Introduction
Numerous healthcare issues, including limited healthcare access, affect individuals, healthcare providers, and primary medical systems in modern society. Healthcare access is the capacity to secure healthcare amenities such as preventive medicine, diagnosis, therapeutic interventions, and treatment of illnesses, abnormalities, and other health-related conditions. Health coverage must be convenient and cost-effective to ensure more people obtain adequate healthcare. Healthcare access is critical since it leads to healthcare inequities in several vulnerable communities. Healthcare practitioners must be mindful of the possible issues a patient may face. Once health professionals acknowledge the challenges and their sources, they can offer real solutions that can arise for various reasons.
Causes
Limitations in healthcare service are primarily due to differing access to healthcare among various populations. The absence of insurance and financial resources, age, linguistic hurdles, inadequate healthcare providers, barriers, an unreliable source of treatment, and legal obstacles are among the causes of healthcare access limitations (Gold et al., 2021; Madu et al., 2021). In comparison to the majority community, certain racial, ethnic, social, and other groups lack sufficient health care. These people are more prone to avoid seeking medical help and the treatment they should receive. For several Americans, inadequate available funds are an obstacle to care, but minority people have the most limited access. Ethnic and racial communities are frequently assigned a health care plan restricting the available services and clinicians. Racial or cultural subgroups are less likely than white people to be able to see the same physician on a routine basis and instead rely on hospitals and emergency departments.
People who do not have access to regular healthcare have more difficulties getting medicines and keeping appointments. Low-income immigrants are more prone to face legal difficulties, making it more difficult for a person to keep their healthcare appointment. The health providers and diagnostic centers where minority groups are concentrated, such as in urban-rural areas, are frequently insufficient. Illiterate people may find it challenging to comprehend basic health information or when they should see their doctor (Liu et al., 2020). Numerous elderly individuals are on fixed incomes and cannot manage to spend on their medical care. Older adults are also more likely to have transportation issues or lack mobility, both of which might limit their healthcare coverage.
Analysis
Medical professionals must be knowledgeable about various variables contributing to affordable healthcare restrictions. Errors such as a lack of medical care, financial ability, age, poor language skills, a lack of health professionals, structural barriers, an irregular supply of care, and legal barriers all play a part. As a result, proper funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program is required, as is the retention and implementation of Medicare expansion. Maintaining stable insurance coverage marketplaces, sustaining ACA market changes, and resolving physician shortages are different variables that will solve the problem. Hospitals should expand the amount of accessible graduate medical training and school loan cancellation programs and eliminate barriers to professional visas for foreign-trained doctors to help expand the therapeutic workforce.
The Context
Individuals cannot get therapy if it is unavailable in their location or if clinicians refuse to treat them due to insurance or other difficulties. Specialty specialists and mental healthcare experts are in short supply in rural settings. Even if services are available, various obstacles may prevent patients from receiving care (Ramos & Chavira, 2022). One is insufficient mass transit, either due to excessive travel time, the lack of public transportation and the lack of a car and perhaps other alternative means of transport, or the restrictive transport expenses. Providers may decline to visit patients if no scheduled appointments are available or if their insurance is not accepted. Language barriers may prevent providers from communicating with patients, or their offices may be inaccessible to disabled people. Excessive wait times for appointments or to visit providers in their offices may further discourage use. The expense of medical insurance affects access to care.
Why the Issue is Important
Healthcare is being affected by health services, and studying the reasons for the causes is essential since it will provide better solutions to eliminate the incident. Constant and continuous accessibility can help stop illness, diagnose and treat infections and other health problems, improve quality of life, lower the mortality risk, and extend life expectancy. Primary care physicians (PCPs) play a vital role in preserving the safety of the people they represent (Senteio & Yoon, 2020). While working in the practice of social work, PCPs can create meaningful and long-term connections with clients and provide coordinated care. Having a regular PCP is linked to enhanced patient confidence in the therapist, better patient-provider interaction, and a higher likelihood of receiving adequate care.
People Affected by the Problem
When individuals need a doctor, most do not think about contacting and setting an appointment. Whether it is specific geographic locations or populations within the neighborhood, individuals cannot access help when they need it, putting their health in danger. The uninsured, rural communities, the aged, nonwhites, and financially poor individuals are affected by the problem. According to the Institute Of Health, 35 million Americans do not have basic health coverage. They are frequently employed or dependent on employed persons. Thus, they are not eligible for federal or state insurance programs but do not have work-based healthcare coverage. Various organizations cannot offer insurance as a bonus to their employees since insurance prices keep growing.
