Posted: June 27th, 2015

Amongst the health problems and disabilities affecting the elderly population, mental illness is the largest cause.

Long term care (LTC) is of much significance in health care system. LTC services include both medical and non-medical care offered to people with disability or chronic illness who are unable to look fro themselves in the long run. In regard to medical care, LTC provides specialized medical care from expert practitioners to address and monitor the chronic conditions mostly associated with the elderly people. These include food or liquid intake, blood pressure and so forth. Here, services like drug therapy, physical therapy, nursing and counseling are provided. Relative to non-medical care, LTC provides the non-skilled and custodial care which mainly includes assisting in the regular daily tasks such as feeding, bathing, dressing, using of bathrooms and toilets to the old population. LTC is provided in homes, communities, nursing homes or assisted living facilities. The mostly common LTC services is adult day care which is offered on the different set up as mentioned above. LTC is primarily concerned with continued enhancement of the patient’s capability to enable them operate independently as long as possible. By this, LTC creates a comfortable physical and social environment that will enhance the independence of the patient and improve the quality of life. LTC provides best services to fully meet and satisfy patient’s expectations as well as those of his/her family and friends at large.

Amongst the health problems and disabilities affecting the elderly population, mental illness is the largest cause. Therefore, policies relating to mental health are crucial and need to be more emphasized. These policies should focus on the outcomes to identify what actually place in the health of a patient from the care and treatment they receive. In addition, these policies should empower the voice of patients as well as service users. In this respect, there are alternative mental health policies adopted to ensure the vision for mental health of people is maintained. These policies specify the framework to be developed in order to manage and prevent mental disorders. Whenever, these policies are conceptualized, they can promote coordination of essential services to facilitate care and treatment as well as prevent inefficiencies and fragmentation of the health care. A recent policy, mental health parity is utilized to improve the situation (Williams, and Torrens, pp. 182-219).

Lastly on the hospital role, hospitals have played a big role in health care of patients from ancient times. Hospitals have important roles based on the following dimensions, patient outcome, patient satisfaction, patient efficiency and patient safety. However, these are roles are either positive or negative based on their results. Hospitals have successfully enhanced patient safety through minimizing infection risks and medical errors. There is a high risk of contracting infections in hospital both on patients and staff. Hospital; have a role to curb these infections. Hospital has a role to provide conducive environment that will ensure patients well being. Noise pollution has been seen to affect patient’s outcomes negatively and staff performance as well. In patient satisfaction role, hospitals provide support aspects to enhance patient satisfaction. These include positive distractions and involvement of family. Positive distraction helps to improve patient outcome by improving their mood. On the contrary, negative distraction can be harmful. Hospitals also have a role to ensure patient’s efficiency. Today, most hospitals have designed better system which are clear with easily understandable signs and improved their verbal directions. This ensures easy navigation to the patients and staff at large (Williams, and Torrens, pp. 182-219).

Work Cited:

Williams, Stephen J, and Paul R. Torrens. Introduction to Health Services. Clifton Park, NY: Thomson Delmar Learning, 2008. Print.