University Health Care Assignment: Disparity, Outcomes, and Strategies

This assignment delves into the multifaceted issue of health care, examining the impact of health disparity on patient outcomes and healthcare costs. It highlights how factors such as limited access to care, discrimination, and cultural insensitivity contribute to health inequities. The assignment focuses on nurse-sensitive patient outcomes, such as patient falls and pressure ulcers, which are directly influenced by nursing practices and staffing levels. It proposes strategies to mitigate these outcomes, including comprehensive fall risk assessments and improved skin care protocols, and evaluates their clinical and cost-effectiveness. The author emphasizes the importance of evidence-based assessment tools and organizational protocols to measure and reduce adverse patient outcomes, ultimately aiming to improve healthcare quality while controlling costs. References to relevant research and industry reports support the analysis.

Running head: HEALTH CARE
Health care
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

1HEALTH CARE
1.
Health disparity is a multi-factorial construct that results in differential access to care and
delay in receiving timely care for health issues and ailments. Such form of accessibility barriers
occur because of lack of availability of health services for disadvantaged people living in remote
areas and increases cost of health care service. Hence, affordability issues and non-availability of
services creates barriers in access to care. Some minority patient groups stay away from health
care services because of experience of discrimination based on their identity. Hence, as health
disparity results in health inequity issues and poor experience in care which ultimately has
negative impact on patient outcome. Health disparity is also evidenced by poor cultural
sensitivity among health care workers and this cause many people to drift away from mainstream
health services and suffer from adverse outcome. Significant gap in life expectancy and health
outcome is found for racial minority group compared to other population group (Bourgois et al.,
2017). This is a major indicator of disparity. Impact of health disparity on health care cost is seen
because of increase in health care expenditure, premature deaths and loss of productivity.
2.
Nurse sensitive patient outcome includes those health issues that occur because of
nursing negligence or because of nursing staffing issues. One example of nurse sensitive patient
outcomes include incidence of patient fall and fall related injury in elderly patient.
3.
Cost associated with nurse sensitive patient outcomes like pressure ulcer or fall related
injury can be reduced by strategies like comprehensive fall risk assessment, adaptation of patient
safety culture or adapting certain infection control model or theories. For example, accurate fall

2HEALTH CARE
risk assessment is strategy that can be used by nurse to prevent fall related injury. The clinical
effectiveness of this strategy can be evaluated by checking reduction in patient outcomes related
length of hospital stay, number of fall incidence and disability due to falls (Slade et al., 2017).
These data will give idea about both clinical effectiveness and cost effectiveness of strategies to
reduce cost associated with fall related injury. For nurse sensitive patient outcome of pressure
ulcer, use of strategies like positioning and regular skin care can prevent such incidence in the
future. The effectiveness of this strategy in a clinical setting can be determined by reduction in
incidence of pressure injury and improvement in the area of mobility.
4.
To ensure improvement in health care cost without compromising patient care, I would
take the step to thoroughly measure and assess nurse-sensitive patient outcome by the use of
evidence based assessment tools. Utilizing relevant organizational tools and protocol to assess
risk of different nurse-sensitive patient outcome can help to reduce adverse outcomes for patient,
promote patient well-being and reduce the cost involved due to treatment for nurse sensitive
patient outcome. Furthermore, paying attention to nurse sensitive indicators like education in
specific areas, process to assess different types of patients and quantity and quality of patient
outcomes such as fall can help to reduce overall cost and maintain high quality of care too
(Mastal, 2016).

3HEALTH CARE
References:
Bourgois, P., Holmes, S. M., Sue, K., & Quesada, J. (2017). Structural vulnerability:
operationalizing the concept to address health disparities in clinical care. Academic
medicine: journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges, 92(3), 299.
Mastal, P. (2016). Ambulatory care nurse-sensitive indicator industry report: Meaningful
measurement of nursing in the ambulatory patient care environment. Retrieved from:
https://www.aaacn.org/sites/default/files/documents/misc-docs/AAACNNSIIndustryRepo
rt.pdf
Slade, S. C., Carey, D. L., Hill, A. M., & Morris, M. E. (2017). Effects of falls prevention
interventions on falls outcomes for hospitalised adults: protocol for a systematic review
with meta-analysis. BMJ open, 7(11), e017864.