The goal of healthcare facilities’ safety measures aims to protect everyone who enters the facility for whatever reason, including patients, visitors, employees, contract workers, volunteers, and others. Quality encompasses preventing avoidable damage and making accessible the proper care — offering effective services to those who might benefit from them and not providing ineffective or harmful treatments to those who could use them. In healthcare, it is essential to foster a safety culture so that the well-being of staff and patients is a top concern. However, fostering a safety culture in the healthcare industry is not without obstacles. In addition to a moral need, healthcare facilities must prioritize their employees’ and patients’ health and safety to avoid legal and regulatory complications. Financial and reputational losses, employee burnout, high turnover, a lack of capacity to attract top talent, rising insurance rates, and poor patient outcomes are all possible results of an organization with a subpar safety culture. This paper analyzes limited access to healthcare as a healthcare issue that affects the outcome of patients and compromises their safety. Limited access to healthcare accounts for harmful results, including mortality, and should be avoided.
Elements of the Problem/Issue
Access to healthcare implies receiving health services on time (Levesque et al., 2019). Moreover, Levesque et al. (2019) reiterate that access to healthcare is defined using perspectives; healthcare coverage, availability of the required services, timeliness, and availability of qualified personnel to offer the required services. Patients having insurance coverage access more healthcare services than those without. Those without health insurance are statistically more likely to be in poor health and get less medical attention (Yabroff et al., 2019). The extent to which people of varying ages, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds are covered by various insurance programs, such as publicly funded Medicaid, differs considerably.
A major obstacle to receiving necessary medical attention is the lack of adequate health insurance coverage, the distribution of which adds to health inequalities (Mayer et al., 2020). Medical debt is frequent among insured and uninsured people, and the high expense of out-of-pocket medical care may cause people to put off or forego necessary treatment. Simply put, this poses an extreme risk to the patient’s health. According to Hojjat and Hojjat (2021), individuals of color constitute more than half of the country’s uninsured population, and the percentage rises sharply with decreasing wealth.
Another factor that can limit access to healthcare services and raise the risk of harmful health outcomes is the scarcity of available healthcare resources. Patients may have to wait longer for treatment if not enough doctors are available. Consistent access to health care may be hindered by inconvenient or inconsistent transportation, contributing to unfavorable health outcomes. Those from racial/ethnic minority groups who were at higher risk for severe disease due to COVID-19 were more likely to lack access to transportation to medical treatment, according to research (Kim et al., 2020). Late-stage presentations of several medical disorders are also linked to transportation constraints and residential segregation. This makes it more difficult to get medical attention when it is needed. There is also a need to engage more healthcare professionals to reduce the access barrier associated with the lack of professionals to meet patients’ needs.
Analysis
Healthcare providers should be committed and work together to solve the challenge posed by patients’ inaccessibility to healthcare services. The issue of access to healthcare should be a priority for all healthcare stakeholders as it significantly impacts the overall healthcare outcome of the population. Accessible healthcare is both affordable and convenient.
The context for Patient Safety Issues
If they are used well, the many technological advancements in the healthcare industry might help reduce the growing access gaps. Through technology, developments like telehealth have increased the access level of healthcare services to many patients, but these are still a problem, especially for remote patients. With a healthcare system plagued by severe and pervasive specialist shortages and geographical inequalities, telehealth and remote patient monitoring are indispensable, cost-effective, and reliable methods of increasing available resources (Barbosa et al., 2021). Doctors need reassurance that digital health solutions are financially feasible. Healthcare professionals need to adopt a technological mindset both personally and institutionally. Similarly, there is a need to improve the effectiveness of the current workforce by enacting commonsense medical liability reforms and reducing regulatory burdens imposed by the government and the insurance industry, such as prior authorization, which harm patient care and drive-up costs (Anderson et al., 2023). New physician-led payment models should be developed to improve results while reducing costs.
Populations Affected by Patient Safety Issues
People living in remote areas often struggle to access healthcare. Several obstacles make it difficult for those living in rural areas to access the healthcare they need (Cyr et al., 2019). When someone has access to healthcare, they can easily and quickly get entry to the necessary medical attention when they need it. However, access to healthcare is a common issue for rural dwellers. Several factors may limit access to healthcare even when there is a sufficient number of healthcare providers in the area. The majority of these people live in extreme poverty. For this group, finding a provider that accepts their health or dental insurance as payment for treatments is a common problem.