Potential Solutions
Telehealth will become a vital, cost-effective, and accurate way to expand capacity and eliminate the issue in a health system with significant and ongoing specialized shortages and geographic inequities. Physicians should be assured that virtual care technologies are cost-effective and have a payment plan (Pham et al., 2020). They should improve the efficiency of personnel by enacting standard health liability changes and lowering provided by the insurance sector regulatory barriers, such as specific permission, that distract from care delivery and drive up costs. New practitioner payment systems should be advanced to obtain better benefits at reduced costs.
Implementation of the Solution
Evidence-based interventions promoting population health can help guarantee that everyone can live a long and healthy life. Health workers and community workers can design and implement strategies for eliminating health disparities. Ignoring the situation could have severe effects on individual health. Adults without health insurance are less prone to receive preventative services for chronic diseases like diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. Evidence-based practice, such as telehealth, has several advantages, including the capacity to adapt and individualize patient treatment, lower patient care costs, and improve the knowledge of the medical practitioner providing patient care (Mahoney, 2020). The proof-based practice has several drawbacks, including a lack of information, a disregard for rational thinking, and the time and complexity of locating legitimate, convincing evidence. Evidence-based practice necessitates the strength of proof on an ailment, issue, or inquiry.
Ethical Principles
If the solution is implemented, health practitioners will adhere to several principles, notably beneficence, autonomy, non-maleficence, and justice. Beneficence is the physician’s commitment to act in the patient’s best interests. It underpins moral standards to safeguard and defend others’ rights, prevent injury, assist disabled people, and save those in danger. Nonmaleficence necessitates that every healthcare action is measured against all advantages, risks, and repercussions, occasionally designating no care to be the preferred therapy (Healy et al., 2022). Autonomy is commonly defined in medical practice as the ability of competent people to make rational medical choices (Healy et al., 2022). In the case of clinical ethics, justice is the notion that while determining if something is moral or not, doctors must consider if it is following the law, the patient’s rights, and whether it is fair and balanced (Healy et al., 2022). Beneficence integrates the suggested solution because it plays an essential function in all aspects of health. Professionals in the healthcare field owe a responsibility of care to their patients, colleagues, and society.
Conclusion
The ability to obtain healthcare utilities is characterized as access to care. Healthcare companies should understand the barriers to healthcare accessibility and devise solutions by developing systems that include evidence-based strategies to encourage population health, ensuring that everybody has the opportunities to stay a happy and prosperous life. Providing cost-effective technologies, enhancing personnel productivity, and developing new practitioner payment schemes to gain better advantages at lower costs are possible solutions. Before adopting these ideas in a hospital context, nurses should evaluate their ethical implications, such as beneficence, autonomy, non-maleficence, and fairness. To ensure healthcare coverage, it is critical that healthcare workers receive continuous learning and proper training, deliver proper medical care, avoid errors, and provide affordable health care.
References
Gold, A. E., Gilbert, A., & McMichael, B. J. (2021). Socially Distant Healthcare.
Healy, C. M., Savas, L. S., Shegog, R., Lunstroth, R., & Vernon, S. W. (2022). Medical ethics principles underscore advocating for the human papillomavirus vaccine. Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics, 1-3.
Liu, C., Wang, D., Liu, C., Jiang, J., Wang, X., Chen, H.,… & Zhang, X. (2020). What is the meaning of health literacy? A systematic review and qualitative synthesis. Family Medicine and Community Health, 8(2). doi: 10.1136/fmch-2020-000351
Madu, E., Mezue, K., & Madu, K. (2021). Social determinants and cardiovascular care: A focus on vulnerable populations and the Jamaica experience. FASEB BioAdvances, 3(4), 266-274.
Mahoney, M. F. (2020). Telehealth, telemedicine, and related technologic platforms: current practice and response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Wound, Ostomy and Continence Nursing, 47(5), 439-444.
Pham, Q., Hearn, J., Gao, B., Brown, I., Hamilton, R. J., Berlin, A.,… & Feifer, A. (2020). Virtual care models for cancer survivorship. NPJ digital medicine, 3(1), 1-7.
Ramos, G., & Chavira, D. A. (2022). Use of technology to provide mental health care for racial and ethnic minorities: Evidence, promise, and challenges. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 29(1), 15-40.
Senteio, C. R., & Yoon, D. B. (2020). How primary care physicians elicit sensitive health information from patients: describing access to psychosocial information. Qualitative Health Research, 30(9), 1338-1348.