The UK Medical-Healthcare Changes - Assignment Example

UK Medical Healthcare Changes By Management The of the School The and where it is located TheDate Questions #1: Acute hospital reconfigurations and hospital closures In the past few decades, the patterns in the healthcare industry have changed in the UK and throughout the world. The change has not only emerged from the treatment methods used but also in consideration to the treatment philosophy or methodology used currently. The focus has shifted from the traditional treatment or curing approach or the reactive methodology to a more protective or proactive approach. Instead of emphasizing on the treatment of diseases, most healthcare practitioners are now trying to prevent the ailments before the happen through alteration of people nutrition, physical activity behaviour and other suchlike considerations. The main contention is on preventing chronic ailments such as obesity and other pathogen related ailments. The preventing method or approach being used is the education of people on the need not only to take care of their own personal health, but also to consider the health of others (Hallowell, 1999, p.598). Chronic ailments are now being accorded 24/7 healthcare, where the practitioners take the medical practise to the homes of the patients. Chemotherapy for instance is now being offered at the homes of the patients (O’Neill & Wallis, 2009, p357). This approach has led to reduced costs, which thus has improved the choice and value for money. Geriatrics, a new healthcare approach, has also been introduced. Geriatrics is a healthcare branch that deals with the care and treatment of old people. According to Rubaker (2008), the discipline of geriatrics though introduced in 1950, did not get well implemented until in 1988, and since then the concentration on the field has marginally improved (p105). The care for the old, which is common in all cultures, has now been introduced and popularized in the western medical field, and its operations has improved the medical standards as well as the life expectancy of most people. The discipline not only concentrates on the old age, but rather also assists patients use their productive lives wisely to ensure that their old age is more disease-free. The priorities in the healthcare industry have shifted from cure to prevention, which is mostly as a result of reduced funding and reduced capacity of healthcare institutions to accord the usual services. In a population where healthcare problems are rapidly increasing, the funding to the hospitals has reduced marginally, which causes an unequal shift. This thus has led more organizations to develop teams, which has thus led to the decline in single practitioners and the development of teams of more than six years. The number of single practitioners has reduced by 33% whereas the number of group practitioners has increased by 300% (McInnes, 2007, p13). This thus is a key challenge to the development of the healthcare industry. The reduced funding from the government to the healthcare industry results from the politics. The politics funded the healthcare industry greatly back then, but the general practitioners were overworked, maximizing the hospital capacity to take in more people. This resulted to the creation of a new paradigm which was the introduction of homecare, which has made hospitals less populated with people with chronic ailments and as such a higher capacity to serve more people. The possibility in the shrinking in the budget, coupled with a need to reduce the work rate of the general practitioners, was the key driver towards the transformation of the healthcare industry in the United Kingdom. This thus has prevented the closure of several healthcare industries despite the fact that some hospitals were closed as a result. Question #2: Main challenges to professional medicine One of the key challenges to the public health industry in the United Kingdom is the rise in healthcare politics which are a critical area of assessment that needs to be revisited. One of the key ways through which politics have affected healthcare is through the modification of the budgets in accordance to their perspectives. Ignoring the rise in number of patients and healthcare concerns in the world, the political field seeks to reduce funding to the healthcare industry, which thus poses a great challenge to the healthcare practitioners in these regions. The introduction of political bodies that govern the healthcare has also made decision making within healthcare organizations to be adversely affected. The reconfiguration of the NHS Trust Development Authority and other bodies such as the NHS Commissioning Board, responsible for the restructuring of the healthcare services, is vital. Regardless, the engagement of the politicians as well as organizational politics, with their main focus being on whom of the deciding parties wins in discussions would have seriously detrimental effects on the healthcare industry. The democracy in the Well Being Healthcare indicates that those who shout loudest get it their way, which will marginally compromise the efficiency of the decision making process and the value that people derive from it. This essay will however focus on the effects of politics in the healthcare industry and its overall outcome. Politicizing the NHS thus would marginally affect decision making, treatment of serious and severe cases and not to mention the cost of healthcare services. Each member of the bodies will be a salaried member, which is only leading to increase in healthcare operational costs and as such, it is crucial for the reduced political scope the NHS restructuring has had to face in the past few years. Decision implementation would also marginally encompass longer transition periods, which will lead to slow turnaround time in hospital treatments, new hires and other similar issues that are utmost importance to medical practitioners and patients as well. Another area of concern is the rise in the chronic ailments in the past few years. Cases of cancer for instance have increased steadily in the past and the