Viable Healthcare
Student’s Name
Institution Affiliation
Instructor
Course Name: Course Code
Date
Viable Healthcare
Importance of Primary Care
Primary Health Care meets people’s health care needs throughout their entire lives: it includes physical, mental, and social well-being. I believe that it is an integral department in the health care system because it is more people-centered than merely disease-centered. Primary care has fundamental principles such as health promotion, disease prevention, medical treatment, and rehabilitation and palliative care. According to The World Health Organization (WHO), primary health care is based on practical, social, and technological methods that provide quality health care to anyone in a community at an affordable cost (Healthy People 2020, n.d).
According to Healthy People 2020, primary care views an individual as a whole. Therefore, it goes beyond helping individuals with medical treatment and diagnosing illnesses to working towards the prevention of the occurrence of such issues. In other words, I believe that primary care does more than the traditional health care system, and that is what makes it important in today’s world of health that is continuously evolving.
I believe that primary health care needs to be enhanced and focused on, especially in health care units based in the United States. Effective primary care can help in reducing high rates of hospitalizations and emergency unit visits. Primary health care is at the core of health care in the United States, and yet research shows that it has not been made universal like in other middle and high-income nations. The majority of counties in the united state continue to face financial and geographical barriers to accessing primary health care.
Medical health policies are inadequate in maintaining a primary care workforce. They have inadequacies in training, recruiting, and retaining health care providers. It indicates the need for medical policy improvement by the United States federal government to promote access to primary care and improve health for the US population. The United States also has dysfunctional financing schemes, which threaten young nurses and doctors willing to join the profession. The health care organization needs innovation to organize how the primary care unit operates (Givan, 2016).
The UK has departments such as International Medical Corps Primary Health care that include vaccination, community mobilization, education, and training for health care providers. Health care organizations have made primary care accessible and continue to provide universal registration to citizens (Givan, 2016).
Health care in the United Kingdom is funded by the National Health Service (NHS), the organization provides primary care that is free at the point of delivery. This means that all expenses are covered: from emergency unit visitations, long hospitalization periods, chemotherapy, dialysis, radiation, and complex surgeries. The availability of health care policies that support and fund primary care in the UK has led to an enormous improvement in their health systems.
In comparing health care systems in the United Kingdom and the United States, it shows that the US needs to value primary care as much as it values acute care. There is also a need to make it affordable for individuals to reduce healthcare organizations’ struggle.
Reference
Givan, R. K. (2016). Health care systems in the United States and the United Kingdom. The Challenge to Change, 26-52. https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9780801450051.003.0002
World Health Organization. Declaration of Astana. Astana, Kazakhstan: Global Conference on Primary Health Care; 2018. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/primary-health/declaration/gcphc-declaration.pdf. Accessed January 2, 2019
Question
Do you believe primary care must be the foundation to any viable health care system? Why or why not? Provide examples of where this is true (in other countries). Furthermore, why do you think the U.S. has struggled with this concept for so many years? Include reliable and recent references. 1-2 pg