Access to Health Care (Nursing)

00:00 Welcome back, everyone.

00:02 Today, we're talking about health care organizations and an important topic to everyone, Access to Healthcare.

00:09 Access to comprehensive quality healthcare services is important for promoting and maintaining health, preventing and managing disease, reducing unnecessary disability and premature death, and achieving health equity for all.

00:23 So when we think about accessing care, there are three steps to consider.

00:27 First, actually gaining entry into the healthcare system, usually this happens through insurance coverage.

00:34 Second, accessing a location where needed health care services are provided.

00:39 This talks to geographic availability or the availability of places for people to actually go.

00:46 Third, finding a health care provider whom the patient trusts and can communicate with.

00:52 This speaks to having a personal relationship with your provider.

00:57 Now there are some barriers to health services.

01:00 First, it's very expensive.

01:02 So there is a high cost of care involved.

01:04 Second, there may be inadequate or actually no insurance coverage for the individual to access care at all.

01:11 Third, there could be a lack of availability of services to the individual.

01:17 And fourth, there could be a lack of culturally competent care.

01:23 When you think about the challenges or the barriers to access to care, there are some implications to this.

01:29 First, if they have a barrier, you might have someone with an unmet health need.

01:34 Second, there could be delays in receiving appropriate care.

01:39 Third, there could be the inability to get preventive services which means they're not able to get care before they end up with an injury or an illness.

01:48 Also, again, healthcare is expensive.

01:51 So if they don't have insurance and they have to pay out of pocket for health care, it could pose a financial burden.

01:57 Also, if they're not able to get preventive services, then they might have a hospitalization that otherwise, they didn't really need.

02:06 Now there are three components to access.

02:08 First is coverage.

02:10 Second is services.

02:12 Third is timeliness.

02:13 And we're going to go over each of these individually.

02:16 For coverage, that talks to health insurance coverage which could be helpful to gain entry into the healthcare system.

02:23 Or lack of adequate coverage, that makes it really difficult for people to get the needed health care that they need, plus it places a burden of large medical bills if they have to pay out of pocket.

02:34 So when we think about services, there are three types of services we can discuss.

02:39 First, a person's primary care provider or actually the first health care provider that they may see if they have an illness or injury.

02:47 A second may be evidence-based preventive services or services provided in an event to, perhaps, prevent an illness or injury, or even health promotion.

02:57 And finally, of course, emergency medical services.

03:01 When we speak of timeliness, we are-- one thing we can think about might be the availability of the appointments or care for illness or injury when it is needed, or we can think about time spent waiting in the doctor's office, or the emergency room.

03:15 So when we consider our aim to provide access to everyone, we should think about the future efforts that we're going to need to focus on the deployment of a primary care workforce that's better geographically distributed and trained to provide culturally competent care to a diverse population.

03:32 So let's discuss what we learned today.

03:34 First question, what are some of the barriers to access to health services? First, a high cost of care.

03:48 Second, inadequate or no insurance coverage for individuals.

03:52 And third, lack of availability of services.

03:57 And finally, a lack of culturally competent care.

04:01 Final question, what might happen as a result of these barriers? A patient may have unmet health needs.

04:14 They might have delays in receiving appropriate care.

04:18 They may have the inability to get preventive services.

04:21 Because of no insurance, they may have a financial burden if they have to pay out of pocket for care.

04:25 And finally, if they don't get preventive services, they may actually have a hospitalization which they could have prevented otherwise.

04:33 So I hope you've enjoyed this video on Access to Care.

04:35 Thanks so much for watching.