The Concept of Health Policy

The Concept of Health Policy
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The Concept of Health Policy
An in-depth understanding of the operational environment marks the onset of effective outcomes. Dynamic industries such as healthcare require an extensive exploration of multiple issues, internal and external to clinical settings, which affect the overall outcomes. Bearing the multifaceted nature of contemporary healthcare, such a detailed understanding requires standardisation. The concept of health policy is a tool that stakeholders in healthcare employ to understand their operational environment. Superficially, health policy defines the scope of decisions or interventions that healthcare professionals undertake in their daily obligations. This paper employs Walt’s approaches of policy application to explore the concept of health policy for emergency physician professionals in the UK. The Walt approach of policy application is an extensive tool that should accord the emergency physicians a platform to understand the internal and external policy prospects that define the scope of their operations.
Walt Approach of Policy Application
The Walt approach of policy application is among the most popular models employed to understand the contemporary concept of health policy. The model is political and tends to understand health policy as a factor of the government and its various institutions (Cees et al., 2019). The Walt model differentiates the concept of policy by dividing it into two categories: high politics and low politics. High politics or macro-policies are the long-term policy inputs implemented by the state or the high political class to guide decisions or standards on a national grid. High policies often accommodate multiple sectoral interests. In healthcare, every department is generally covered in the confines of high political policies. The Walt model also categorises policies into low politics in which more specific aspects of an institution, a department, or an industry are explored (Power, Bury, & Ryan, 2019). Healthcare professionals in the emergency department, for instance, are subject to low political policies that are poised to affect the scope of their activities.
The political system dictates the need for synchrony between the low and the high political policies. A health policymaker must be aware of the constraints of policies to make them feasible and relevant to the operational environments. On some occasions, the efficiency by which policies impact inputs can elevate their applications across the political ladders. That is, a low politics policy can be advanced into a high politics policy, especially if such a policy constitutes outputs that match the needs of a wide area operational environment. Ultimately, bearing the dynamism of the operational environment, healthcare professionals should understand policies both within their areas of specialisation and beyond those areas.
High Politics Policies in UK’s Healthcare
UK’s healthcare bears a considerable affinity to high political policies. The Department of Health (DoH) form part of the stakeholders in national policy developments on healthcare matters. The participation of the department in national health issues stems from the expertise that it harbours and is needed in making informed and futuristic policies for UK healthcare. Presently, the Health and Social Care Act of 2012 marks the scope of healthcare policy in the UK. The act was initiated in the legislature with the motivation to instil some changes to the Civil Contingencies Act of 2004 (Power, Bury, & Ryan, 2019). The Health and Social Care Act emphasises responses to emergencies. The need to change the law was based on the restructuring initiative that would classify stakeholders in emergency care to ease both responsibility and accountability. The Department of Health oversees the implementation of the Health and Social Care Act of 2012 throughout the nation.
The background of health policy is complex to understand, bearing the inputs of Walt’s model. Walt simplifies the policies to foster a more accurate flow of healthcare information and services from high political ends to low political ends (Power, Bury, & Ryan, 2019). Health systems and health outcomes have been cited as vital elements in formulating and implementing policies. However, the complexity in understanding health policy stems from the fact that policy is more than national law. Instead, policies must support programs and interventions to steer the necessary outcomes. At the high political level, the health policies constitute the administrative norms, guidelines, regulations, and rules that the government employs to translate laws and regulations to services and programs that citizens need.
Different topics in evidence and politics have been cited to influence policies at the macro levels. Evidence-based policies are the primary policies at the macro healthcare levels. The evidence-based policies are formulated based on the application of rigorous studies such as randomised controlled trials and scientific inputs to identify practices, standards, and programs that can improve outcomes (Newson et al., 2018). In emergency care, some of such policies emphasise factors such as the guiding factors in a workplace environment, healthcare safety, and ensuring efficiency in healthcare practice. There are also political debates surrounding personal healthcare policies. Based on the social and cultural architecture of a nation, some policies can be implemented without the necessity of scientific inputs (Tammes et al., 2017). Philosophical policies are based on prevalent socio-cultural prospects, including government authority, individual rights, and ethics. Conversely, there are also economic topics that aim at developing policies geared towards high operational efficiency indices while minimising healthcare costs.
