400238 Policy, Power And Politics In Health Care Provision Homework Answer

Answer :

Government policy and a significant catalyst for policy change

The medicare system was introduced in 1984 has now become a crucial Healthcare policy in Australia. It was conventional. The Health policy provides the health insurance scheme to the Australians through the taxation system and revenue generation; however, it does not cover some of the medical and allied health services (Dixit & Sambasivan,2018). The policy lacked equal attention, self-determination, individual rights, self-management and reconciliation. The policy was unable to combine the evidence of health crisis among the vulnerable population and strategies to improve the disease burden along with the human rights identification. However, the policy supported the effort to improve and maintain individual health and the population (Ducket, 2018). The health policy lacked vital element for improving services, understanding individuals as the central role, and improving their experiences as a patient and consumer healthcare services. The policy has  no data linkage, no tracking of experiences, and importance of mental health services were not recognized, also but individual has to enrol in different programs to get help for single condition (Fox et al., 2019). The Australian healthcare system potentially deals with some of the significant challenges, including resource allocation, performance and healthcare outcomes improvements. The policy change was required due to the implementation errors or the lack of administrative efficiency (Fox et al., 2019). The policy change catalyst were factors including an increase in the demand, change in the complex health conditions, increasing prevalence of non-communicable diseases, healthcare cost, and increasing inequalities among the indigenous and non-indigenous population (Ducket, 2018). Due to increased public reporting of the availability of the services and an international reporting system for clinical indicators required the change in the past policy system. The government has introduced the policy initiating schemes to address all these changes, including the pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, public services, and aged care facilities (Dixit & Sambasivan, 2018).

Identify the health care priorities required over the coming decade to address health inequities within Australia.

 Establishing health care priorities is essential for ensuring that all the available resources can be directed towards critical health needs and allocated efficiently. For example, communicable disease has been controlled; however, in preventable conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, the health outcomes are still not desirable (Ratcliffe et al., 2017). To address the healthcare priorities for maintaining equity, the principle of social justice, cost reduction for a vulnerable population and priority population. The Australian healthcare priority to address the inequalities should include focusing on the target population, communities or group experiencing the health inequalities, potential for preventing and providing early intervention to the vulnerable population through affordable and efficient services. The vulnerable population includes indigenous communities, lower socio-economic people, and people living in the country's rural, isolated regions. The cost of the individual and the community should be managed to manage the financial loss, loss of productivity, emotional stress and the quality of life (Burns et al., 2019). 

Setting the priorities help the inequitable allocation of resources and support the healthcare system through human rights and social justice based on equity, diversity and a supportive environment (Ratcliffe et al., 2017). With paradigm shift of the disease appearance from communicable to non-communicable diseases, chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension needs to be addressed. For example, adults from Aboriginal and Torres islander are now becoming at higher risk of developing chronic conditions like diabetes, alcohol addiction, obesity and hypertension (Burns et al., 2019).. The socio-cultural, economical, and environmental determinantal should be an essential health care priority (Whitty et al., 2015). Geographical isolations limit the medical services and act as a barrier to achieving desirable health outcomes. Improved primary healthcare system by the active participation of individuals and community should be focused on (Burns et al., 2019).

Is it ethical to give foreign aid to a country to fund a public health system that excludes critical interventions?

Foreign aid is the process of providing funding by the donor country to the undeveloped or financial challenged country to resolve critical issues (Gardner, 2019) locally. The government and the people of eh developed countries are increasingly called upon for contributing financially to health initiative outside their countries. World Health Organization has also emphasize the importance of uplifting the countries unable to provide better health outcomes to their population due to financial crises (Johri et al., 2012). The competition between the national priorities and the foreign aid commitment of the countries raises crucial ethical questions, especially providing funds to the countries that do not provide intervention in line with the donor countries and may have different cultural and social beliefs. It provides funds to the countries for public health system different from each others in terms of social environment, contextual factors, and information availability (Gardner, 2019). The country's funding can help provide the quality activity toward the desired interventions, including research, information, civil system development. On humanitarian grounds, around billions of people still living on less than U.S Dollar 1 and poverty have a terrible impact on the health indicators (Lu et al., 2017).

Foreign aid is primarily based on the ides of association with other countries in trade, education, tourism, and humanity (Johri et al., 2012). So, although the country is not following the interventions like birth control programs, aid can be used to treat malnutrition and malaria in the receiving country. The foreign ais arise from the moral obligation that arises from the valuable considerations of justice, humanity and distributive equality. The concept of sovereign equality os every nation is the core of the Internation commitment, and hence all nations should respect the cultural and ethnic setting of the host country; hence to execute a particular specific model as per the donor country violates the right and choice of the receiving country (Lu et al., 2017).

Relationship between the law and policy, in the adverse event, the possible consequences if a clinical policy or directive is not followed

Laws are these of specific principles, standards, and procedures implemented to maintain justice within society. Policies are the document that can lead to the new law's formulation (Taylor, 2017). For example, the government made policies for educating people and funding anti-smoking campaign for the social cause of the population, further establishing the law for banning smoking at public places as a part of the public policy. The policy is a collection of rules, standards, regulations and law that work in combination for the population's welfare. The policy outline and analyse the governmental decisions that become formal statements attached to punishments and legislation becomes law; hence, the relationship of law and policy within the healthcare context can be a hand in glove (Van Beek et al., 2013).

While playing the healthcare professional's role, there are several challenges in terms of policies, including payments, directions, treatment, accreditation, and compliance. If a clinical policy directive is followed in an adverse event, it might have ethical-legal consequences (Vainieri et al., 2019). Deferring with the instructions of the policy have negative consequences for the healthcare professional. The choice of either not following the policy or disregarding the values of eth healthcare policies may attract malpractice claims in case of an adverse event. As this can question the efficiency and patient safety, it can also lead to negligence and breach of code conduct and can be imposed on the clinician. The consequences may include inconsistency in the standard of care and compliance failure (Kwon & Johnson, 2013).

Steps in developing a Journal Entry for analysing and evaluating a policy issue concerning power and politics 

The evaluation of the policy issues in term of politics and power include developing a framework that applies to the examination of the content, implementation and impact of the policies under the influence of particular political motto or desire that can cause an issue within the policy (Baum, & Friel, 2017). The evaluation steps are developed concerning merit, worth, achievement and goals met by the policy. The office of the Associate Director of Policy proposed the following steps for evaluating the health policy. The political and power influences are not always visible hence require through the mechanism for evaluation. They often influence decision-making, structuring, authority, and institutions, resulting in policy issues (Gore & Parker, 2019).  

Clarifying what is to be evaluated (health policy)

Setting the evaluation criteria

Identify and define the policy issue (in terms of policy development or implementation) 

Engaging the stakeholders (government, workforce and population)

Analyse the intensity of the problem

Data collection

Evaluating the data

Analysis of the data

Report formation

Report analysis

Benefits of developing this type of diagram

The analysis and evaluation process for policy issue includes surveys and interviews with the stakeholders through proper questionnaire development (Kaczmarek & Romaniuk, 2020).This model's advantage is the appropriate scope of brainstorming and identifying the critical issues within the policy. The benefit of developing this model diagram is to take strategic and structured decisions for meeting the objectives and goals defined by the policy. The diagram helps analyse the concern associated with the policy in terms of efficiency and effectiveness for concluding. It helps in monitoring and evaluating the operational activities and issue identification inappropriate and immediate manner. The issue can be identified with ease and spontaneously, and a planned solution can be proposed (Kaczmarek & Romaniuk, 2020)..