Trends Influencing Access and Equity in Health Care
Select a trend that is influencing access or equity in the health care system negatively and summarize how it is impacting the delivery of health care. Include a discussion of the disparities in the health care system. Include a brief history of the trend, the current status, and your thoughts regarding what needs to be done to address it.
Write a 2- to 3-page paper using the following guidelines and evaluation criteria. Use a minimum of five references from the professional nursing literature in the assigned course readings and other references in the Walden Library. If they are relevant, you may use one or two professional web sites in addition to the literature references.
Begin the paper with a brief paragraph that provides an overview of the assignment and its purpose. There is no separate heading for this paragraph; the heading is the same as the title of the paper. This will be about 2-3 sentences. The last sentence in this paragraph is a sentence that begins "The purpose of this paper is to ¨. This paragraph is worth 20 points.
Use the following headings for the rest of the paper.
Access or Equity Trend - 20 points
State the trend you have selected that is influencing access or equity in the health care system negatively. Provide a one-paragraph overview about the background and history of the trend.
Influence on the delivery of health care - 40 points
Discuss at least two specific ways in which the trend you selected in the previous section is impacting the current status of health care. This will be one paragraph for each of the two ways.
Creation of health care disparities - 20 points
Discuss how the effects of access or equity in health care based on this trend help to create or maintain disparities in health care. This will be one paragraph.
Strategies to address inadequate access or inequity - 40 points
Discuss at least two specific ways you think nurses and the nursing profession can address inadequate access to health care or inequity in health care. Each of the two ways will be one paragraph.
Summary - 10 point
Provide a one-paragraph summary of the main points in the paper.
Trends Influencing Access and Equity in Health Care
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United States has made little progress in addressing Equity and Access in health care calling for a need to address more areas that will create equitable health care systems. The main areas of equity calls for support in primary care, improved health information systems, payment models, informed research and health care disparity monitoring (Sultz & Young, 2014). The purpose of this paper is to look at the socioeconomic trends that are related to costing, health insurance and how the influence access and equity in health care (Sultz & Young, 2014).
Socioeconomic trends influencing Equity and Access in Health care
Socioeconomic factors continue to influence equity and access in health care negatively in the United States. Rising costs of health have posed a lot of strain for American families and the government spending. In 1960 the health spending of the United States accounted for only 5.2% of the country’s gross domestic product. Presently the health care system accounts to 16 % of the country’s Gross domestic product. To add on this, spending for health care is growing at more than double the rate of overall economy. It is estimated that the average premium was $12,106 in 2007 up from $11,480. It is estimated that health spending will rise to an average of 20% of the country’s Gross domestic product by the year 2050 (Sultz & Young, 2014).
Influence on the delivery of Healthcare
There is an absence of systematic disparities in social determinants of health care between groups of different social and economic advantage or disadvantage; this includes power, wealth and prestige (Barr, 2008). The costs of health care insurance premiums continue to be on the rise than overall inflation of the earnings of workers. This has put more pressure for employers and other groups put more funds in health insurance. The increase in premiums also makes it difficult for the unemployed groups to purchase insurance policies of their own; this contributes to a great number of Americans without health insurance.
The cost of health care is so high and covers too little this is economically and morally imperative. Emergency rooms also reveal little or no aspect of comprehensive care for patients; this leaves health care systems with fewer resources for patients who actually need emergency care. The cost of providing emergency care is also high; in fact, some hospitals have had to close emergency units to do the cost. Poor remuneration also forces physicians, consultant doctors to resign from public hospitals, leading to many patients being underserved (Norris & Aiken, 2006).
Creation of Health Care disparities
Challenges in Access and Equitable Health care are related to complex medical systems that involve clinicians and health insurance policies. These differences arise due to social stratification and social dis...