Limited access to medical care coincides with the ever-powerful struggle for global health equality, affecting many regardless of race, gender, and geographic position, mostly people living in apparent but under-resourced areas. These communities have many obstacles that restrict their ability to obtain essential healthcare services quickly; from being isolated geographically and physically accessing complex healthcare services to cash constraints, which make these healthcare services unavailable to many. Furthermore, these hardships worsen the general challenges that require a robust healthcare infrastructure in short areas with very few healthcare professionals. Resolving these multifaceted obstacles must be given priority to effect a commensurately significant impact on the health outcomes of individual patients, develop a broader public health sector, and ensure that the provision of healthcare services is equal, capable of responding to patients’ needs and consistent across all the segments of society.
Elements of the Problem/Issue
The crucial matter of the inequality in access to healthcare tends to affect predominantly rural areas, economically challenged communities, and poor minority populations, leading to a significant public health concern. The unavailability of hospitals around them constantly challenges residents living rurally, so they have to move long distances geographically to get the necessary medical services (Barbosa et al., 2021). The formerly economically inactive communities find themselves in a disproportionately high association with medical costs, which prevent not only the primary care but also the treatment in their case. This problem is aggravated by the absence of thorough coverage for insurance, which the bulk of these groups rely on; they stand a chance of being easily affected by medical expenditure at the end of the day (Warner et al., 2020). Minority groups, as well as their community members, also encounter healthcare stratification marked by cultural and linguistic differences as a cause for lower utilization of available services due to language difficulties and lack of cultural competence in care. These barriers are far-reaching, influencing the quality of life and the well-being of injustice. However, the imbalance in the societal scheme of things, which can result in higher mortality and morbidity rates, an increase in healthcare costs, and closure of the cycle of poverty and health inequality, are manifested.
Analysis
Evaluating the annotated bibliography reveals the diverse and multilayered opportunities that hinder healthcare access. This burden points to the need for more broad-based approaches. Telehealth, as stated by Barbosa et al. (2021), is a game changer in providing us with the much-needed solution for healthcare inequalities that both geographical and logistical barriers have created, thus providing a glimpse into the role of technology in the future of healthcare delivery. Tzenios (2019) provides detailed student-friendly classifications of these health determinants and includes the factors from individuals to the system. It, therefore, suggests a wide range of changes like universal health care coverage and central system upgrading. Additionally, Nair and Adetayo (2019) note that cultural competency and workforce diversity, two components that are key to guaranteed satisfaction and adequate healthcare service, are critically important for an ever-growing population regarding its ethnic diversity. These takeaways spotlight the diversity and depth of the problems and the need to take an integrated approach to find solutions that rely on different technical aspects, policies, structures, and cultures.
Considering Options
Exploring solutions to the issue of healthcare access is undoubtedly a complicated task that requires an entire set of approaches ranging from the latest technologies to modern policies. Expanding telemedicine services embodies the power of demolishing geographical barriers between patients and their healthcare providers, and telemedicine service levels can be accessed intimately (Barbosa et al., 2021). Therefore, this giant leap forward in digital space brings significant investment in the infrastructure and a policy framework that supports the telemedicine models and operates standards with reimbursement platforms and the telemedicine service types. An imperative move that should be at the forefront of healthcare reform is to cover technology. Centering universal coverage and not extremely expensive healthcare cost policies are the fundamental reforms that aim to build an efficient healthcare system in the country for both the low and middle classes. However, such roll-out of reforms encounters robust political resistance and economic limits, indicating it captures the complexity of a change that sincerely converts the healthcare landscape idea.
