Population Health Organizational Assessment (Health, Medicine, Nursing Essay)
After reading Case Study on Organizational ReadinessPreview the document, please consider how you, as a VHA clinic leader, would address the Population Health Organizational Assessment (PHOA) results of your group’s readiness to engage in a population health strategy. Because (like the average organization who had participated in the survey) your lowest scores were found to be in the areas of patient engagement and self-care for chronic conditions, your task is to prepare your group for learning and change in order to increase patient partnership and patient-centered care, especially in the areas of:
shared decision-making
health education and health literacy
health coaching and behavior change.
In a 3-4 page paper, please describe in detail your approach to a program to engage your clinicians and support staff and to lead the change effort.
Additional Resources
As a starting point, you may use the sample mission statement below:
In VHA, Veterans health education is defined as any combination of information, education and other strategies designed to help Veterans:
Enhance their quality of life through health promotion and disease prevention.
Actively partner with their providers and health care teams.
Engage needed family and social support systems.
Develop self-management and coping skills.
Population Health Organizational Assessment
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Professor’s Name
Course
Date
Population Health Organizational Assessment
Population health is a customized approach that enables health departments to connect their work with policies that bring change in the local vicinity. The process forms partnerships that are non-traditional within different sectors of society like public health, local government, and academia to achieve positive patient outcomes. Various health concerns are brought about by population health, and the most efficient way of addressing the problems is implemented. Veterans Health Administration (VHA) implemented the Population Heath Organizational Assessment (PHOA) to evaluate the readiness of organizations in promoting population health (Hatef et al., 2019). In this topic, the way I (the VHA clinic leader) should address the PHOA results of different VHA groups will be discussed.
Shared Decision-Making
Shared decision-making (SDM) can be termed as the process of patients and clinical workers working together to make decisions, select tests, care plans, and treatments based on clinical evidence. Shared decision-making is an essential aspect of patient-centered care because it empowers patients to manage their health by themselves. To improve patient-centered care in the VHA organizations, implementing a shared decision-making process is essential. Results from the assessment show that patient engagement in health care organizations is minimal affecting shared decision-making. Initiating training programs for health works is vital because it equips them with the right skills to deal with patients.
Enrolling programs that help patients access and address their values, communicate with their preferred language, and are equipped with health literacy levels is essential. Low health literacy among patients contributes to patient engagement because it affects their capability to use and engage with clinicians. Educating patients on health matters is vital for building their confidence and allowing them to communicate freely. Addressing issues like preferred patient language and values empowers them to be involved in treatment decisions because they are confident.
Another way of promoting patient engagement is through using decision aids and educational resources that are evidence-based (Elwyn et al., 2017). Ensuring VHA organizations use decision aids to help patients make decisions is an effective strategy to promote patient engagement and self-centered care. Decision aids provide patients with information that helps them make the right decision, and they can be videos, printed books, or website resources. These tools will help patients communicate their values, challenges, benefits, and care alternatives.
Ensuring organizations implement the shared decision-making process in their daily routines is another strategy that will help health organizations deal with the two health issues. Implementing SDM in daily clinical routines ensures that the process is executed when delivering care to patients. When patients engage with their caregivers, they get to learn a lot about their health, and it helps them when taking care of themselves and improves their patient–centered care.
Health Education and Health Literacy
Population health is not trained in medical institutions, so implementing a population health program is almost impossible. Ensuring that clinicians and patients from all organizations have access to health education is essential. Educating clinicians equips them with communication skills that help them communicate efficiently with patients, thus promoting patient engagement. Customer service skills are also necessary for healthcare organizations. Advanced education for clinical workers will equip them with customer service skills, which will help them deal with different types of patients (Anderson, August, Goldberg, Youatt, & Beck, 2019). Education wi...