Effects of External Environment in Health Care Environment Essay

Introduction

The external environment factors influence the total operations of healthcare facilities. They include risk management, medical liability, error reporting, care delivery, regulatory requirements, and certification. Various effects of the external environment in New Zealand healthcare sector are evident. For instance, the external environment factors affect the diagnosis which explains a patient's health issue and notifies successive health care decisions. Safe environments for voluntary error reporting and learning from error reporting result to improved diagnostic procedures (Eckersley et al., 2016).

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

The external environment factors affect service quality in the healthcare sector. Improving patient care has become a priority for all healthcare facilities with the overall goal of fulfilling a high extent of patient satisfaction. According to Braithwaite et al., (2017), low incidences of medical errors and better patient delivery improve quality of care among the patients. The hiring of only certified employees is significant in offering high-quality care with desirable results. The increase in medical malpractice litigation and more healthcare regulatory requirements contribute to improving health care quality across the nation (Braithwaite et al., 2017).

The external environment factors contribute to the patient satisfaction in the healthcare sector. Zwier (2009) addresses that hiring of certified doctors, surgeons, neurosurgeons, and nurses help to lower the incidences of medical errors that might emerge during healthcare delivery. These medical practitioners are familiarized with the medical tools and understand the medical ethics. They understand that offering better health care is part of their duty and responsibility (Zwier, 2009). A proper approach of hiring only the qualified medical practitioners will result to increase in patient satisfaction of the healthcare facility.

The external environment factors affect the patient safety in the healthcare sector. Qualified medical professionals are important because they understand the suitable medications to prescribe to the patient. They know the appropriate tools to use because they have a high potential of increasing the patient safety in the healthcare facility (Weller et al., 2012).

Funding Of Healthcare Sector in New Zealand by the Government

Health care funding and resources include the infrastructure within countries, the human resource and funding of the healthcare facilities in those countries. Human resources for the healthcare systems are also very low where by people that have the skill in the healthcare industry are very limited. This could result to shortages of the healthcare practitioners which could result to patients not getting the services that they may need over a longer period of time. The healthcare resources are also unequally distributed in that people have to travel for long distances to get the services they are looking for.

New Zealand has a mixture of private-public system that has cost sharing features. In this private insurance is used to pay these fees and grant access to private doctors. On that only thirty percent of New Zealand's have such insurance covers, thus showing that a population of more than a half of the citizens do not have access to private healthcare practitioners (Kuperavage,2017). The problem stated above has resulted too many people not being able to access private medical care. The increase in the advancements of the healthcare system has resulted to the government pushing more funds in the healthcare sector for the expenses are beginning to be more than the government has budgeted for. This has left most of the healthcare systems in the hands of private developers hence the increase

In New Zealand, the expenditure of the healthcare system has risen. These is due to the following factors; increase in the aging population, diversifying income gap, and the increase in expensive treatments. The factors have left a majority of people in New Zealand to be in poor condition since the government does not provide a subsidiary to the sector of health.

References

Braithwaite J.Matsuyama,Y & Johnson, J. (2017). Healthcare reform, quality, and safety: perspectives, participants, partnerships and prospects in 30 countries. CRC Press.

Eckersley, L., Sadler, L., Parry, E., Finucane, K., & Gentles, T. L. (2016). Timing of diagnosis affects mortality in critical congenital heart disease. Archives of disease in childhood, 101(6), 516-520.

Weller, J., Boyd, M., & Cumin, D. (2014). Teams, tribes and patient safety: overcoming barriers to effective teamwork in healthcare. Postgraduate medical journal, postgradmedj-2012.

Zwier, G. (2009). Patient satisfaction in New Zealand. The New Zealand Medical Journal (Online), 122(1300).