Design and Implementation of Collaborative Care Model Essay

Current Population

The population of the area comprises mostly of African Americans. The community is a low-income area and individuals who live here struggle to make ends meet. This makes it hard for them to access premium health care that is offered at private hospitals. Therefore, most of them have to rely on the community health center. Poor people have been associated with numerous chronic health problems that are as a result of their lifestyles and a lack of viable income. The community is underserved in terms of social amenities. Other structural challenges that are faced by the community is the reduced access to fresh foods, high density of fast food restaurants, and the area is not conducive for physical activity. This makes people have sedentary lifestyles that contribute towards them developing chronic diseases. Access to health care is reduced and the few who are able to access the community health center have to contend with receiving substandard service. While the nurses and doctors who work in the facility mean well, the sheer lack of proper communication and direction has made the services being offered to seem lackluster. With increasing numbers of obese community members, it is vital that the community get appropriate health care and health care professionals should be able to address the increasing obesity rates within the community. A majority of the community members do not have medical insurance and they work odd jobs. Others do not have jobs at all. People living in public housing account for the majority of patients that visit the community health center. Without any other option of health care access, they have to rely on the health center for all their medical needs. The lack of proper care might be discouraging but since they do not have any other option, they have to contend with what is currently available and accessible to them.

The level of education in the community is limited. Schools are not well maintained, gang violence is rife, and drugs are sold on every street corner. The neighborhood is what might be considered to be unhealthy. With limited access to education, many of the people who live in the community have only managed to go to high school. School dropout rates far outnumber the rates of those who managed to finish their studies. This makes the population less educated and discriminated upon. Since the area comprises mostly of black Americans, there are unique economic barriers that face the community. Development is minimal in the area and this makes it hard for young people to have any ambitions in life. Making the area perennially prone to continued social injustices and lack of proper health facilities. Reduced income has made many people to not seek medical help even from the health center for fear of being charged to access care. The nurses who work in the community health center are mostly from other neighborhoods and they do not closely understand the community relations.

Current Operations of The Community Health Center

The community health center is charged with offering outpatient medical services and care to the residents of the community. The services include counseling, primary care, pre, and post-natal care, and health education. The health center is supposed to offer services regardless if the patient has the ability to pay or not. The services offered at the community health center are tailored to meet the needs of the community. Studies have indicated that community health centers offer services that improve the health outcomes of their patients. However, in our case, this has not been the case. A majority of the patients have been complaining that while they do get access to primary care, receiving information and proper care is quite difficult. This has been due to the fact that a patient is not likely to meet the same nurse or doctor who had handled his or her case. Handing over patients is not done in the correct manner and a patient has to introduce and state their issue to every medical personnel they meet. Follow up of patients is not possible since the health care workers assume that a particular person is doing the follow-up (Overbeck, Kousgaard, & Davidsen, 2018). This creates confusion in the operations of the health center and patients end up suffering.

Chronically ill patients are sometimes not able to make their appointment either because they are unable to leave their house or they do not have someone who can escort them to the health center. While the health center is supposed to have noted all the chronically ill patients who have regular appointments and to always check to ensure that the patients always make their appointments. This is not the case. The health care workers seem to be overwhelmed and all this can be attributed to a lack of proper communication and role definition. A patient can stay at the health center for hours before he or she is attended to and making an inquiry is always answered with wait for your turn. Therefore, patients end up suffering and might fail to be seen by a health care worker. Some of the workers are able to identify patients who have been waiting for long and attempt to attend to them. However, this is not possible all the time since the worker might be overwhelmed or they might be working a different shift. When patients come to the facility, they are first registered and then they will be called based on this register. Most times this…

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…makes it hard for it to create the necessary teams for caring for the patients. Collaborative care model relies heavily on the interaction between different professionals within a team. If there are not specialized professionals within the team, then collaboration becomes hard since the discussions and treatment plan development is not possible.

Policies

The community health center needs to make changes into its own policies that will be aimed at supporting the collaborative care model. One of the policy changes would be eliminating the need for a single caregiver being charged with the responsibility of caring for multiple patients all by themselves. Currently, the focus is mainly on individuality. This means that there is no coordination of activities and a caregiver is charged with seeing the patient from start to the end. Handing off a patient to others is not encouraged and most caregivers will not be willing to handle a patient who is not theirs. There should be a change in policy regarding information sharing. The community health center needs to make it clear to patients that in some instances the center might have to share patient information with other providers in order to support collaborative care. With a change in the data sharing policy, the center can safeguard itself against lawsuits and it can be able to share information freely (Unützer, Harbin, Schoenbaum, & Druss, 2013). While most community health centers receive funding from the government, the center can seek funding from donors. Donations can be well-wishers and other non-profit organizations. This will assist the health center to cater to its needs and those of its caregivers. In order to seek funding, the health center needs to develop a policy for collecting donations and demonstrate how the donations will be used. Communication within the health care facility can also be modified. There is a need to encourage caregivers to discuss with patients on the proposed treatment plan. Sharing information with the patient will improve adherence to the treatment plan.

There are external policies that have been created that encourage and offer support for collaborative care. The community health center can embrace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. This act encourages for the development of integrated approaches to patient care in order to improve quality of care and reduce costs of care (LaBelle et al., 2016). Implementing this policy will encourage caregivers to collaborate and share information with each other with the aim of improving patient outcomes. To safeguard against the potential of a breach in patient privacy implementing a policy for seeking funding for information technology infrastructure will be vital. Improving upon the IT infrastructure will allow the health center to strengthen its data protection and it can easily be able to securely share information…