-being through averting, identifying, and curing possible diseases or physical and mental injuries. Healthcare is usually provided by doctors, nurses, and other professionals in the medical sector. Usual components of healthcare include dentistry, oncology, pharmacy, midwifery, among others. Medical care can be ordinary or complex, depending on the condition of the patient. With new inventions in the medical sector, healthcare providers encounter many patient-related problems ranging from limited access to health care. Some people still do not seek medical care in hospitals and other health providers due to different reasons. Some people cannot seek professional medical care due to the low economic status that cannot allow them to access well-established medical facilities. The sum effect of this is that there becomes an increase in unhealthy population and related deaths.

Performing the research

Through using search engines like Google Scholar, Google books, Sci-hub, JSTOR, among others, I was able to access several academic journals, articles, and books from well-known authors and academicians. The search engines enabled me to know the extent to which a good population cannot access professional healthcare; however, it is improved in the 21^st century. It also helped me develop possible solutions to increasing the ability to raise awareness of better healthcare, the implications, mostly negative, for not improving access to health care. Equally, through researching using Google scholar, I was able to underscore the importance of seeking professional care instead of traditional medicines, which only complicates and leads to more morbidity and even deaths. In my research, I strived to make sure that my research sources are trusted sources and are as current as possible since technology changes daily.

Ahmed, S. A. S., Ajisola, M., Azeem, K., Bakibinga, P., Chen, Y. F., Choudhury, N. N., … & Yusuf, R. (2020). Impact of the societal response to COVID-19 on access to healthcare for non-COVID-19 health issues in slum communities of Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria, and Pakistan: results of pre-COVID and COVID-19 lockdown stakeholder engagements. BMJ global health, 5(8), e003042. This journal talks of the dire need for lawmakers to acknowledge and counter the healthcare in slums. It details healthcare access before and after the COVID-19 pandemics in the countries Bangladesh, Kenya, and Nigeria. It highlights how the lockdown in these countries affected access to healthcare by slum dwellers. It reveals that due to lockdown and stringent measures put in the health facilities to control the pandemic’s spread, a reduced number of patients were able to access medical care in the hospitals. It ranged from the hospitals’ refusal to accept many patients, especially the patients that seek outpatient services. The governments equally announced that if the health conditions are not fatal, then there is no need to visit health facilities. The journal equally cites that the cost of treatment drastically increased while income reduced as many people lost their jobs during COVID-19. Fear of being diagnosed by the COVID-19 pandemic was equally why many opted to shun going to the hospitals. Therefore, it is clear the journal requires the policymakers to make the general public know if the pandemic is under control to access the hospitals.

Zhang, X., Dupre, M. E., Qiu, L., Zhou, W., Zhao, Y., & Gu, D. (2017). Urban-rural differences in the association between access to healthcare and health outcomes among older adults in China. BMC geriatrics, 17(1), 151. These articles talk about the discrepancy in access to healthcare among different age brackets. It confirms that ability to acquire healthcare depends on the level of physical and cognitive ability of persons. It shows that it is highly likely that older people will not access healthcare in China than the young. The research established that incapacity to access healthcare among adults increased deaths, especially in rural. This called for possible solutions to ensure senior citizens access proper medical care.

Alcalá, H. E., Chen, J., Langellier, B. A., Roby, D. H., & Ortega, A. N. (2017). Impact of the Affordable Care Act on health care access and utilization among Latinos. The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, 30(1), 52-62. This article suggests that in the US, Latinos poorly access healthcare than non-Latinos. The report then indicates that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) can reduce the discrepancy. Further, the article suggests that the remaining differences require robust solutions that can do better than ACA, especially for non-citizens that are mostly overlooked in healthcare cover.

In conclusion articles helped my knowledge of why people in different parts of the world poorly access medical care. I also acknowledged the discrepancies in access to health care depending on age, economics, and geographical setups. By building the annotated bibliography, my work in developing a good research paper was made easy. Therefore, I knew the type of resources and the sources to acquire the correct information.

Analysis of current Health Care Problem

As discussed previously, health is an essential component of life, which means being free from physical or mental ailment. Proper healthcare benefit people as it ensures the best state of health. Healthcare of a population entails improving individuals’ physical and psychological condition by avoiding, identifying and curing any possible sickness. Healthcare is provided either at home or in health facilities by professionals like gynaecologists, dentists, pharmacists, among other stakeholders. Medical care involves general or complex procedures that must be done under extreme supervision, lest it turns to death by a simple mistake. With proper medical care, life expectancy is automatically increased in a country. With an increase in population, economic ability increases as labour, both skilled and unskilled are available at a given time. Accessing medical care by every individual is the block on which this prosperity in medical care is built. However, there have been issues to do with inadequate access to healthcare by individuals.

