LIMITED ACCESS TO HEALTHCARE

Running Head: LIMITED ACCESS TO HEALTHCARE

LIMITED ACCESS TO HEALTHCARE 2

Limited Access to Healthcare

Student name

University

November 8th, 2018

Introduction

As the world keeps on developing, there are some areas that have a challenge to access healthcare services. There is a number of factors that limit these areas access to healthcare. In other places there are no barriers to access the healthcare facilities however there is no access to appropriate quality of care. In this assignment I am going to analyze some of the barriers that limit healthcare and discuss the potential intervention and approaches that can be implemented to solve this problem.

Limited access to healthcare is greatly contributing to the spread of certain diseases. According to Heather in his book from rural village to a global village he explains that the rural areas are the most affected by limited access to healthcare. According to the research some of the health care services to treat and prevent chronic diseases are missing in rural areas. Some of these services are: mental health, substance use and abuse, preventive care, pediatric and many more. There are several factors that cause the limitation of healthcare services, these factors include health illiteracy, geographical barriers, transportation and mobility.

There are multiple geographical location barriers in these rural areas where they have no access to healthcare facilities around them, they are scarcely populated and located in remote areas. This puts them at risk of limited access to healthcare.

Lack of means of transportation is also another factor limiting the access to health services, healthcare facilities are located far from certain rural areas hence they need to travel to receive medical assistance. Lack of mobility means is a key factor to access healthcare, affecting patients who cannot afford these means.

In many healthcare centers the availability of medical providers is of one or two professional doctors and sometimes they are shared by other healthcare facilities. This leads to limited access to quality healthcare and sometimes the consumers or the patients might have to wait for long hours for their specialists to arrive.

Lack of healthcare practitioners is one of the main challenges the rural areas are experiencing in many parts of the world. The government is initiating projects to curb these problems. Although I am not holding a position that can help me capitalize these approaches which are beneficial to the community, I will explain these potential approaches that I conducted research on.

To access the information sources in the university library I used the PubMed database that helped me access documents that relate to limited access to health care. I used key words such as health information search, chronic disease, health care access and health seeking behavior. I also filtered the number of years for the articles published to a limited gap of 5 years that gave me the most current updated articles regarding limited access to healthcare. From the sources I used I went through them to see if they have the content that I needed on limited access to healthcare and if the information was reliable.

In the journal of community health published in October 2013 there is information on how transportation barrier affects the community (Syed, 2013). This article elaborates the challenges that are faced by patients in seeking the healthcare services. The author emphasizes on the disadvantages brought by this barrier and the negative outcomes that come in hand with the transportation barrier. In general, the article briefs on the negativity that is common by patients who have limited access to healthcare and medical access.

According to an article published on the American journal of medicine by Ronald and his counterparts they explained the use of telemedicine (Weinstein, 2014). Telemedicine is simply the use of technology where a patient receives healthcare services without physically reaching the health care center. From the author they came to a conclusion that telemedicine has a lot of benefits and it can curb the problem of limited access to healthcare. The author list some of the benefits gained from telemedicine as follow: is an affordable service to patients who would have spent much to reach the healthcare, uses on prison where inmates are not allowed to leave the premises of the prison and in turn they have limited access to healthcare, is potentially beneficial for patients with special needs who have difficulties moving around, among others. This article is helpful because it enlightens how people who have limited access to health care can utilize and acknowledge technology to receive healthcare in the comfort of their homes.

In an article published in 2013 in the journal of medicine research (Moorhead, 2013), it covered the use of health information online. The author of this article summarized that information is being shared online on the social media from patients, health professionals and the public to curb the limited access to healthcare. The Article discusses the benefits of health information online that remark the health issues and improve the health outcomes. Even though there are many benefits that come with health information online, the information needs to be monitored not to violate the privacy and confidentiality of patients and also to improve its reliability and quality. Consumer health information has raised concern as many patients are going online to seek remedies. The use of electronic devices and communication gadgets has gone up in engaging in healthy information sharing. This is explained by the author of the article “the impact of consumer health information on demand for health services” by Debra SabatiniDwyer and HongLiu (Dwyer, 2014).

According to the article titled “The home health care routing and scheduling problem with interdependent services” published in the health care management science, it addresses the in-home health care services that are conducted in private homes by either home care attendants or medical practitioners (Mankowska, 2014). In this article they were successful in explaining the advantages of the in-home health care to curb the problem of limited access to health care for the aged or patients who couldn’t make to the centers. The author dictates the application of this approach and the successful outcomes based on its principles.

Learning from the research

From the scholarly opinions that I learned on limited access to healthcare, I gathered vital facts on this problem. These articles had knowledge that enlightened me further on the challenges and threats that are posed by limited access to healthcare. For example, I learned that missed appointments with a healthcare practitioner may lead to a chronic disease worsening due to a missed follow up to assess the progression of the disease and recovery. The peer-reviewed journals gave me an opportunity to gain knowledge about the potential intervention approaches that can be used to solve the problem of limited access to healthcare. For example when I read the journals on online health care information seeking I learned of the advantages that it brings when patients seek health care on the internet, which is helpful but also the article highlighted on the disadvantages that can be brought by the online health seeking information (Emmerton, 2014).

References

A New Dimension of Health Care: Systematic Review of the Uses, Benefits, and Limitations of Social Media for Health Communication [Journal] / auth. Moorhead Anne // The journal of medicine internet research . – 2013.

Dr Google and the Consumer: A Qualitative Study Exploring the Navigational Needs and Online Health Information-Seeking Behaviors of Consumers With Chronic Health Conditions [Journal] / auth. Emmerton Lynne // Journal of medical internet reserach. – 2014.

From Rural Village to Global Village [Book] / auth. Hudson Heather E.. – Newyork : Routledge, 2013.

Telemedicine, Telehealth, and Mobile Health Applications That Work: Opportunities and Barriers [Journal] / auth. Ronald S. Weinstein Ana Maria Lopez, Elizabeth A. Krupinski // The American Journal of Medicine. – 2014. – pp. 183-187.

The home health care routing and scheduling problem with interdependent services [Journal] / auth. Dorota Slawa Mankowska Frank MeiselChristian Bierwirth // Health Care Management Science. – 2014. – pp. 15-30.

The impact of consumer health information on the demand for health services [Journal] / auth. Debra sabatini dwyer Hongliu // The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance. – 2014. – pp. 1-11.

Traveling Towards Disease: Transportation Barriers to Health Care Access [Journal] / auth. Samina T. Syed Ben S. GerberLisa K. Sharp // Journal of Community Health. – 2013. – pp. 973-993.