assigned

Running Head: HEALTH CARE POLICIES 0

Policy Process Proposal

The healthcare policies and issues might have an effect on the patients and also on the providers. These effects will vary in the level and also the effects whereby some are critical while others are not. For the nation to have the professionals who understand the issues affecting the patients and are willing to advocate for them, then there is the need to always be on top of current health care concerns, and with the help of the legislative issues, it will be possible to have the nation being what is desired to be.

The policy which can be introduced is to provide the medical care to the medically underserved. This can be done by first beginning with the health care educators to teach the medical students about the factors which determine the health and the health care disparities in a nation. These factors will include the social factors and any other factor which might be contributing in one way or the other to the health differences. Also, the medical students will b encouraged to pursue the residencies in the primary care and medical practice in the underserved communities. The free clinics provide care to the underserved, but medical schools have not collaborated with these clinics hence the need to encourage them to work together in providing services to the underserved medical patients in the society.

For this collaboration to be achieved, the health care professionals will have to combine the common curricular objectives in providing the service learning to the students and also the inter-professional education experiences. This will be done with the aim of expanding clinical rotations to the more diverse populations, and also, they will have exposed the students to the variety of health disparities in the community.

It is possible to achieve this situation within the period of four years when the students are at the medical school and can be integrated throughout the medical curriculum while at the same time they will be meeting the underserved medical patients. This exposure of the students to the patients who are underserved will influence their selection of the residency programs hence increasing the number of medical students who will choose to take the internal medicine or the family medicine.

References

Health Policy Tracking Service, & National Conference of State Legislatures. (1998). Major health care policies: Fifty state profiles. Washington, DC: Health Policy Tracking Service.

Holtz, C. (2008). Global health care: Issues and policies. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.