INTERDISCIPLINARY PLAN PROPOSAL ESSAY

INTERDISCIPLINARY PLAN PROPOSAL

Introduction

Disparities in health care continue to pose a significant challenge to attaining quality health care for all. This paper will outline a plan proposal for the department of health services in our metropolitan city where if implemented, the plan aims to reduce disparities in health care and ensure more equality in access and availability of health care.

Objective

The plan in mind for addressing the issue is a patient-centered focus in health care. The program is to ensure that services offered to the patients are specific to patients and not communities or their locations in the city. If the plan is implemented and the objective achieved, the patient outcomes will improve considerably; patient responsibility will be emphasized on lifestyle diseases thus leading to fewer deaths due to lifestyle diseases among a specific population group. Besides, when the quality of health care is balanced around the city, then there will be no population group ragging behind, and burdens in certain areas or with specific people will be eliminated.

Questions and Predictions

How will patient-centered care be implemented

Whenever people talk about disparities in health care, it is mostly associated with race and ethnic profiling and some instances geographical locations of different population groups. Therefore, to eliminate these disparities, we have to shun the ethnic, racial, and geographic differences among us. Patient-centered care ensures that any medical professional and caregiver focuses on nothing else concerning the patient except their ailment. Through this plan, care providers will have the obligation and responsibility of taking care of every patient regardless of their location, color, or race.

How long will it take to implement the plan

Change does not occur overnight and especially when it involves a complicated matter like health care system. Therefore, the project will be a gradual process but with specified goals and targets which have to be met and reviewed in every six months. The plan aims to reduce disparities and eliminate them, therefore in every six months, each health facility under the metropolitan department of health have to provide a record of their achievements. That is there has to be a reduction in mortality and morbidity rates, disease burdens should be reduced, and patient responsibility has increased. Therefore, there is no specific time for implementing the plan, but there have to be milestones realized every half-yearly.

How much will it cost to implement the plan

The first thing that has to change to minimize disparities is improving the health professional’s attitude towards certain population groups. Change of mentality does not cost a thing in terms of money, but it requires time for learning and adjusting to new views of different things. The plan also involves the provision of more medical equipment and staff to cover all the patients in all locations equally. However, change is gradual, and equipment and personnel will be deployed according to the allocated budget from the federal government, which means if its $100000 in a financial year, the staff and equipment will be added with the measure of the available resources.

Change Theories and Leadership Strategies

For the metropolitan department of health care services to reduce disparities in health care, then it means that some things have to be changed and leadership is essential in realizing the change. In this issue, the change theory to be involved will be the Lewin’s change theory due to its relevance in this case issue. Lewin’s change theory recognizes that in any organization contemplating change, there will be supporters and opposers of change, but if the supporters dominate the opposers, then the desired change will be achievable. However, for the supporters to dominate those against the move, then the leaders have to be involved in ensuring that they shape the mindset of their followers to supporting the change. Therefore, the most appropriate leadership strategy in addressing the issue is the delegation and empowerment strategy.

Delegation and empowerment lead to many people in the organization being involved in the projects undertaken. If the administrator delegates the responsibility of ensuring the quality of health care services is achieved, then more people will be working towards quality health care, knowing that they are answerable for the outcome. Therefore, more people will be in support of the process and change can, thus, be achieved easily in the health facilities. When more people are involved, an interdisciplinary approach is achievable since there will be representatives from different disciplines given the responsibility of heading certain areas of the plan. This approach will see more ideas come into the plan, and implementation of the project will be simplified since everyone will be working from the same page.

Team Collaboration Strategy

For the plan to work, then different people have to be assigned different roles that have to be defined. The department administrator will be the overall supervisor for the procedure in ensuring that implementation process flows as desired. However, in every facility, the nursing personnel in-charge will head their specific health professionals in ensuring that patient-centered focus is achieved. There will also be quality personnel designated for assessing the quality of health standards given to particular population groups. However, for the team to work together efficiently, then there will be weekly meetings involving the stakeholders headed by the health administrator. In these meetings, the stakeholders will be discussing the issues arising from the plan and most importantly sharing how they can better the process to reduce disparities. During the half-yearly reviews of the outlines, the quality team and the nursing in-charges will be responsible for making the reports after the investigation and presenting it to the administrator. Through this process, everyone will be involved in implementing the plan, and this improves the effectiveness of the strategy.

Required Organizational Resources

For the plan to be successful, there are financial and budgetary issues that have to be addressed, and these include staffing, equipment supplies, and any other associated financial need. Disparities may occur to inadequate health professionals; therefore, to reduce inequalities, and then staffing issues have to be addressed. In the urban neighborhoods under the metropolitan department of health, there is a vast population who are financially underprivileged meaning that most of them are uninsured. Therefore, they unable to obtain desirable health care, the staff in the facilities are fewer, and this leads to overpopulation and overworking of the team. With the plan, those facilities will require at least five more staff added, which will cost about $200000 yearly. In addition to the side, there is equipment that needs to be procured to take care of at least the basic and routine check-ups for the patients.

However, most facilities have this equipment and what needs to be done in facilities with a high population of patients is adding more material to the facilities which could cost about $100000 in procurement. The facilities may also require medicines and utilities to help in patient care estimated to about $10000, and this makes an estimated budget for the implementation of the plan to $310000. However, this sounds like a lot of money, and it is but if disparities in health care are not addressed, then disease burden in specific populations will continue rising to lead to increased cost for both the department and the economy. For instance, if cancer patients continue to grow among the black community, then the department will incur much more in procuring chemotherapy and radiotherapy machines and drugs, and the cost of maintaining the facilities and patients could increase to even $1000000 yearly.

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