Health Improvement Plan Please Respond To The Fo

Please respond to the following post with a long paragraph with your opinion, add citations and references.

A healthy community is one where all private and public entities work together for the overall health and well being of the ever-changing community needs. A community health assessment is a great first step to identify the specific needs of the community in order to better focus on target areas or populations. My county has a community initiative to improve health called “Live Well Mohave” in which the hospital is teamed up with the public health department in an effort to identify health needs, and implement a health improvement plan (“Live Well Mohave,” n.d.). A healthy community would provide safe, smoke-free environments, good housing and job opportunities, quality schools, and healthy eating options for all ages and cultural backgrounds. These things together will contribute to a physically and mentally healthy community with improved quality of life. A healthy community is able to treat patients at the appropriate level of care, and facility for their complaint.

One thing that is growing to be more of an issue in my community is the amount of psychiatric patients that are spending hours to days in the emergency department waiting for a bed to become available in a mental health facility that will take their insurance or lack thereof. These suicidal or homicidal patients that often are intoxicated are stuck in the middle of a hectic emergency department, and are sometimes medicated to ensure their safety and the safety of others. This situation is worsening and needs to be addressed for the good of the community. An outpatient facility recently opened up that was supposed to take the burden off of the emergency department, however it failed to do so. For the safety of all patients, staff and visitors personnel should have a separate area for these patients that are cared for by psychiatric nurses and physicians if they must wait for extended lengths of time in the emergency setting. “Boarding of psychiatric patients, defined as a length of stay greater than four hours after medical clearance, is ubiquitous throughout emergency departments (EDs) nationwide. Boarding is recognized as a major cause of ambulance diversions and ED crowding and has a significant adverse impact on healthcare providers, patient satisfaction, and hospital costs” (Misek, Debarba, & Brill, 2015, Introduction). The ideal solution would be to have larger inpatient facilities that would reduce wait times for these individuals to receive the most beneficial care.

References

Live well Mohave. (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2018, from http://www.azkrmc.com/mohave-county-community-heal…

Misek, R. K., Debarba, A. E., & Brill, A. (2015). Predictors of Psychiatric Boarding in the Emergency Department. Western Journal of Emergency Medicine, 16, 71-75. http://dx.doi.org/[10.5811/westjem.2014.10.23011]