Solution
Taking a holistic approach that encompasses the introduction of telemedicine and broad reforms in the policy sector coupled with an in-depth approach to cultural sensitivity offers multiple opportunities to improve healthcare access. Using telemedicine to cut on geography-related obstacles, such as travel and time, allows immediate medical services in communities affected by remoteness and underserved populations (Barbosa et al., 2021). In totality, the urgency has been strongly emphasized on policy reforms that seek to offer essential healthcare services to everyone, as well as some steps to address the founding issues of affordability and equity. The entities should ensure that people with less economic status benefit as much as possible from the recommended and required healthcare services (Warner et al., 2020). As a result, the narrow programs that combine the activities on building cultural competence among healthcare providers are aimed at providing the necessary services and respecting people from different origins (Nair & Adetayo, 2019). This tripartite strategy will provide a realistic roadmap that can lead to sustaining access to healthcare in the short run.
Ethical Implications
The proposed solution is consistent with the critical moral aspects that make its ‘ethicality’ stand out. Improving Health Outcomes includes beneficence, actively rendering benefactions, goods, or services, and preventing or eliminating harm. Additionally, the policy that fosters telemedicine and reforms healthcare insurance gives people increased autonomy, which helps patients make better decisions about their care. As such, justice is the driving force, as the movement works to correct unjust healthcare disparities that have most adversely affected underprivileged populations. The ethical dimension is a point of concern in order to make telemedicine more effective as a health system service rather than being a disadvantage in the usual quality of care. Moreover, policy reforming should focus on the combination of equity and quality so that everyone has access to health care and ethics at the core of the health care system are respected.
Implementation
A multi-level participants’ coalition is built to enhance the healthcare service using vigorous policy advocacy as the first step of this comprehensive solution. The latter is a decisive stage for making a preferable legal and regulatory environment that imprints devotion to telemedicine and developers that health insurance covers each person similarly, regardless of location or asset status. In addition, many resources must be allocated to construct the essential technological infrastructure that a health system for virtual medicine relies on, like high-speed internet access and a user-friendly and secure interface. Besides that, designing and running educational and capacity-building activities that could improve the health workers’ cultural interaction skills should be implemented. These programs will train healthcare leaders and caregivers to manage culturally sensitive services, which will meet the different needs of the patients. It is vital to start with an initial pilot test in limited communities as a learner of implementing integrated strategies and delivering substantial helpful information and data. Meanwhile, a careful solution that discovers the burgeoning practices that could be scaled up for national application is urgent to secure a broad and robust impact of health care access.
Conclusion
A multifaceted approach to quality in healthcare, including the utilization of telemedicine, institutional policy changes, and cultural sensitivity, stands as a means towards communally equitable healthcare delivery. Through this strategy, policymakers attempt to eliminate the health gap and contribute to an upgrade of the general level, particularly for the less privileged groups. Throughout the collaboration between two or more infrastructure ethnos, the participation of the various stakeholders, such as the commitment-holders, the service provider, and the community members, should be emphasized. Thus, this type of collaboration can be rightly described as a vital tool for eliminating the multi-side barriers that block the way to getting the needed services. Creating an inclusive and integrated healthcare system is a significant and utterly important step for improving everyday health and social justice.
References
Barbosa, W., Zhou, K., Waddell, E., Myers, T., & Dorsey, E. R. (2021). Improving access to care: telemedicine across medical domains. Annual review of public health, 42, 463-481. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-090519-093711
Nair, L., & Adetayo, O. A. (2019). Cultural competence and ethnic diversity in healthcare. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Global Open, 7(5). https://doi.org/10.1097%2FGOX.0000000000002219
Tzenios, N. (2019). The Determinants of Access to Healthcare: A Review of Individual, Structural, and Systemic Factors. Journal of Humanities and Applied Science Research, 2(1), 1-14. https://journals.sagescience.org/index.php/JHASR/article/view/23
Warner, J. J., Benjamin, I. J., Churchwell, K., Firestone, G., Gardner, T. J., Johnson, J. C., … & American Heart Association Advocacy Coordinating Committee. (2020). Advancing healthcare reform: the American Heart Association’s 2020 statement of principles for adequate, accessible, and affordable health care: a presidential advisory from the American Heart Association. Circulation, 141(10), e601-e614. https://doi.org/10.1161/CIR.0000000000000759
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