HEALTH CARE POLICIES

Health Coverage Insurance Policies for Patients' Safety



Health Coverage Insurance Policies for Patients' Safety

Patient safety emerged as a central pillar in all strategies to initiate health development programs and quality management in hospitals. Health care should be considered as a complex activity involving a combination of actions, technology and professional interactions. While health care provides benefit to people, it also poses a risk, which is often preventable, and it has the possibility of reducing the final impact of the risk. Adverse events that may occur during the care process may sometimes be motivated by the functioning of the health system, either by actions or omissions. Installation of policies and strategies for patient safety in the network require a design with clear guidance and accurate network that provide facilities of appropriate care identification, analysis, evaluation and implementation of actions to operationalize the most cost-effective strategies (Teitelbaum et al. 2009: 67).

In recent years, policy debates about how to achieve this goal include the issues of necessary public health functions or services as the foundation for achieving better health policies for public. The health policy makers have understood that without an appropriate infrastructure, as required to provide these services, none of the healthcare authorities may move efficiently towards the improvement of health for everyone. Moreover, the needs of a city, region or a nation will change over time. The presence of a well-developed network of functions and essential public health services allows flexibility and growth of programming over the years (Monheit et al. 2003: 297).

It has become necessary for the government to spend more than ever before in order to provide healthy life to patients. However, studies have shown that, despite the fact that UK spends more money per capita than any other nation, not everyone is insured. Perhaps even more surprising, when one adds the various government indirect subsidizations of health care through the tax code to the direct expenditures on Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs, the total dollars spent per capita by the government on health care is also higher than any other industrialized nation, in which all achieve universal coverage (Freeman 2000: 44).

In this essay, we will be discussing the health coverage insurance policy of the country to understand the relationship between legislation, policies and practice. We will also be discussing the legal and professional boundaries that impact on practice. In addition to that, we will be analyzing the funding of insurance coverage. Several other contexts in terms of health coverage insurance for patients in United Kingdom will also be discussed.

Teitelbaum et al. (2009) states that, in the United Kingdom, every citizen insured (also applies to EU citizens) on the NHS (National Health Service) if the person has registered before a disease. The NHS funded by taxpayer dollars, and it is a state institution. The NHS covers all costs of treatment; one must simply pay a flat fee of £6 on each prescribed drug (Inglehart 2004:76).

Since, financing of health care in the United Kingdom is achieved through a mix of ...