Health Care Planning Essay

The health care planning involves the development of a long lasting plan that focuses on the development of the plan of health care services delivered to patients. At the same time, it is not only the responsibility of health care professionals but also individuals to develop their long run life care plans. In fact, life care planning is a complex process that involves multiple issues and the planner should take into consideration multiple factors that may and do affect the life of individuals. However, the life care planning is extremely complicated to the extent that individuals require the assistance of professional life care planners, who can help them to create their life care plan to ensure the high quality of living at all stages of their life. The assistance of life care planners is helpful and essential for the delivery of all essential services and care to individuals. More important, life care planners help individuals to understand their emerging needs and changes that are likely to occur in their life, how to minimize the risk of negative changes and how to maintain the high quality of living. The accurate life care planning helps individuals not only to maintain the high quality of living but also to save costs because health care costs comprise a large part of expenses and individuals, who are planning their life care accurately, can develop cost-efficient strategy in a long-run perspective to balance their life and maintain the high quality of living through prevention of possible complications that leads to saving costs and health of individuals. Therefore, the life care planning is essential for the provision of health care services of the high quality, while health care professionals should conduct the detailed study of the background of their clients, understand their culture, personal needs, and psychological peculiarities and develop the individual plan of treatment for each client.Health Care Planning Essay Assignment

Medical Intake/ History Review

The medical intake should include the health history of the client as well as the client’s family history because it opens the way for the effective and accurate assessment of potential and actual health risks, such as risks associated with the development of chronic illnesses. At the same time, the analysis of the medical intake reveals key needs and possible challenges the client may confront in the course of the implementation of the life care plan. The life care plan is a very important plan that focuses on the elaboration of the healthy lifestyle that helps the client to maintain his/her physical shape and stay active as long as possible by means of coping with possible health issues beforehand through their prevention rather than through their treatment.

Past studies (Ekmekci & Turley, 2008) reveal the effectiveness of the life care planning as the tool that helps individuals to determine their priorities and become aware of the importance of their healthy lifestyle. In actuality, many people underestimate risks and problems which they may face in the future. For example, young people do not care about their health because they are still young and healthy and view possible health problems as the attribute of aging. The current study focuses on the revelation of effective strategies that health care planners can provide for their clients and how they can achieve the accurate and effective life care planning along with the detailed analysis of factors that influence the life care planning. In fact, many health problems that individuals develop in the course of their life could have been prevented, if they had a life care plan and were aware of key risks, which they specifically confronted and which could have been diverted, if they had a life care plan.Health Care Planning Essay Assignment

Medical Records Providers

Medical records providers are health care institutions that provide health care services for the client, but they protect the private information of their clients that may raise problems in face of the health care planner because of the restricted or no access to the private information of the client. The restriction of the access of the life care planner to medical records of the client is determined by the existing legal norms and requirements concerning the privacy and its protection. This is why many health care organizations do not uncover the private information of their clients to life care planners, unless customers ask them to do so. Anyway, the procedure of obtaining medical records is always extremely complicated.

In this regard, the involvement of clients into the process of obtaining medical records is important, while the life care planner should guarantee the full protection of the private information of the client and bear the full legal and ethical responsibility for the use of information of the client (Kirkman-Liff, 1994). The direct involvement of the client can help consistently to obtain the medical record from medical records providers. As a result, the life care planner will have at disposal all the information required for the effective and succinct life care planning.

The introduction of electronic health records can be helpful to conduct accurate and informative health records. In fact, electronic health records can provide more accurate information on the client’s health compared to conventional medical records, while the processing of the information is also more effective and easy. As a result, the life care planning becomes more accurate and faster compared to the use of conventional medical records.Health Care Planning Essay Assignment

Chief Complaint and Subjective History

At the same time, the client should provide the key information about his/her health concerns and the chief complaint that may influence the life care planning process. The life care planner should obtain the detailed information on the chief complaint of the client and his/her history, as the client presents it. In such a way, the life care planner can understand the client better as well as clients’ needs, expectations and key problems. The identification of the chief complaint uncovers the main issue the client is dealing with and is likely to deal with in the nearest future. In some cases, when chief complaints are serious, clients may have lifelong health issues that may affect the quality of their living and, thus, they have to be taken into consideration in the course of life care planning.