Causes of the problem

Several kinds of research done reveal that there are different reasons why individuals are unable to access health care services. For example, since the outbreak of COVID-19 in China and the eventual spread globally, several patients have been unable to access health facilities for several reasons especially in the slums (Ahmed et al., 2020). The article postulates that lockdowns in Bangladesh, Kenya, and Nigeria have negatively influenced healthcare access. It contributes to reducing healthcare access to fear of being diagnosed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which many believe is a ticket to death. Equally, due to the ease with which the virus spreads, going to the hospital would mean that one meets people from different geographical areas whose virus status is unknown. Hence, hospitals would be possible hotspots for the spread. Many, therefore, prefer to manage non-COVID illnesses at home. The article further associates the reduction in hospital visits to the drastic increase in hospitals’ cost of treatments. To control crowding in the health facilities, the hospitals put up measures that ensured overcrowding is controlled. One action is to increase admission charges so that many people shy from visiting even with small illnesses.

Another research associated reduced hospital visits to the cognitive mental ability related to advancement in age (Zhang et al., 2017). This research confirms that inadequate visit to health facilities is brought about by lower levels of health and well-being in senior citizens. For example, it shows that insufficient access to healthcare in China is mostly higher among senior citizens in rural than their urban counterparts. This cause is higher since it is physically challenging for older people to cover even a short distance from homes to access medical care. Inability is due to weaker bones that barely support their movements. At times challenges in communication contributes to the reduced visits to hospitals. Most senior citizens have problems with hearing, sight issues and reduced cognitive skills and ability. This makes it hard for them to agree to go to hospitals as they feel bothering. The inadequacy in healthcare access is linked to higher rates of disability, mental cognitive challenges and increased number of deaths of older folks in China. This means that if not properly looked into, this cause can be of grave danger in future.

In the US, there is research by Alcalá and others that revealed disparities in access to healthcare between the natives and the immigrants. The investigation revealed that Latinos had less access and limited application of healthcare than non-Latinos. The measures used to examine the access to medical care included deferral medical attention, visiting the emergency department, giving up on attention or visiting a medical specialist and insurance condition (Alcalá et al., 2017). The research results revealed that Mexicans and Central Americans, Latinos, had a lower probability of being covered by medical insurance than other whites who are locals of America. Research suggests the possibility of the American government discriminating against immigrants, or rather citizens who are not considered original Americans. This means that accessing medical care was a tall order for them.

The context for limited access to healthcare

With the increased living standard in developing countries, middle-income citizens have become infrequent to access proper medical care. This, therefore, means a lot of people do not get the required and acceptable level of medical cover. This, in turn, overburdens the government and reduces economic production as a sick population is not adequately productive. Poverty is highly to blame for improper healthcare access. Due to the high costs of treatments in the hospitals, it becomes highly likely that the vulnerable, that is, the elderly and people from humble backgrounds cannot get the care and attention required. All these factors give rise to a rise in patient safety issues. This makes the study to be powerful to suggest possible solutions.

Group of People Affected by Medical Access Issues

Most vulnerable persons to poor access to medical attention are poverty-stricken individuals. As explained previously, elderly members in the rural and especially from developing countries like Bangladesh cannot access medical attention due to the inability to cover themselves with the drastic increase in drugs pricing. Another study reveals that migraine is widespread and is abandoned, and as such, it usually hardly detected and hardly treated (Katsarava et al., 2018). The research reveals that society-poverty is directly linked with poor access to medical care in Europe. Further, Katsarava and others’ analysis showed that the negative correlation between rampancy of poverty is much robust for average and high-income households than those with meagre incomes.

Options to Implement Solution to Poor Access to Healthcare

There are several options to use in implementing solutions to poor healthcare access. The governments can implement the World Health Organization’s advisory to ensure health is accessible to all. It is upon the governments to provide the citizens are protected and can access health facilities. There needs to be mobilization in the rural setups to sensitize people on the need to visit health facilities. Alternatively, with low, remote access to healthcare facilities, technology can be of great essence in designing software applications that provide virtual diagnosis and consultations. This will make it easy and possible for the weak in society to have easy access to proper treatment. Hodgkinson et al. (2017) suggest a need for an inventive and thorough perspective in tackling psychiatric issues among groups encountering poverty. This has the overall positive effect of tackling mental cases among individuals or families with such a claim. Moreover, Hodgkinson and others have identified scheduled comprehensive developmental, mental health testing by professionals to recognize likely distress expeditiously among different families.

