Key Health Indicators Essay Paper

Review (TEXAS) state’s health report card (use https://www.americashealthrankings.org/)
and consider direct and indirect burdens of key health indicators.
Post an explanation of the Texas’s key health indicators and how these indicators influence health status.
Explain how this relates to what is and what is not covered under Medicare and Medicaid.
Then, explain the direct and indirect burdens of health risk behaviors and disease (i.e., cost, morbidity, premature mortality, etc.).
Finally, explain how policy impacts key health indicators and the burdens of health risk behaviors and disease.
Locate and review your state’s health report card.
Reflect on your state’s statistics and key health indicators, including how they influence health status.
Consider how this relates to what is and is not covered under Medicare and Medicaid.
Think about the direct and indirect burdens of health risk behaviors and disease (i.e., costs, morbidity, premature mortality, etc.).
Consider how policy impacts key health indicators and burdens of health risk behaviors and disease.

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Key health indicators

A review of Texas State key health indicators show that for 2018, the state has an overall rank of 37 within the federal rankings. This was a reduction in rankings by three places from the previous year. The ranking is based on five health indicators that include behaviors, community and environment, policy, clinical care, and outcomes (United Health Foundation, 2019). These health indicators are considered relevant since they show population interactions with the health care industry, particularly how the industry to prevention and intervention as aspects of care. Key Health Indicators Essay Paper In fact, the indicators are the more common care concerns that cause the most interaction between the population and the health care industry thus acting as a good measure of the industry’s performance as well as acting as a good basis for comparison between different states across the USA (Tartavoulle & Manning, 2017).

The health indicators influence what is and what is not covered in Medicare and Medicaid through making sense of health data to influence policies and resource allocation. Medicare and Medicaid are federal government programs that are intended to ensure health care quality through addressing the existing disparities that would typically be noted as the badly performing areas among the indicators. Through identifying the badly performing areas that affect most of the population, Medicare and Medicaid budgets and policies can be directed at the specific areas that would achieve significant gains for most of the population (Tartavoulle & Manning, 2017). In this respect, the performance of the indicators makes sense of medical data to ensure that medical resources are efficiently used to target existing concerns.

Health risk behaviors and disease would typically exert a strong influence on overall health with an effect on other aspects of life, with this relationship termed as burden of disease or cost of illness. Firstly, it exerts a burden through prevalence and incidence that results in ill health with the individual being incapacitated during the duration of illness. Secondly, it affects longevity through placing a burden on the body particularly the body systems whose functions are impeded by ill health. Thirdly, it can result in morbidity and mortality when the body is burdened and health care intervention is not provided within the appropriate time thus causing the burdened systems to shut down. Fourthly, it negatively affects the quality of life since the individual must spend time recuperating from the disease. Finally, it has a negative effect on finances through direct costs from seeking care and indirect care from lost wages (Tacconelli et al., 2017).

Burden of disease and key health indicators have an effect on policy. In this case, knowledge of the burdens and indicators is important for formulating and prioritizing interventions and policies. This ultimately has an effect on how care resources are allocated while considering the constraints introduced by budgeting in a bid to achieve efficiency. To be more precise, they are used in three important ways. Firstly, they are used to argue on how health care policies should be prioritized within an agenda setting. This is because the public is entitled to an assessable quality standard that is based on burden and indicators without which wastes and exaggerations are likely to ensue. Secondly, burden and indicators help in appropriately targeting particular policies and issues, particularly with regards to social and/or medical costs and interests. Finally, burden and indicators can acts as baseline measures to determine efficacy to the intervention, program or policy. In fact, the estimates can facilitate comparisons of approaches and consequences (Mason et al., 2016).

References

Mason, D. J., Gardner, D. B., Outlaw, F. H., & O’Grady, E. T. (2016). Policy & politics in nursing and health care (7^th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier.

Tacconelli, E., Foschi, F., Forstner, C., Finch, R. & Pletz, M. (2017). Infectious Diseases (4^th ed.). New York, NY: Elsevier.

Tartavoulle, T. & Manning, J. (2017). Infection in the Intensive Care Unit. New York, NY: Elsevier Health Sciences.

United Health Foundation (2019). 2018 annual report: Texas. Retrieved from https://www.americashealthrankings.org/learn/reports/2018-annual-report/state-summaries-texas .  Key Health Indicators Essay Paper