Effects of Injury/ Illness on Daily Living

The life care planner should also take into consideration effects of injury or illness on daily living of the client to develop the life care plan facilitating the recovery of the client and his/her healthy life. The client may suffer unexpected injury or develop an illness that may have a considerable impact on his/her life. This problem may be not always foreseeable and the life care planner should help the client to come prepared to such unexpected problems and make the client come prepared to them. At the same time, clients should be aware of the fact that they may suffer an injury virtually anytime and anywhere. This is why they should come prepared to such a risk and plan such events. In this regard, the life care planner can help to deal with such injuries and rehabilitation after their treatment more effectively and faster compared to situations, when individuals are absolutely unprepared to injuries and unexpected health problems.

Moreover, injuries and illnesses may affect the daily living of individuals and change their life unexpectedly that makes the life care planning difficult in a long-run perspective. For example, individuals have to change their plans totally, if they suffer a serious injury, when they have to stay in bad instead of traveling to the mountains, as they planned. Clients of the life care planner should be aware of such risks and the task of the life care planning process is to mitigate such risks and prepare clients to confront injuries and unexpected illnesses stoically.Health Care Planning Essay Assignment

Current Physical Complaints

Current physical complaints of the client contribute to the identification of the major health problems the client is facing at the moment and is likely to face in the future and affect substantially their life care plan. Current physical complaints help the life care planner to assess the current condition and help the client to cope with current health issues successfully. Moreover, the analysis of current physical complaints allows the life care planner to determine the starting point for the work with the client. To put it more precisely, the life care planner can assess accurately what the client can actually do in terms of the life care plan and what should be the focus on the plan at the moment.

The identification of current physical complaints complements the analysis of the health history of the client and that of his/her family that may affect the client’s health and life care plan. As a result, the life care planner can also foresee possible health problems that the client is likely to face in the future. The attitude of the client to his/her current physical condition is also very important because it helps to determine, whether the client can cope with health issues easily or probably he/she needs extensive support from the part of health care professionals, family members and other people.Health Care Planning Essay Assignment

Past Medical History

Past medical history uncovers past health problems, which may reoccur in the future and, more important, they may create conditions for the development of chronic health problems in a long-run perspective, unless past health problems are not treated properly. The past medical history of the client gives insights into the future health issues, which the client may confront, because many health problems can have early manifestations. If the life care planner fails to notice those early symptoms or misinterpret them, there is a risk that the life care plan will be ineffective. For example, the life care planner fails to identify the development of a chronic disease in the client and develops quite an optimistic life care plan. However, the client steadily develops a chronic disease which changes his/her current condition and life consistently. The entire life care plan turns out to be under a threat. The client loses his/her confidence in the life care plan at all. Such results are apparently devastating and should be prevented by all possible means.

Furthermore, the medical history of the client helps to develop a long run strategy that focuses on the minimization of risks related to the development of chronic illnesses and other serious health problems. In fact, the life care planner cannot develop a long run strategy, if there is no information about the past medical history of the client. Instead, the past medical history can help to understand not only key health issues of the client but also to uncover coping models used by the client, his/her psychological peculiarities, the support of his/her family and social environment and many other details, which may be helpful in the development of the life care plan.

Current Medical and Rehabilitation Situation

The current medical situation helps to develop the effective life care strategy that facilitates the recovery of the client from current health problems. The recovery and rehabilitation of the client is essential because it helps to find out what methods of work with the client are effective and what are not. The life care plan is grounded on the ability of the client to recover and cope with various challenges.

On the other hand, the recovery of the client from his/her current health problems with the help of the life care planner increases the confidence of the client in the life care plan. As a result, the client starts believing that the life care plan can help him/her to improve the quality of life and the client gets engaged into the life care planning process.

