The Health Care Key Product - Dissertation Example

Promoting effective choice in the United Kingdom National Health Service United Kingdom's National Health Services, established in nineteen forty eight, is one of the biggest organizations in Europe. Moreover, as observed by the World Health Organization, it is among the organizations that offers the best health services in the world. Nonetheless, the UK's National Health Services is in need of improvements so as to match the demands of the twenty first century. In recent times, enabling effective choice has been promoted as a means of improving the public services. This dissertation will comment on how effective choice for patients can be promoted within United Kingdom's National Health Service and show whether this will result in improved health outcomes. National Health Service choices National Health Service choices refer to a service aimed at enabling individuals to take control of their healthcare. It is designed to assist people to make choices about their health. These include lifestyle decisions regarding things such as exercise, drinking and smoking as well as finding and utilizing National Health Services when in need of them. For instance, when one decides to visit a specialist, he or she has the alternative of choosing the time and place to consult the specialist from a catalogue of clinics and hospitals. This list includes the local hospitals, an increasing number of private sector care centres as well as private hospitals contracted to serve National Health Service patients, and National Health Services trust hospitals within the entire country. The choice can be based on what is the most vital: bus routes, MRSA rates, or several other criteria. Even in situation where one does not have a computer, the National Health Service choices can be utilized since the information is available in prints outs, DVDs through, for instance, a local library of GP as well as any available computer. Promoting effective choice for patients Wider access to information Effective choice for patients can be promoted in a number of ways. One is providing solid information that would enable patients to ask the right and relevant questions from the doctors regarding their treatment needed and health status. The information should be disseminated in a straightforward manner through for example pictures, audio, video, and words format that gives greater convenience while selecting the health service. Again, the information should be well-sourced and based on sound evidence. Moreover, it should further be tested and reviewed and presented in a precise and clear language. What is more, the information should be designed such that they support the existing knowledge and relationship between patient and the healthcare provider. Giving support for effective choice is not simple, though, because of difficulties faced by consumers, health systems, and clinicians. Therefore, greater utilization of written or electronic tools could assist in clarifying choices for patients. Since the decision support cannot substitute the human component in facilitating effective choices, information could be coupled with excellent decision counselling to assist patients comprehend the benefits, uncertainties and potential risks of clinical options as well as help them in choosing the alternatives that best caters for their personal preferences. The decision counselling could be provided by the clinicians with or without formal informed-choice teaching or trained third parties functioning as neutral decision counsellors. The National Health Service cannot really support effective choices without addressing the underlying challenges that hinder patient's accessibility to required information. Therefore, solutions for new information technology, reimbursement schemes and training programs are essential. The demand for assistance by patients will rise as clinical alternatives multiply while the information sector keeps on growing. All patients require reliable information to use so as to make good choices. However, supplying of this required information has not been done well by hospitals and physicians. The ironies in the health care system are that knowledge in the sector is poorly delivered while the society takes pleasure in exceptional access to general information. The United Kingdom citizens can get so many details through the internet yet struggle to collect reliable information regarding their clinical alternatives or ways to care for their health. The consumers are provided with a system that makes available the material commodities of care save for knowledge. The Commonwealth Fund survey (2004) show that the frequency with which United Kingdom patients leave the physician without their essential questions not being answered is high. The increasing need for patient information is, in several ways, a modern trend. In general, patients of preceding generations were only required to decide whether to look for medical services and whether to pursue their doctor's recommendation; it was not up to them to decide about the best alternatives. The physician had a tendency to assume a paternalistic role, retaining exclusive control over medical information. The provider as well as consumers anticipation of medical care was that the physician was familiar with what was best (Laine & Davidoff, 1995). However, today expectations and roles for information have changed allowing the fresher model of dynamic patient participation and informed choice in care (Hibbard, 1995). Justification for wider access to information Greater Patient Autonomy The consumerism culture in the United Kingdom promotes the public's control over their life choices (Hibbard, 2003). This phenomenon coupled with the ethical necessity to respects autonomy of the patients has altered the locus from clinician-patient relationship to patient-cantered form which actively engages patients in decision-making process while shunning Paternalism (Reiser 1993 & Coulter, 2002). Wider access to Information Modern patients have become used to accessing information as well as acquiring the necessary tools for research in clinical alternatives and evaluate their personal medical information; the physician is no more the only purveyor of health knowledge (Kassirer, 1995). Increasing clinical options Developments in biotechnology and medications and have resulted to a multifaceted list of choices for health conditions which previously had only a single form of care. The complexity of these procedures presents to patients the increased task of processing scientific data, nomenclature, and technological ideas, a unique challenge to patients with numeracy, language, literacy, or challenges. Increase of Chronic Illness Active involvement is essential for the increasing number of chronic diseases patients (Bodenheimer, Lorig, Holman, Grumbach, 2002). Therefore, self-management which is a centrepiece of effectual long-term care, needs greater access to health information Greater Accommodation of Personal Values For the increasing number of choices for which the most choice are determined by personal preference (Kassirer & Pauker, 1981) patients must look into how procedures would affect the patient's lives as well as manage the scientific qualms related to the outcomes. In this regard, patients need informed choices (Braddock; Edwards; Hasenberg; Laidley; Levinson 1999) that entails a stage of counselling which goes past the casual advice that, conventionally, clinicians offer in demanding practice (Kaplan, Ganiats & Frosch, 2004). On subjects arraying from screening tests (Sieber & Kaplan, 2000) to end-of-life care as well as surgery (National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Conference statement, 2001); patients cannot appropriately weigh the harms and benefits without looking at the evidence in view of personal values (Woolf, 1997). In order to do so, patients require extent substantive support provided by informed and shared choices (McNutt, 2004). The intensity of informed choices should be standardized to the type of clinical choices, as others have explicated (Sheridan, Harris & Woolf, 2004) Conclusion The ultimate solution to effective choice is through correction of the present system that hinders the delivery of information that patients require when they need it. The current system presents an outdated model which views health care key product as therapeutic while information delivery is taken as secondary requirement that is offered to satisfy patients. Information is power (Bacon, 2004). According to Berwick (2000) knowledge is a primary product of health care. Moreover, experts have argued that, in many situations, the failure or success of clinical work is determined by the patients' comprehension. Informed choice is essential for the patients, who ought to know the way alternatives impact on their health as well as the entire society. In health care, the single most aspect that is changing dramatically is the rising influence and volume of information. The patients are facing an increasing need for help in management of knowledge as well as access to qualified professionals in particular task. While the intricacy of choice and the volume of information rise, the need will simply get more urgent. References: Bacon, F. (2004): The Proficiency and Advancement of Learning, 1605. Berwick, D. (2000): Knowledge always on call; for docs, practicing medicine will mean providing information more than providing care, 14:250-2. Bodenheimer, T, Lorig K, Holman H, Grumbach K. (2004): Patient self-management of chronic disease in primary care. JAMA, 288: 2469-75 Braddock, C. H.; Edwards, K. A.; Hasenberg, N. M.; Laidley, T. L.; Levinson, W. (1999): Informed decision making in outpatient practice: time to get back to basics. JAMA, 282:2313-20. Commonwealth Fund. 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