Health Care Provider Changes and Service Delivery Essay

Health Care Provider Changes and Service Delivery

Healthcare and its finance today has been complicated by many dynamics, including the changing demographic of Western society today. Hence, it is difficult to answer a question about addressing healthcare personnel shortages effectively with "I agree" or "I disagree." There are simply too many intricate factors involved in the dynamics of physician numbers, population demographics and the types of services and specialties in healthcare on offer today. Therefore, while it is true that a more effective doctor-patient ratio has been achieved by involving the services of non-traditional disciplines and other variations of healthcare providers, there is certainly no conclusive response to whether this will be the case in the long-term or even if greater efficacy in terms of matching expertise to patient needs has been, in fact, achieved. In short, the way in which the population is changing in terms of demographics, along with the various professional and conceptual changes within the medical profession and the services it includes, as well as the changing demographics of service providers themselves have created a platform that offers much grounds for future investigation, but little likelihood of finding a simple solution to the question of healthcare personnel shortages.

Mick and White (n.d.) mention various dynamics involved in the changing dynamic of healthcare provision, especially as concerns the demographic of providers. Indeed, the authors cite that, for the first time, the number of female physicians in training have matched those of male providers. This, along with the social demographic of an increasing number of single-parent homes and the household duties women fulfil, according to the authors, are likely to result in more physicians available, but fewer hours during which they can make their services available. In other words, women will, by nature, not be able to work the same amount of hours as men.

I am not sure to which degree I agree with this claim. Indeed, for all of their working lives, women have managed to balance their workloads by means of employing servants and nannies to care for their homes and their offspring while also putting food on the table. Furthermore, the number of single male parents is also increasing, which would arguably result in the same conundrum for male doctors who are parents…