medical costs have marginally increased. The aspect has led to the creation of a culture that leads people to be conscious about their health and nutrition habits. Another key challenge that has affected the healthcare industry is the development of alternative treatment methods that are less focused on scientific treatments such as acupuncture, hypnosis, placebo effect, hydrotherapy and herbal medicine. The alternative treatment methods have marginally affected the healthcare industry clientele which has led to reduced earnings. With the increase in side effects and the improvement of alternative healthcare, people have lost their confidence in the healthcare industry and as such are seeking alternative cure from non-medical specialists. Question #3: Need for Counselling Before Genetic Testing In the past four decades, genetic testing has become increasingly popular both due to the popularization of the concept and the increased funding it has received from both government and personal entities. The increase in the funding in the genomic testing in hospitals has increased due to the identification of the role of genetics in diseases, where mapping of genomes with the causation effect being identified. The genetic testing, though popularized about a decade ago in the medical field and the medical testing is not a revolution that is about to end, and as put by Keim (2010), ‘it is just beginning. ’ Notable healthcare bodies have been developed to monitor the progress made by this discipline. They include Human Genetics Commission (HGC) Gene Therapy Advisory Committee (GTAC) and Genetics and Insurance Committee (GAIC), among several others. One of the key areas of concern is the outcomes of genetic testing. Genetic testing has been used to identify chronic ailments, define if a child is prone to chronic ailments and identify genetic hereditary ailments such as breast or ovarian cancer. This assessment thus shows broadly that there exists various ways of identifying ailments, and preventing them from happening. But the question lies in the assessment of whether genetic testing is socially accepted. The disclosure or withholding of information pertaining to ailments that a patient is prone to has been a critical area of debate. The need for counselling has been introduced as a remedial action to curb such debates. The ‘right to know’ or ‘not to know’ are two viewpoints that have surged a critical debate on the disclosure of potential ailments for patients who undergo such tests. Other social perspectives that need to be thoroughly assessed are considerations of the kin or family. Women tend to have a need to want to control their health or understand the medical risks they face and identify ways to mitigate these risks. The need to understand if one has a chance of contracting or having a chronic disease is an area that needs critical assessment. The role of counselling on such matters, both prior to the test and after the test is to acquaint the patient with the risks they face, the unwanted truths that they might realize and the offering of advice and incentives they can take to take charge of their health as well. Genetic treatment thus poses a great challenge due to premature medicalisation which would lead patients to social disorders such as a loss of will to live, stigmatization and worries about their lives which would have severely detrimental effects on the patient’s social and medical life (Hallowell, 1999, p.600). Cases of displaced anger, such as patients being angry with medical practitioners and unhappy with the outcomes of testing have been reported cyclically (Lawson, 2003, p25). Counselling as an alternative was hence introduced to deal with the possible negative outcomes of the predictive genetic testing. Genetic testing would lead to identification of ailments that patients did not perceive they possessed. It is the right of the patient to decide whether they would like to know what risks they face in the future or if they would rather not know the full extent of the ailment. However, the moral dilemma comes in when doctors have to tell patients who would rather not know their medical condition. Notifying the kin or the rest of the family, despite the need for them to know, is ethically inappropriate though its appropriateness in logical terms is called for. Counselling would thus assist patients cope with their medical ailments, establish the risks of taking the tests and notify the patients prior to taking the test, hence giving them a chance to know if they are sick or if they are not. Counselling would also assist a patient take over his health and his emotional wellbeing with professionalism. This would reduce the cases of self-harm or anger and detrimental effects that the patients currently face and also let the patient decide what he or she wanted to do about the results. The ethical aspect of counselling is honouring the patient’s request pertaining to taking charge of their own health and additionally, guiding them on a path to physical and emotional healing in a professionally instructed manner. In this contention, counselling prior to taking genetic tests and after the tests is highly recommended among patients to ease their emotional burden if the results of the genetic tests are horrific. References Hallowell, N, 1999, Doing the right thing: genetic risk and responsibility. Sociology of Health & Illness, Vol. 21 No.5 pp. 597–621. Brubaker J. K., Fall 2008, The Birth of a New Specialty: Geriatrics. The Journal of Lancaster General Hospital, Vol. 3 No. 3 pp105-107. O’Neill, C., and Wallis, C., March, 2009, Home healthcare: Emerging evidence for NHS commissioners. Journal of Care Services Management Vol. 3 No.4 pp 357–3. McInnes, K., March 2007. A practitioner’s guide to interagency working in children’s centres: a review of literature. Accessed on 25 May, 2014 from http://www.barnardos.org.uk/practitioner_guide_interagency_working_in_children_centres_publications_tracked.pdf Lawton, J., 2003, Lay experiences of Health and Wellness: Past Research and Future Agenda. Sociology of health and illness, Vol 25, No.3, pp23-40. Read More