Introduction
Health education in the United States of America has undergone major transformation regard the way it is undertaken in pursuit of improving the health status and wellness of the population. Health education in the United States of America is influenced by health care structure and health care policy.
Impact of the health education services in the United States
The characteristics of the health education system in the United States of America have undergone major improvement since the earlier days when the country was founded and there has been an adoption of various models of dissemination of health education services to a specific group of the population depending on their health needs. A lot of people think that health information technology needs to be upgraded to complement the terms of health education services. Therefore concurrency should be established between health information technology and health education services the latter being the major factor, to be considered in delivering quality health care to the people. It is conceived that the use of electronic health records in disseminating health education produces huge awareness amongst the youth. Every case of a disease needs to be recorded separately to allow for future access to the information (Martone, Emori & Gynes, 2006). Therefore the cause of the disease to the patient can be established using information that is stored on electronic media. Health education service providers are entitled to funds from the health care delivery system to help them in collecting and maintaining correct information. In absence of grants and loans, it will be impossible for the health education service providers to carry out this important task.
A general view of health education also concerns the health care administration. There is a need for the simplification of the billing and codes in the various health care organizations. Another important aspect of health education is how to treat a disease. This requires effective research studies to establish the right practices for the consumers. Another responsibility of the health education service providers is to identify the disease for which warrants an individual to be admitted to the hospital and that which needs readmission.
According to the change theory, the complexity of the healthcare delivery system can be minimized by the integration of the systems. The health care systems should have organizational leadership and a way to supervise risks to minimize practices and performances that are unsafe. The health care systems that are complex should be organized in a way that they demonstrself-organizationzation approach to ensure that the various actors of the health care system develop a spontaneous interaction. An error in medication for a patient can have varying effects on that patient; the error can either have fewer effects or can lead to permanent effects on the patient’s health or even death. Nurses, therefore, are medical practitioners who play a key role in determining the health of a patient; this is because the nurse delivers the medication to the patient as well as ensures that the patient gets the medication at an appropriate time. The RNs can either perform malpractices or have professional deficiencies that can lead to the death of a patient (Martone, Emori & Gynes, 2006).
Health behaviors of the population
Some positive transformations in the health habits of the American citizen have been realized, thanks to the health education service providers. In fact, after the introduction of the modern health delivery system, there has been an increase in the expectation of the improvement of public health by the general population. This is not the case. However, some positive, as well as negative changes in the habits of the American population, have been observed in the past three decades (Martone, Emori & Gynes, 2006).
Positively; there has been a small reduction in cigarette smoking and alcohol drinking cases. As a matter of fact; the smoking percentage has reduced from 40% to 25%, whereas, alcohol drinking has reduced from 7% to 4%. On the other hand, the health care delivery system has impacted negatively on the health of Americans whereby; cases of obesity have increased from 49% to 68%. Nevertheless, the mortality rate for diabetes between 24 to 74 years old has fallen from 9.8% to 8.4%. It is anticipated that obesity will increase the mortality rate (Martone, Emori & Gynes, 2006).
Conclusion
For the past twenty years, the American population has experienced a reduction in acute care facilities, thus the severity of the illness of the hospitalized patients has increased, besides being more immune-compromised. As a result risk for hospital-acquired diseases has increased.
Delivery of health care in homes is becoming the most rapidly growing sector of the health care delivery system. The number of patients receiving health care services at home is more or less equal to those receiving the services at hospitals. To complement the expansion of the American health care delivery system, infection control personnel require doubling of their efforts. Improved administrative support schemes to prevent infections and medical mistakes to achieve reduced risk of infections. Finally, the infection control branch will need to increase their surveillance of infections and occurrence of problems as well as their avoidance strategies to all situations which call for delivery of health care services.
Despite the numerous health problems; proper medication and awareness will reduce death rates, in the future, with a focus on the following aspects of the health care delivery system; pay for performance and reward for physicians maximum utilization of information technology.
Reference
Martone, W.J., Emori, T. G. & Gynes, R. P. (2006). Comparison of rate of hospital-based infections in neonatal intensive care units in the USA. American Journal of Medicine, 26(4), 31-67.