The solution to poor healthcare access

since one problem identified in health is low or limited access to healthcare, there is a solution to sort it completely. Following the World Health Organization’s (WHO) policy on health would help develop and implement a system that will make it easy and cheap to access quality medical attention. This can be done with strict observance of patient’s rights. For example, Moldova has Mandatory Health Insurance (MHI), making it possible and cheap to access free medical carefully sponsored by the government (Hone et al. 2016). It has significantly improved people’s health in the country by reducing the costs of medication. Since it is compulsory, health insurance has ensured that everyone can access any health facility, irrespective of an individual’s economic status. Thus it has helped reduce manageable and unavoidable casualties and morbidity among the citizens.

Implementation

The governments can implement the solution with other health sector stakeholders to ensure access to healthcare is implemented. For example, for mothers who cannot access hospitals, training is offered to them to handle themselves. Equally, community health workers can be trained to perform home-based care to pregnant and new mother on how to handle themselves. This involves practices on the types of foods to take and hygiene practices. A model in California, the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative (CMQCC) can be developed elsewhere. The model can be a deal between the governments and private sectors to reduce mortality and morbidity due to inability to access medical facilities (Ai-ris & Molina, 2019). The services provided include Antenatal Care (ANC) and Postnatal Care (PNC). In this case, the organizer will offer mobile hospitals services to identify mothers at high risk and suffer from malnutrition. The casualties are then referred for further advice. Consequently, pregnant mothers, lactating mothers and children will undergo regular monitoring to ensure they are safe and free from risks.

From personal thoughts, during implementation, the elderly must be considered as they are mostly affected by disability to move to health facilities to access affordable healthcare—this due to their inflexibility to move quickly as they are weak physically and mentally able. Thus governments should make sure that the elderly can access healthcare even remotely. They should be all placed under government insurance to encourage their visits to hospitals. One disadvantage of free access to all is that it will promote laziness among the citizens. It will lead to overpopulation as the citizens will not be bothered about expensive treatments. The government, thus, may be overwhelmed by the enormous expenses to cover her citizens.

In summary, health cover is essential to the lives of human beings. Healthcare access helps improve the physical and mental health status of citizens. Improvement in citizens’ health will result from the improved economic prosperity of a nation as there will be adequate labour, both skilled and unskilled. Therefore governments should make it top priority to fund or subsidize the cost of healthcare fully. The governments can do subsidy and funding through collaboration with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and the private sector among other stakeholders in the health sector. Recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) should be fully implemented to ensure universal health coverage, irrespective of the age, colour, sex or financial ability.

References:

Ahmed, S. A. S., Ajisola, M., Azeem, K., Bakibinga, P., Chen, Y. F., Choudhury, N. N., … & Yusuf, R. (2020). Impact of the societal response to COVID-19 on access to healthcare for non-COVID-19 health issues in slum communities of Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria, and Pakistan: results of pre-COVID and COVID-19 lockdown stakeholder engagements. BMJ global health, 5(8), e003042. https://gh.bmj.com/content/5/8/e003042.abstract

Ai-ris, Y. C., & Molina, R. L. (2019). Maternal mortality in the United States: updates on trends, causes, and solutions. No reviews, 20(10), e561-e574. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1542/neo.20-10-e561

Alcalá, H. E., Chen, J., Langellier, B. A., Roby, D. H., & Ortega, A. N. (2017). Impact of the Affordable Care Act on health care access and utilization among Latinos. The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, 30(1), 52-62. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3122/jabfm.2017.01.160208

Hodgkinson, S., Godoy, L., Beers, L. S., & Lewin, A. (2017). Improving mental health access for low-income children and families in the primary care setting. Paediatrics, 139(1), e20151175. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2015-1175

Hone, T., Habicht, J., Domente, S., & Atun, R. (2016). Expansion of health insurance in Moldova and associated improvements in access and reductions in direct payments. Journal of global health, 6(2), 020702. https://doi.org/10.7189/jogh.06.020702

Katsarava, Z., Mania, M., Lampl, C., Herberhold, J., & Steiner, T. J. (2018). Inadequate medical care for people with migraine in Europe–evidence from the Eurolight study. The journal of headache and pain, 19(1), 10. doi https://doi.org/10.1186/s10194-018-0839-1

Zhang, X., Dupre, M. E., Qiu, L., Zhou, W., Zhao, Y., & Gu, D. (2017). Urban-rural differences in the association between access to healthcare and health outcomes among older adults in China. BMC geriatrics, 17(1), 151. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12877-017-0538-9