One other defining feature is a lack of reliable means of mobility. Some people may not be able to utilize services because they lack the resources to access them, such as transportation to far-away services or the capacity to take paid time off work to use them. In addition, individuals of color make up the bulk of the population. For example, patients who do not speak English or have little health literacy may lack confidence in interacting with healthcare personnel (Schillinger, 2021). People have trouble relying on services because they worry about their privacy being breached.
Considering Options
When people get the medical attention they need, they can better form trusting connections with their doctors, which is crucial to effectively managing and recovering from their health problems. If individuals cannot get the care they need, they have to deal with unnecessary suffering and problems that only worsen. Many people avoid going to the doctor because they fear what they could experience there (Chambers et al., 2023). Leaders in the healthcare industry must maintain their focus on cultural competence training and the development of non-racist policies to eliminate implicit prejudice. In order to better care for their patients, medical professionals should take the time to get to know them as individuals by engaging in friendly questioning at the outset of each appointment and encouraging patients to voice any concerns they may have. Moreover, healthcare institutions might take steps to increase translation services for communities with bilingual and trilingual residents.
Due to a lack of infrastructure and financial resources to a lack of infrastructure, and financial resources. Even if remote areas have clinics, they may lack the most advanced equipment to provide adequate medical treatment to their residents. This forces patients to seek treatment outside their immediate area, which may be inconvenient and costly. One of the most important ways to solve the problem of poor healthcare access in rural areas is via telehealth (Haleem et al., 2021). Thanks to telehealth, people living in remote areas can now visit professionals without leaving their homes or local facilities.
Solution
Access to healthcare is a significant problem in rural areas, and telehealth is a crucial tool in solving this problem. Thanks to telehealth, people living in remote areas can now visit professionals without leaving their homes or local facilities. Healthcare professionals also benefit from the knowledge of telehealth subspecialists. Telehealth allows those who do not have easy access to a clinic to communicate with one remotely and get medical care (Haleem et al., 2021). Doctors may coordinate treatment for patients located over great distances using videoconferencing and cloud-based data. Thanks to telemedicine, primary care physicians in outlying locations may now consult with specialists to better serve their patients. If the necessary technology has been implemented, it will also be a cheaper choice for individuals worried about money. It may allow patients to connect remotely with their doctors for regular exams, saving them time and money.
Implementation
Implementing this intervention is cost-effective but requires initial capital investment. Setting the technology in place requires a strong network connection, the development of software applications, and training. Thus, the initial cost of establishing a reliable system may be high, but its outcome is more rewarding. Healthcare practitioners and patients must be trained to participate effectively in telehealth as technology. However, it should be the burden of all sectoral stakeholders to invest in this dimension to achieve the highest standards in healthcare provision.
Ethical Implication
The ethical implication of implementing telehealth intervention can be determined using the four ethical principles. This included autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. Telehealth, in the first case, advocates for justice. Adopting telehealth reduced the disparities in access to healthcare, thereby making healthcare services available to all (Mbunge et al., 2022). Thus, it promotes equality of all patients irrespective of their demographic differences. Telehealth services available for urban dwellers are also available to rural dwellers. The principle of autonomy demands that all patients be treated equally, irrespective of who they are. Telehealth also corresponds to the principle of maleficence. This principle asks professionals to prevent patients from any harm. Making services available for all patients and with ease can prevents the occurrence of missed medications and appointments and untimely attended conditions; by this, it prevents patients from harmful outcomes.
Conclusion
Creating a safety culture in the healthcare industry is crucial for reducing errors, enhancing the general standard of care provided to patients, and ensuring staff members’ physical and emotional safety at work. Patient safety is impacted by several important factors, including access to healthcare services, which must be addressed. Patients in remote locations or regions lacking providers may access resources and treatment thanks to telehealth, which increases efficiency without increasing net costs, shortens patient travel times and enhances care quality. Patient satisfaction may also rise with telehealth usage due to improved access to treatment, convenience, and decreased stress. While telehealth provides advantages for patients and doctors, it has been slow to catch on due to several obstacles, such as older persons’ technology utilization and slow Internet bandwidth in rural or underserved regions.
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