Course Project—Plan to Address Health Issue

Running Headlines: RESPONSE 1

Needs Assessment

Joseph Toole

Health Promotion and Disease Prevention

10 Jan 2017

Health needs assessment can be defined as the systematic approach to ensure that health service uses the available resources in improving the health of the population in the most reliable and efficient way. This is a discussion about health needs assessment and how it can be used in addressing a health issue. Further, the discussion will identify and analyze two needs assessment.

Health needs assessment involves qualitative, epidemiological and comparative techniques to identify inequalities in health care and the access to service, determination of priorities on the most effective use of the resources and description of health problems of the population. It should be noted that health needs are those that can fully benefit from health or alternatively from wider environmental and social changes. For health needs assessment to be a success it must have a practical understanding of the time, what is involved and the resources that will be used in the assessment. More importantly, requires sufficient integration of the results into commissioning and planning of local services.

Traditionally, health needs assessment has always been undertaken by the public health professional. However; this should not be the case as all the professionals in the healthcare sectors need to participate in this imperative exercise. In this case, primary care teams and hospitals must be able to rise to the occasion and provide health care that meet the needs of the local population. A combination of the personal knowledge of patients with health needs assessment is sufficient to meet the desired goals.

The two needs assessment that has been selected in this case are intensive and extensive. The main difference that exists between intensive and extensive needs assessment is the fact that intensively uses few cases or even one case detail in an effort to understand the cause and effect whereas the extensive needs assessment uses relatively many cases in the determination of population. Extensive needs assessment uses population-based indicators and has many strengths. Some of the strength includes the availability of data for broad geographical areas, availability of a large number of individuals and the description of entire populations. Moreover, it is relatively easy to access, inexpensive to use and it is perceived as unbiased. Survey is also used in the extensive needs assessment. Survey has its advantages that make it be preferred. It usually has the direct feedback from the public; it creates public awareness on certain issues, and it can also be customized to meet the specific needs of the client. Service and database programs are also used in the extensive needs assessment. SWOT is also part of the extensive needs assessment. The intensive needs assessment normally requires the ranking of priorities. It is always important for criteria which can be used in ranking to be developed. In this case, feasibility is always used as one of the criteria for ranking.

Health needs assessment provides the opportunity for describing the patterns of diseases in the existing population and the distinction from regional, district and national disease patterns. Moreover, health needs assessment also involves highlighting of the area of the unmet need and provision of a clear set objectives. During health needs assessment, the rationale for improvement of the health services is also decided upon. More so, health need assessment also ensures that patient’s professionals in the healthcare can learn new skills in meeting the demands of patients.

One of the major epidemiological accomplishments in the health sector is the introduction of team-based approach in handling patients with chronic diseases like a diabetic foot. Team-based care can be defined as the provision of the comprehensive health services to families and individuals by at least two health professionals who have collaborated with family caregivers, patients, and other community service providers (USDHHS, 2016). The paper is going to discuss how team-based approach is used to take care of patients with chronic disease.

Team based approach ensures that physicians can connect well with their patients in handling questions and calls from patients. Even though team-based has been identified as the future for delivering care to chronic patients, there is a need for continuous research to be done in an effort to improve the output. There are many diseases that require team-based approach in ensuring that the patient gets the right treatment. In this context, we present diabetic foot as the case that requires team-based care which is rooted in the primary care setting. It should be noted that high functioning team based approach work effectively and efficiently to provide quality care to diabetic foot. Patients with diabetes continue to increase as the day's progress, and this calls for a joint effort in patient care. Statistics indicate that one out of four patients with diabetes are likely to experience foot ulcers and more than half of them get infected and are hospitalized. Further, approximately 20 percent of individual that are hospitalized will undergo amputation. It has been reported that there is higher mortality rate in patients with diabetic foot than those with malignant cancer. Therefore, there is a need for a team-based approach to help in providing care for the patients (Kenney, 2010).

Reference

United States Department of Health and Human Services, (2016), Creating Patient Centered Team-based Primary Care, Rockville, MD 20857,

Kenney, C. (2010) Transforming Health care: Virginia Mason Medical Center’s Pursuit of the perfect patient Experience. New York, NY: Productivity Press