A health care system is a complete structured network of organizations, facilities, and all health care providers in the specified environmental region. Nursing services are essential to the system, and nurses constitute the biggest portion of the health care system. This essay aims at identifying features, development, and controversies of the health care system.
The term is usually used to refer to a program whereby the government makes health care available to its people. The government can be supported by the private sector to finance the program or sometimes the private sector can take the initiative independently (Besley & Gouveia, 1994). The system is divided into four crucial levels:i. The personal individual care.ii. The professional care providers, for example, pharmacists, clinicians, and their families.iii. The organizations, for instance, clinics, nursing homes, and hospitals.iv. The political and economic environments, i.e. markets, payment systems as well as financial and regulatory institutions.
The main object of a health care policy is the norm of universal access to health care. The argument is that nobody, regardless of their earnings or contribution submitted should be denied from accessing a certain minimum level of health care. There are three features of health care that emphasizes this argument (Dash, Llewellyn, & Richardson, 2009).
The first feature is paternalism; this is where a government tends to take measures to control consumers’ right to consumption of particular products. It is mainly done to safeguard their health because sometimes individuals are improperly informed or for some reasons they fail to value some things in their utility functions. The product of some of these behaviors of consumption that negatively affect health seems proper to other people. For example, in most countries, governments have taken the task to dissuade its people from smoking. Therefore, it explains why the health care provision may reach certain levels of provision when proper judgments are not made in consumption behaviors.
The second feature is distributional judgments; this is where people find it more prudent to limit the domain in inequality in some areas. For example, if the affluent people value healthcare to the poor directly, they will be readily willing to donate funds to the program rather than give money to individuals to spend it whichever way they like.
The third feature is the significance of externalities in the use of health care. In most cases, nobody likes being sick or encountering sick people because they think that the sick ones are infectious, or they find their condition unlikable. These encounters propel the good people to offer help by contributing money to alleviate the pain (Dash, Llewellyn, & Richardson, 2009). Therefore, providing health care is doing a public good.
Over the time, health care systems have been progressing from one level to another, and every government has wanted to offer better health care to its people. Development of strong health systems is very significant, however, executing it has always been the most difficult part. Four critical points have seen progressive success in the program. They include having an understanding of and commitment to change, proper means to emphasize the change, and capacity and skills for improvement (Besley & Gouveia, 1994). The reason the change is needed in service delivery is to provide a clear picture of the public to the medical professionals, for example, clinicians to help build wide public support. This kind of arrangement has helped many health care systems, which have found it important to include a large community in their pursuit of change.
There is a continuous monitoring of health care providers’ performance in respect to access, quality, and patients experience. Health systems can track the progress and intervene with poor performers as necessary and by publicizing the public will now have an informed choice of providers. This kind of transparency leads to peer pressure among providers to perform better (Dash, Llewellyn, & Richardson, 2009).
Health care systems have not missed having controversies either during the making or during the implementation. There are always varying reactions from people, activists, politicians and church community, who feel aggrieved by these systems. More often, the systems do affect a number of people negatively and positively and, as a result, people will often tend to oppose them. There are pressure groups that do influence health care policy. They include pharmaceutical and insurance companies and hospital associations. These groups are well organized and they will always be fighting for their interests. However, they cannot be dismissed since they can be a force for political action (Besley & Gouveia, 1994). Physicians will care about their conditions of living and the health care quality offered to their patients.
One of the challenges that faces most stakeholders is the use of proper IT system. Furthermore, it is important that various health systems know and address the technological aspects in order to move with changing times for efficient delivery of quality services to the public (Dash, Llewellyn, & Richardson, 2009). The ultimate impact of better health care systems is to bring forward transformational advancement in the health sector and to the well-being of the population. Citizens should have confidence in their governments and feel a part of it by getting the best health care provision despite their income and contribution.
In conclusion, the health care system is the structure of professional care providers, organizations, personal individual care, and political and economic environments. There are three main features of health care system, which include the paternalism, distributional judgments, and significance of externalities in the use of health care. Moreover, four crucial points contributed to progressive success in the program’s development. They include having an understanding of and commitment to change, proper means to emphasize the change, and capacity and skills for improvement. As any other system, health care system does not avoid controversies. The major of them are various reactions of people as well as the use of IT technologies.