Health Care Reform in Reno, NV
10 Dec 2012
A community with good health is a community that is thriving. If I had $200 million to improve the health of the residents of Reno I would focus on healthcare. There are four components of the healthcare: clinical preventive care, primary care, emergency services, and long term care. Access to an excellent health care system must be achieved across each of these components in order for the full potential of prevention to be realized. For example, reducing the incidence of heart disease and increasing preventive measures depends on various factors. This would include having access to cholesterol and blood pressure screening in clinical preventive care, primary care to educate about the morbidity of certain behaviors such as smoking and treatment of disorders such as hypertension, effective emergency services capable of handling heart attacks, and easy access to rehabilitation and long-term treatment for heart disease patients. In this paper I will mostly be focusing on clinical preventive care.
Clinical preventive care has a direct affect on many of the leading diseases and causes of death. It’s important to have access to such services for disease prevention and for detection of asymptomatic diseases while they are still in their treatable phase. In order for clinical preventive care to be efficient various barriers must be reduced. Patient barriers include lack of education, lack of a convenient care location, lack of funds to pay for treatment, and a general skepticism of medicine. Providing a free health clinic to the public would be an effective solution to this. A large university such as UNR could run such a clinic suing medical school students supervised by real doctors. Prevention is the most effective way to halt the increase of disease, which means that a significant portion of healthcare funding should be focused on this.
In order for any kind of reform to be successful I would attempt to change the structure of Reno’s healthcare system. This would include, but is not limited too, changing traditional payment and delivery systems, increasing the influence of market forces, and welfare reform. Another important factor to consider is having a health care system that tailors to different cultures and languages. This is especially important in Reno due to the relatively large Hispanic community and various other types of immigrants. Primarily this would involve increasing effective communication in hospital workers and healthcare professionals.
In addition to funding clinical preventive care, I would also devote a portion of the money to the University of Nevada medical school because the education of doctors is directly tied to the health of patients. Health care is evolving at a quick pace and the education system must keep up with all the scientific and technological breakthroughs. As our societal health needs change we also need to change the curriculum of medical students. The current curriculum in most medical schools teaches future doctors disease treatment and technical skills, but often lacks experience in the complex system of medicine in real life situations. Funding could go toward further education in better customizing patient specific treatments as well as prevention and wellness.
One of the most effective ways to improve health is prevention. This is why increasing the amount of funding to clinical preventive care would be greatly beneficial to the residents of Reno. Since medical doctors are involved in patient treatment it would also be advantageous to change the structure of the curriculum at the medical school. Such changes would be quite fruitful in the long run and would improve the health of residents over the next 20 years.