In addition, the adequate assessment of the current medical situation helps to develop the rehabilitation strategy that will decrease risks and threats to the health of the client and maintain high standards of the quality of living (Stalker, et al., 2009). The rehabilitation comprises an integral part of the life care planning. The rehabilitation after current health problems lays the foundation to the further quality of health and life of the client.

Financial Summary

The costs of the life care planning include health care costs; the costs of the maintenance of the healthy lifestyle based on physical activities of clients; costs of the rehabilitation, in case of health problems; costs of the proper nutrition; and other issues. Health care costs comprise the largest part of the total life care costs. In this respect, taking into consideration current health costs and current dynamic of the growth of health care costs, it is possible to suggest that health care costs will comprise about 20% of the total income of clients, which they have to spend in terms of the implementation of the life care plan.Health Care Planning Essay Assignment

The costs of the maintenance of the healthy lifestyle based on physical activities of clients may vary consistently since they may involve the intensive practicing of expensive sports, which is costly, or individuals may simply do jogging on the regular basis that will not need substantial costs. Therefore, it is possible to define the budget of the maintenance of the healthy lifestyle as 1-5% of the total income of clients. Costs of the rehabilitation depend on health problems, which clients suffer but in general they do not exceed health care costs and comprise about 3-5% of the total income of the client.  Costs of the proper nutrition may not exceed costs of the conventional nutrition, if clients are aware of the importance of the proper nutrition and stick to the healthy food consumption. As a rule, the proper nutrition costs comprise about 10% of the total income of clients.

Other issues are specific for each client and may vary consistently depending on the client. In this regard, it is possible to raise the total budget of the life care plan by 5% more. As a result, the total maximum costs of the life care plan should not exceed 40% of the total income of clients. Taking into consideration costs of health care services, such investments in one’s life care plan are worth making because they contribute to the adequate and successful implementation of the plan that means that clients will have an opportunity to maintain high standards and quality of living for a long time and prevent numerous health problems that may have a negative impact on their life.

Family / Community Support

The family and community support comprises an integral plan of life care planning because the family and community comprise the proximate social environment of the client and the client’s health and quality of living depends consistently on his/her social environment. In this regard, it is important to distinguish the impact of the family and community support on the life care plan. The family bears a considerable moral responsibility for the client as well as the client bears responsibility for the support of family members. In such a situation, the life care plan helps the client to build up positive and effective relations with family members focusing them on the mutual support that will improve the quality of their life and help them to save costs on health and nursing care services.Health Care Planning Essay Assignment

Community members also play an important part in the life of the client because the client cannot live in isolation from his/her community. The community support may be very helpful, especially if the client has serious health problems. At this point, many researchers (Zuckerman, 2006) insist on the effectiveness of the application of community therapy, when individuals suffering from considerable health problems rehabilitate and recover faster due to the support of their community members and due to their deeper integration into their community life.

Expected Outcomes

The implementation of the life care plan is supposed to bring positive outcomes to the quality of life of the client because the plan helps to foresee possible health issues and related problems and overcome them successfully. Moreover, the plan also contributes to the prevention of various health issues and focuses the client on the development of the healthy lifestyle, prevention of health problems and development of positive social relations with the proximate social environment.

Conclusion

Thus, the life care planning is a responsible and challenging process that involves the detailed analysis of the client’s needs, current health condition, his/her health history as well as that of his/her family, and many other issues mentioned above. However, the life care planning is very helpful in terms of the development and implementation of the effective plan of the maintenance of high standards of living and helping individuals to avoid numerous pitfalls and challenges, which they may confront in the course of their life, if they have no life care plan. Instead, the life care plan focuses on the development of positive interpersonal relations of the client with his/her social environment, identification of key resources required for the implementation of the plan and formation of the proper lifestyle that helps the client to maintain the high quality of living and stay healthy as long as possible and avoid serious health problems.Health Care Planning Essay Assignment