Care Coordination Plan: Mental Health and Social Equity

People who suffer from mental illnesses need specialized care to alleviate their symptoms and attain full recovery. It is hard to get that kind of care in health centers that do not employ care coordination plans. Health coordinators involve patients, caregivers, and staff in planning and administering care (Coffey et al., 2019). They allocate time for meetings and discussions to set goals and come up with more effective techniques. Productive conversations yield care coordination plans that enable healthcare providers to meet the needs of people suffering from mental disorders.

Quality of Mental Health Services

Care coordinators employ various models to assess the quality of health services in their place of work. Samartzis and Talias (2019) described an eight-dimensional model that applies in microscopic and macroscopic levels. Gauging the quality at a clinical level is not enough because it does not examine the financial situation. Therefore, an effective care appraisal model uses many dimensions to address several issues. The eight-dimensional model does this by answering the following questions (Samartzis & Talias, 2019):

  1. Are the health providers using appropriate methods to alleviate mental illnesses?
  2. Can the patients access a mental health service when they need it?
  3. Is the sick person ready to use the services that a mental institution offers?
  4. Are the health workers capable of taking care of people suffering from mental disorders?
  5. How effective are the health professionals when discharging their duties?
  6. Does the mental health system facilitate therapeutic relationships and procedures?
  7. How efficient are the health workers in their line of duty?
  8. Are the patients and health workers safe in the mental hospital?

After finding answers to these questions, care coordinators design plans to improve the quality of healthcare. They study the responses to identify challenges and situations that need fixing (Coffey et al., 2019). For instance, ineffective communication, lack of teamwork, and improper utilization of community resources derail efforts to cure mental illnesses. I arranged a meeting with patients and caregivers to explain how the preliminary care coordination plan addresses these issues.

Priorities in the Discussions

I prepared a priority list to avoid leaving out essential interventions during the discussions. All suggestions aimed to achieve collaboration in the community health center. Administering effective care is possible when patients and family members collaborate with the health workers because consulting becomes easier (Coffey et al., 2019). Service users collaborate with staff members who are reachable and work as a unit. On top of the priority list was the hospital’s plans to invest in more means of communication between patients and health workers. Facilitating proper reporting and interaction of staff members to encourage teamwork was the second item. Another issue is planning to invest more time and resources in using more resources in the community. The care coordination plans changed when I studied evidence-based practices.

Evidence-based practices show that a competent care coordinator focuses on patients’ well-being even when no longer in the health center. Vita and Barlati (2019) discovered that psychiatric rehabilitation supports those living with mental sickness to acquire social skills. Patients learn these skills when health workers abide by medical ethics. Jain et al. (2017) described ethical issues that expose people with mental disorders to harm. For instance, health providers who do not observe safety measures in hospitals endanger patients’ lives. Their negligence can result in health complications associated with treatment techniques. Addressing ethical concerns in the hospital is essential because patients’ right to life is always the priority. Thus, I involved the relevant parties in designing plans to eliminate healthcare issues associated with unethical behavior.

Healthcare Issues

Unethical health providers do not respect patients’ attitudes, traditions, and views. Their behavior discourages transparency, confidentiality, and voluntary treatment (Jain et al., 2017). For instance, some health providers use patients for research purposes without their informed consent. Others employ risky methods to administer care without disclosing the side effects. Patients deserve to know things that expose them to danger in hospitals. Lack of confidentiality, involuntary treatment, and poor patient-doctor relationships lead to concealing crucial information.

Lack of Confidentiality

Professional health workers conceal personal information learned about the service receivers during treatment. However, some health providers disclose patients’ details without their consent (Jain et al., 2017). In many cases, they do so after accepting bribes or when influential individuals threaten them. Due to this, some patients and caregivers avoid seeking treatment in hospitals while others provide untrue information. Assessing patients’ progress is difficult when accurate data is unavailable.

Involuntary Treatment

People with mental disorders cannot make informed decisions about their lives. Some health professionals take advantage of their situation to conduct experiments on them (Jain et al., 2017). Selfishness drives medics to disregard professional conduct in their line of duty. Patients participate in procedures that may harm them because they lack awareness. The health workers must consult caregivers and the relevant authorities before subjecting victims of mental sickness to risky methods.

Poor Doctor-Patient Relationship

Health workers struggle to obtain accurate information from patients when there are trust issues between them. Jain et al. (2017) indicated that caregivers and patients lose confidence in medical professionals who exploit their rights. For instance, doctors and nurses who refuse to furnish patients with their health records cause displeasure and lack of friendship. It is ethical to be truthful when dealing with people who trust you with their lives.