The modern healthcare policy revolves around specific issues. Primary among the issues is technology. There is an increasing reliance on technologies to deliver healthcare services. Different technological tools such as electronic health record systems or wearable technologies have proven efficient in diagnosing and delivering services to patients (Colin et al., 2018). However, technologies come with challenges that require standardisation. Privacy is monumental among the challenges associated with the inputs of technologies in healthcare. Bearing their susceptibility to breakdown, patients are not assured of when their confidential pieces of information can be leaked to the wrong hands. In every healthcare department within the UK, some policies guide the use of technology. Specifically, the Data Protection Act of 1998 and 2018 guides how healthcare professionals, regardless of their specialisation, must emphasise the privacy of their patients (Holding et al., 2021). To emergency physicians, policies on technology management steer the need for continuous learning to adapt to the escalating technological advancements.
Patient safety is another factor that consistently influences health policy in the UK. While the UK is ranked among the leading healthcare systems in the world, it still encounters a considerable share of safety concerns. Some of the most common safety concerns in the UK healthcare facilities include medication incidents that contribute to 10.2% of the safety cases, treatment/procedure incidents (20.6%), ongoing monitoring/review incidents (13.2%), and patient accidents (19.2%) (Holding et al., 2021). With all the above concerns, the NHS has a platform for continuous policy developments to combat emerging safety concerns in healthcare. The NHS patient safety strategy affects all healthcare professionals and stems from the Equality Act of 2010 that analyses patient safety impacts on the overall health indices (Maughan et al., 2016). Some of the aspects of the national safety policy worth understanding for a practitioner include the patient safety syllabus, patient safety incident management system, patient safety incident response framework, and national patient safety alerts. Understanding policies should guide professionals on strategies to address various safety concerns.
Health Policy Options
Multiple health policy options exist at the macro-political level in the UK. The policy options define the factors that mark various health decisions or standards within the UK. First among the factors is philosophy in which every individual is accorded the right to health. As per the inputs of the World Health Organization, every country in the world is part of at least one treaty addressing health-related rights. Every individual, on account of the right to health, should access healthcare services. This policy option affects emergency department professionals extensively, considering that they need to save lives in critical conditions at all times. As such, individuals with money or the poor and immigrants or citizens all have the right to seek emergency health services in any UK healthcare facility, both public and private. The UK is also a religious jurisdiction in which faith-based organisations steer macro-political influence on the architecture of the healthcare policy. In religious jurisdictions, there is a perceived obligation to offer some healthcare services to individuals. On other occasions, non-governmental organisations take the initiative of steering policies aimed at ensuring access to basic care for any individual in need. In the emergency department, philosophical policy options influence a range of factors, including the number of people seeking emergency interventions, costs, and the utilisation of other resources (Lucyk & McLaren, 2017). There remain controversies on philosophical policies, especially on the individuals responsible for paying for services offered primarily on philosophical grounds.
Healthcare financing is the second important policy option in the UK. Financing healthcare services remains integral for the amount and quality of services that individuals receive. In the UK, emergency services are offered based on the presented symptoms or patient needs (Hodkinson et al., 2016). However, the services must attract payments of specific kinds. Different economic models exist in UK’s health. Individuals can be accorded publicly-funded care or single-payer systems. The public funds occur through insurance or taxation. There are also financing options, including complete capitalisation and mandatory or voluntary private health insurance policies. Individuals are at liberty of choosing the economic or financing policies that they find befitting to their needs.
Health Workforce Policy
The quality and efficiency of care are highly determined by the number of health workers in a nation. The workforce tends to influence the execution of tasks within clinical settings. There are 1.1 million NHS workers (Edwards et al., 2020). More efforts are put to increase the number of workers. In an emergency department, the need for more professionals i...