Assignment Week 6: Health Care Beyond the Hospital Analysis

Health Care Beyond the Hospital (105 points)

Many sectors beyond healthcare facilities need national health policies. Health disparities result in worse outcomes for the poor. A national or regional health policy can protect vulnerable populations from poor quality healthcare and a lack of access to health needs.

Find a case study examining a vulnerable population that is impacted by a national or regional healthcare concern, specifically lack of shelter, gaining access to healthcare, or lack of healthcare insurance. Include any statistics you can find.

Address the following:

Clearly explain the health disparities and why it is worse for the poor.

What are some of the moral and ethical obligations that may need to be applied to Saudi Arabia’s national policies?

What are some of the positive social changes that need to be accomplished to protect these populations?

What unmoral and unethical acts could be used by stakeholders to influence the policy changes?

Summarize your recommendations for the national or regional health policy to protect vulnerable populations from this disparity.

Attempts to improve the quality of care have often been underpinned by a biomedical understanding of quality – i.e. the conceptualization of a gold standard of quality guided by clinical guidelines – that can lead to a narrow focus. Provider practices tend to vary despite the existence of accountability procedures and guidelines.14 Interventions may not be implemented as intended or easily accommodated within established models of care.15 Clinical quality is important for patient outcomes but perceptions of the quality of care – which may not correlate with actual quality – are likely to be the key drivers of utilization.16,17 Patients may also find it difficult to evaluate the quality of care because they lack their physician’s medical expertise and training.

In South Africa, a key motivating factor in patients’ travel to access health services – including travel across borders – was found to be the patients’ perceptions of the quality of health services.20 Patients may sometimes believe an ineffective and unsafe treatment to be good, even when they have access to effective and safe treatments. In Malaysia, for example, many people with hypertension seek potentially ineffective and unsafe treatments from traditional practitioners.21 Perceptions of the quality of care are based on a mix of individual experience, processed information and rumour. In Uganda, perceptions of the quality of the care that was locally available were found to have persuaded many women to seek maternal care away from their local area – apparently regardless of the availability of transportation and the distances involved.22 In Bangladesh, despite a nationwide expansion in the network of health facilities, facility-based deliveries remained rare and most women still attempted to give birth at home or, in the case of complications, at distant periurban health centres that the women believed to offer care of higher quality than that available at the community facilities closest to their homes.23,24 Patients’ trust in services has been shown to be an important element of perceived quality.25

Perceptions of the quality of care may relate entirely to non-clinical factors. For example, criminalized or marginalized populations – e.g. some ethnic or sexual minorities – may judge the quality of care only according to the extent that the care environment is non-discriminatory or supportive.26 In Zambia, many patients considered public-sector clinics supported by one particular nongovernmental organization to be better than other public-sector facilities that apparently provided the same standardized package of care.

Welcome to class

Hello class and welcome to the class and I will be your instructor for this course. This is a -week course and requires a lot of time commitment, organization, and a high level of dedication. Please use the class syllabus to guide you through all the assignments required for the course. I have also attached the classroom policies to this announcement to know your expectations for this course. Please review this document carefully and ask me any questions if you do. You could email me at any time or send me a message via the “message” icon in halo if you need to contact me. I check my email regularly, so you should get a response within 24 hours. If you have not heard from me within 24 hours and need to contact me urgently, please send a follow up text to.

I strongly encourage that you do not wait until the very last minute to complete your assignments. Your assignments in weeks 4 and 5 require early planning as you would need to present a teaching plan and interview a community health provider. I advise you look at the requirements for these assignments at the beginning of the course and plan accordingly. I have posted the YouTube link that explains all the class assignments in detail. It is required that you watch this 32-minute video as the assignments from week 3 through 5 require that you follow the instructions to the letter to succeed. Failure to complete these assignments according to instructions might lead to a zero. After watching the video, please schedule a one-on-one with me to discuss your topic for your project by the second week of class. Use this link to schedule a 15-minute session. Please, call me at the time of your appointment on my number. Please note that I will NOT call you.

Please, be advised I do NOT accept any assignments by email. If you are having technical issues with uploading an assignment, contact the technical department and inform me of the issue. If you have any issues that would prevent you from getting your assignments to me by the deadline, please inform me to request a possible extension. Note that working fulltime or overtime is no excuse for late assignments. There is a 5%-point deduction for every day your assignment is late. This only applies to approved extensions. Late assignments will not be accepted.

If you think you would be needing accommodations due to any reasons, please contact the appropriate department to request accommodations.

Plagiarism is highly prohibited. Please ensure you are citing your sources correctly using APA 7th edition. All assignments including discussion posts should be formatted in APA with the appropriate spacing, font, margin, and indents. Any papers not well formatted would be returned back to you, hence, I advise you review APA formatting style. I have attached a sample paper in APA format and will also post sample discussion responses in subsequent announcements.

Your initial discussion post should be a minimum of 200 words and response posts should be a minimum of 150 words. Be advised that I grade based on quality and not necessarily the number of words you post. A minimum of TWO references should be used for your initial post. For your response post, you do not need references as personal experiences would count as response posts. If you however cite anything from the literature for your response post, it is required that you cite your reference. You should include a minimum of THREE references for papers in this course. Please note that references should be no more than 5 years old except recommended as a resource for the class. Furthermore, for each discussion board question, you need ONE initial substantive response and TWO substantive responses to either your classmates or your instructor for a total of THREE responses. There are TWO discussion questions each week, hence, you need a total minimum of SIX discussion posts for each week. I usually post a discussion question each week. You could also respond to these as it would count towards your required SIX discussion posts for the week.

I understand this is a lot of information to cover in 5 weeks, however, the Bible says in Philippians 4:13 that we can do all things through Christ that strengthens us. Even in times like this, we are encouraged by God’s word that we have that ability in us to succeed with His strength. I pray that each and every one of you receives strength for this course and life generally as we navigate through this pandemic that is shaking our world today. Relax and enjoy the course!

Sincerely,