Policies

Many nations have implemented laws and policies to bar health employees from being unethical in their line of work. The United States created the Mental Health Parity Act of 1996 (Ohio University, 2020). Not only does this act guard against the exploitation of those with mental illness, but it also enables them to acquire health plans. Thus, the health policies protect patients against those who deny them rights. At the health centers, health employees must adhere to the government policies and those created in their workplaces. Some hospitals have policies that govern how they engage with the neighboring community.

Link to the Community

Health providers whose policies promote society’s well-being by eradicating negative impacts are excellent examples of good organizations. Most individuals and organizations are willing to sign partnership agreements with such hospitals (Castillo et al., 2019). Therefore, they can access many resources that enable them to implement various healthcare interventions. Community resources that are essential in my care coordination plan include the courts, schools, and playgrounds. As shown in table 1, community resources are helpful during the implementation of patient-centered interventions.

Table 1. Using Community Resources to Implement Patient-Centered Interventions.

Healthcare Issue Intervention Community Resource Timeline Ethical Question
Lack of confidentiality Parties involved must sign non-disclosure agreements before commencing treatment. Court The care coordination department will draft and provide confidentiality forms before the end of 2021. From January 2022, patients and hospitals’ legal representatives must sign them before commencing treatment. Breaching the consensus attracts legal suits in a court of law. Are healthcare providers supposed to disclose confidential information when doing so protects patients’ welfare?
Involuntary treatment The hospital will invest in training health workers about informed consent when dealing with mental illnesses. School The first training session will take place during the first week of January 2022. Similar sessions will happen after every two months to enlighten new employees about informed consent. Schools’ classrooms and halls offer the best venues for training. Is it okay to treat a person with a mental disorder when there are no caregivers to assist in making informed decisions?
Poor patient-doctor relationship The care coordination department will organize recreational activities to enable patients, caregivers, and health workers to bond. Playground I will seek consent to use community playgrounds for weekly recreational activities from January 2022. Should a health professional avoid breaking bad news to a patient when doing so hurts their relationship?

Implications of the Decisions

The interventions employed to deal with healthcare issues have positive and negative effects. They increase the patient population in hospitals because people like seeking treatment from health providers who value their rights (Jain et al., 2017). Good relationships between staff members and service users facilitate honest conversations to evaluate patients’ progress. Staff members meet patients’ needs when they understand their progress, thus leading to a quick recovery. On the negative, implementing the interventions is costly and may lead to overpopulation in the hospitals. The hospital should acquire more facilities to achieve mental health goals in time.

Healthy People 2030

Most countries work towards ensuring that their citizens lead healthy lives. For instance, in the United States, Healthy People 2030 provides a framework for tracking progress towards achieving health goals (Pronk et al., 2020). The health initiative demands an expanded focus on sharing responsibilities in the quest for a healthy nation. Pronk et al. (2020) indicated that social structures such as families, communities, and physical surroundings play essential roles in people’s well-being. The care coordination interventions facilitate the interaction and cooperation of staff members, caregivers, patients, and community members. Each of them directs their efforts towards meeting the following elements of well-being (Pronk et al., 2020):

  • think
  • feel
  • function

References

Castillo, E. G., Ijadi-Maghsoodi, R., Shadravan, S., Moore, E., Mensah, M. O., Docherty, M., Aguilera Nunez, M. G., Barcelo, N., Goodsmith, N., Halpin, L. E., Morton, I., Mango, J., Montero, A. E., Rahmanian Koushkaki, S., Bromley, E., Chung, B., Jones, F., Gabrielian, S., Gelberg, L.,… Wells, K. B. (2019). Community interventions to promote mental health and social equity. Current Psychiatry Reports, 21(5). Web.

Coffey, M., Hannigan, B., Barlow, S., Cartwright, M., Cohen, R., Faulkner, A., Jones, A., & Simpson, A. (2019). Recovery-focused mental health care planning and coordination in acute inpatient mental health settings: A cross-national comparative mixed-methods study. BMC Psychiatry, 19(1). Web.

Jain, S., Kuppili, P. P., Pattanayak, R. D., & Sagar, R. (2017). Ethics in psychiatric research: Issues and recommendations. Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine, 39(5), 558–565. Web.

Ohio University. (2020). Mental health policy in America: Stats, tips & resources for effecting change. Web.

Pronk, N., Kleinman, D. V., Goekler, S. F., Ochiai, E., Blakey, C., & Brewer, K. H. (2020). Promoting Health and Well-being in Healthy People 2030. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, Publish Ahead of Print. Web.

Samartzis, L., & Talias, M. A. (2019). Assessing and Improving the Quality in Mental Health Services. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(1), 249. Web.

Vita, A., & Barlati, S. (2019). The implementation of evidence-based psychiatric rehabilitation: Challenges and opportunities for mental health services. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 10. Web.

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