Addressing health care disparities at the Southern Regional Health System

Addressing health care disparities at the Southern Regional Health System.
Healthcare disparities at the Southern Regional Health System include a varying access to care and the health outcomes, and therefore affecting a significant populace it serves. The hospital network can employ various methods for setting standards and expectations in reducing the disparities. Additionally, they need to devise ways to monitor and evaluate the performance of the strategies they employ.
Standards and expectations are set in all strategic areas of the organization. A sustained response in planning would be setting requirements for cultural responsiveness and identifying the specific disparities in the area served. This should be region-specific, and the different demand needs to be established (community health assessment). The organizational strategic plan should be aimed at fragmenting the system into distinct segments which meet those identified needs. Staffing these individual departments would require skilled and competitive personnel, and staff to monitor the disparities should be considered. The specific departmental heads must be able to promote systems for professional human resource development. The planning cycle should be clearly outlined, preferably two years, with periodic reports made for evaluation.
Appropriate and measurable objectives should be so established for the service delivery, consumer, and management assessment to continuously develop better, more efficient, and quality implementable plans.

Quantitative measures such as counts would help the organization assess how many people it is serving for a given duration (daily, weekly, monthly, annually) and whether there is achieved an increase in the number of individuals served. Percentages of the gender of the people served would identify whether there is achieved equity in healthcare provision or whether there is a particular gender bias. Frequencies would help determine the particular pattern in which people seek the medical services, and thus the hospital can devise ways to meet the demand in the most efficient manner individually. An evaluation of the quality of care provided is crucial and can be made assessed through opinions, ideas, and feelings expressed by the clientele. Focus group evaluation would help identify whether each segment of the population is adequately served. Interviewing patients aids in assessing the quality of care provided. Conversations with the hospital staff are essential in identifying their needs for optimal performance.