Multidisciplinary Health Care Approach
In the past years, health care, particularly its medical or therapeutic context, has focused as never before on the significance of public, political leaders, and a dutiful media. To many, the opportunities and shortcomings of health care take up intensely significant implications. There is a prevalent sense of exigency amid employers, insurers, consumer groups, and other policy makers about the outwardly irresolvable necessity to fix difficulties of availability and charges without jeopardizing quality of care. In the past decades, key economic and social transformations in the U.S. have changed the way Americans view the function of health care plans in their lives. It has also affected their perception on fortunes and shortcomings of the sophisticated network of health care providers, amenities, program, and services (Bodenheimer et al. 2009). There is an increasing worry that health care is an immense, unmanageable trade that utilizes over 16 percent of the United States GDP and surpasses $1.5 trillion in costs.
The commercialization of the health care industry is producing key chances for megamergers and investors. The corporatization of health care has produced growing disagreements between providers on one side and policy regulators, managed corporations, and other third-party payers. Despite its excellent achievements, the United States health care system shows strange challenges in goals, unguaranteed changes in performance, efficiency, and effectiveness. On the other end, the failure of the government-started reforms has created an emptiness that was filled rapidly by private sector. Nevertheless, there is a variation between present administrational objectives for health care reform and those of the market (Bodenheimer et al. 2009). Even though the projected government programs attempt to sustain some equilibrium amid costs, and availability, the core objective of the market is to control costs. In the end, there are grave worries that market-fueled changes may not amount to in health care program that equitable meets the requirement of all American citizens.
According to McGlynn et al. (2003), in an attempt to offer efficient and valuable care to patients with chronic health problems, the United States healthcare system has done much to restructure its delivery system. Creating an approach to meet the increasing demands of patients and to best use resources has become important. The outcome is the regular utilization of multidisciplinary team. This approach offer improved care than a personal plan which has in the earlier period, only involved physician, and patient. When appropriately carried out, this multidisciplinary team approach offers positive quantifiable results. With a varied group of healthcare practitioners, such as doctors, nurses, pharmacists, health educators, nutritionists amid others, there is more hope that all of the requirements of the patient will be met.
What is considered as the most pivotal member of the multidisciplinary team is the patient since he or she is at the focal point of the team. Thus, this approach is regarded as holistic health care. Multidisciplinary teams, as the names suggests, are groups of individuals from distinct disciplines that join hands for common function. The perception is that it is better to address a crisis or an issue from all dimensions. Whereas the team approach has varied benefits, it can as well be sophisticated to direct schedules and reactions of preoccupied health practitioners, who might require engaging in multidisciplinary teams for any number of reasons. It may be expensive to spend time meeting, necessitating greatly remunerated, busy health specialists to team up for a case discourse. Ensuring that all practitioners create the time to engage can be a mind boggling (McGlynn et al. 2003).
Recent study has indicated that a patient with Type II diabetes, a multidisciplinary approach can really amount to the improvement of glycemmic regulation and enhanced quality life. A multidisciplinary team is particularly optional and it is recommended that the team have experts in education, diet, and medical and mental health care. For patients with breast cancer, the multidisciplinary team includes surgeons, nurses, dieticians, counselors, amid other professionals. Given the sophistication of cancer care, these expert healthcare professionals assist to offer a continuum of care via diagnosis. In cases of patients with heart failure, a multidisciplinary approach can lower costs by lowering hospitalization and enhancing the patient’s adherence to medical care and follow-up (Bodenheimer et al. 2009). Multidisciplinary approach is a well-established approach in behavioral health. In cases of patients with chronic and persistent mental illness, the need to team up and manage amid experts is obvious.
In various angles, the health care system has done and is doing a tremendous work. Essential improvements have been made in medical science that has contributed to quantifiable enhancements in the duration and quality of life. On the other hand, skepticism about the health care system has increased as data about the challenges of costs and quality has become unrestricted. Individuals who perceived medical care a necessity offered by doctors who comply with scientific regulations primed on tested therapies have been mystified to learn that core knowledge disparities to contribute to exceedingly different utilizations rates for therapeutic and diagnostic processed that have created no quantifiable variations in results. The pursuit for best effectiveness in the delivery of health care services is timeless in a nation that expends much more on health care than any other (McGlynn et al.2003).
References Bodenheimer, T., Chen, E. & Bennett, H.D. (2009). Confronting the Growing Burden of Chronic Disease: Can the U.S. Health Care Workforce Do the Job? Health Affairs, 28(1), 64-67.