Policy, Power and Politics in Health Care Provision

Running head: POLICY, POWER AND POLITICS IN HEALTH CARE PROVISION 1
Policy, Power and Politics in Health Care Provision
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Institution

POLICY, POWER AND POLITICS IN HEALTH CARE PROVISION 2
Policy, Power and Politics in Health Care Provision
Policies play an effective role in fostering effective delivery of healthcare services.
Munro et al. (2019) explain that the policy making process in healthcare settings is a dynamic
process that inculcates an interplay of factors. Power and politics are core ingredients of the
policy making process in healthcare settings. The current study seeks to undertake a critical
analysis of the efficacy of power, policy and politics in fostering the provision of healthcare
services.
1. Why is a policy cycle an appropriate tool for developing a new policy?
Gupta, and Fonarow (2018) reveal that the policy making process incorporates series of
interlocking procedures aimed at fostering dialogue with the aim of ensuring effective
advancement of institutional regulations by identifying the problem, seeking evidence, testing
proposals, and making recommendations before the relevant healthcare select committee.
Bhavnani et al. (2017) explain that the ability of the policy cycle is one of the modest and most
flexible instruments for policy makers in health care settings based on its ability to subject the
desired outcomes to effective evaluation procedures. The efficacy of the policy cycle is based on
its ability to apply consultations, rationalism and emphasizing on process over content. The
policy cycle puts a lot of strength on the aspects of consultation and process as ways of
institutionalizing non-linear engagements among the parties in question.
Koeckert et al. (2019) attribute the effectiveness policy cycle to its ability to apply higher
levels of rationalism. Bhavnani et al. (2017) explain that there are tendencies for institutional
healthcare institutions to adopt the aspects of constant trade and compromise whenever they are
faced with challenges. The policy cycle approach assimilates a wider array of sequential

POLICY, POWER AND POLITICS IN HEALTH CARE PROVISION 3
procedures borrowed from the rational decision making model to tackle such issues. Harvey, and
Kitson (2015) explain that in the policy cycle model, all alternatives provided by the
stakeholders in the policy making process are put under investigation and assessed against
certain specified goals and objectives until a single effective answer to the issue under
consideration is presented. The researchers reveal that the policy cycle ensures that the
associated processes and outcomes proceed in a logical step. As a consequence, each of the steps
put in place in this process is considered as an essential stepping stone to the other step(s). The
process proceeds in such a way that no formal rationality is embodied in the decision-making
framework.
2. How is a health policy different to a government policy document?
Formal public and institutional policies are advanced with the aim of influencing a wider
array of decisions put in place by actors as well as the procedures of a particular system.
According to Heinrich-Morrison et al. (2015), policy documents play a central role in ensuring
that the parties involved in a given system embrace greater capabilities of working as a single
entity to achieve certain set goals and objectives that depict higher levels of commonality.
However, Gwyther et al. (2018) explain that health and government policy documents portray
multiple variations both in their modes of inception and implementation.
Overall, formal government policy documents are advanced to give a reflection of the
intentions set by a given state to act on a particular problem. As such, Heinrich-Morrison et al.
(2015) reveal that state policy documents are developed through incorporation of political
ideologies and agendas as a way of fulfilling the promises and manifesto of the government of
the day. For instance, state policies could take the form of formal public statements which may