Health Workers Problems in the United States

Student’s Name Professor’s Name Course Date Health Workers Problems in USA Every citizen is entitled to effective healthcare services that are accessible at any given time. However, the high cost of healthcare services makes it hard for every citizen to enjoy that right. Health workers play an important role in providing health services, especially to people who have no access to the formal healthcare systems. Doctors and other medical professionals depend largely on health workers in order to function efficiently and effectively because health workers usually have an established connection with the communities they serve. Despite their contribution to society, health workers are not fully appreciated and recognised for their efforts. First of all, health workers in the USA have to deal with poor remuneration. In most cases, health workers are paid below the minimum wages which forces them to look for other ways to generate income that supplement their low pay (Dieleman and Harnmeijer 22). Health workers have not been viewed as public employees who are fully fledged and as such their salaries have been very low as compared to other health service providers in the health infrastructures. For example, community health workers are paid a mean annual wage of $ 42,340 while registered nurses are paid a mean of $73,550 annually (Bureau of Labor Statistics). The difference in payment is huge, yet community health workers provide healthcare to poor people when nurses are not available. Health workers do not receive proper recognition as healthcare providers and this is witnessed in cases such as the labour rule that would have barred health workers from the companion exemption (Boris and Klein 320). Health workers positions, especially community health workers, as healthcare providers are mainly funded through grants which lack the sustainability required to pay and compensate health workers properly (Pittman, Sunderland and Broderick 4). Grants are mostly short term sources of funds, which makes them temporary and the process of acquiring them every now and then may stall the progress of health workers in the community. Poor pay usually demotivates employees in any working environment, which in turn results in low retention rates or poor performance at work. Health workers’ motivation need to be boosted by increasing their pay to ensure that they are performing well in providing healthcare services. In addition, there is poor reimbursement mechanism among the health workers workforce which also affects the retention of the health workers (Alvisurez, Clopper and Felix12). Retention of health workers plays a critical role in serving the communities since these workers have already established some trust with the communities and when they leave, they leave with the communities’ trust. Health workers are sometimes viewed as a source of cheap labour by other medical professionals (Alvisurez, et al.). This is especially so due to their low pay, which makes them seem like a cheaper substitute for providing the same care provided by other health care professionals. It also affects the relationship between health workers and the rest of the medical professions because they appear to compete for the same roles. Second, health workers lack the necessary knowledge required to determine best practices in terms of their interaction with patients and other health care providers (Pittman, et al. 4). They do not have a clear guideline on what patient information they should access, or what should be included in the patients’ medical records. The lack of a clearly defined health workers skills requirement usually affects the health workers’ ability to be effective in providing care. In specific, community health workers perform some of the roles performed by nurses, yet they do not train for long periods like nurses. Their training also varies, making it hard to be generalise the required skill sets. Further, it is very challenging to define and measure health workers skills, especially intangible skills, in order to facilitate reimbursement (Alvisurez, et al.7). In addition, health workers face the challenge of undefined roles, such as whether they are health advocates or whether they are involved in treatment and management of chronic diseases, which at times overlap with the roles of other health care professionals, causing some kind of animosity between the two groups, such as between nurses and community health workers. This animosity affects the workings of health workers workforce, limiting the contributions that they make towards the health care system (Alvisurez, et al.11). In addition, when roles are not properly defined, there is an increase in the probability of health services being duplicated, which leads to competencies and time wastage. Health workers are not viewed as important as other care givers such as doctors, ye...