NURS FPX 6616 Assessment 2 Summary Report on Rural Health Care And Affordable Solutions

Student Name

Capella University

NURS-FPX 6616 Ethical and Legal Considerations in Care Coordination

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Date

Summary Report on Rural Health Care and Affordable Solutions

The present study endeavors to scrutinize the presence of inter-professional team providers and resources within Potter County, Pennsylvania, aimed at mitigating the elevated mortality rates attributable to opium overdose. This report seeks to elucidate the cultural competencies requisite for the team to navigate evidence-based data support. Furthermore, it underscores the ethical considerations essential for negotiating legal quandaries inherent in organizational processes.

Specific Population Needs and Community

Potter County, with a populace of fewer than 17 thousand individuals, predominantly comprises non-Hispanic whites, accounting for 97% of its residents (Pew Research Center, 2018). Approximately 22% of the population surpasses the age of 65, while 14% grapple with poverty. The county is beleaguered by opium use disorder (OUD), with incidence rates persistently high over the past two decades. International literature underscores the exigency of providing access to medication treatment and opioid overdose reversal agents. The Pennsylvania Overdose Information Network (ODIN) scrutinized drug overdose incidents, revealing victims predominantly within the 20-39 age range (Barboza & Angulski, 2020).

Factors precipitating drug overdose incidents encompass poverty, low literacy rates, and inadequacies in available resources. Opium utilization manifests diversely, spanning prescription drugs, injections, pain management, and concomitant administration with other analgesics. Accessibility hurdles stem from both consumer-based and provider-based rationales, encompassing factors like geographical remoteness, dearth of clinics and physicians, and insufficiencies in medication treatments. Studies evince a correlation between enhanced availability and heightened treatment utilization, with younger demographics encountering more pronounced obstacles. Acceptability concerns entail reservations and discontentment vis-à-vis medication treatments.

Provider-based constraints revolve around deficient staffing and infrastructure, compounded by issues like time constraints, self-doubt, and tepid interest among providers. Collectively, these multifaceted challenges underscore the imperative of leveraging opioid overdose reversal medications and bolstering medication accessibility.

Current Available Inter-professional Team Providers and Resources

Avera Gettysburg Hospital, situated within Potter County, endeavors to furnish interdisciplinary care through a consortium of specialized practitioners, primary care providers, cutting-edge technology, and pioneering research initiatives. Conducting a comprehensive Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) has empowered the hospital to expand its service portfolio, proactively addressing consumer and provider-based impediments. Initiatives encompass augmenting wellness programs to facilitate lifestyle modifications such as biking and walking tracks, alongside fortifying hospice and home care services.

Present resources, inclusive of remote health services and heightened awareness initiatives, underscore a concerted effort to ameliorate health and medication provision. Noteworthy strides in healthcare outcomes have been buttressed by Inter-professional Education and Collaborative Practice (IPECP), facilitating seamless collaboration among diverse healthcare cadres (Martin et al., 2021).

Interventions targeting opioid overdose are multifaceted, operating at micro, meso, and macro levels (Qudah et al., 2022). At the micro level, educational initiatives and awareness campaigns aim to recalibrate consumer and provider attitudes, fostering self-confidence, skill enhancement, and favorable behavioral inclinations. Meso-level interventions pivot on leveraging resources to effectuate psychosocial transformations, integrating recovery coaches and behavioral health facilities both onsite and remotely. Macro-level strategies entail policy interventions, regulatory frameworks, and FDA oversight mechanisms, collectively engendering favorable outcomes. Ultimately, the intervention paradigm advocates for recourse to alternative therapies and medication regimens for addressing opioid use disorder.

Areas of Cultural Competency the Team Must Address

The heterogeneous composition of the interdisciplinary team juxtaposed with the cultural diversity within the community accentuates the exigency of cultivating cultural competency among healthcare practitioners. Nurses, in particular, are enjoined to hone cultural proficiency to mitigate barriers impeding effective provider-patient communication. Cultural competency mandates an appreciation for the variegated values and preferences intrinsic to specific communities, underpinned by the national standards espoused by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) (Hilty et al., 2020).

Given the predominance of non-Hispanic whites within Potter County, the interdisciplinary team must evince a nuanced understanding of cultural mores shaping lifestyle choices and healthcare-seeking behaviors. Heightened awareness regarding self-medication practices, opium injection trends, and inadvertent medication errors is pivotal. Proficiency in linguistic nuances and value comprehension augments the team’s capacity to devise patient-tailored healthcare plans, thereby elucidating the underlying determinants of opioid use disorder and effectuating therapeutic interventions.

Technology-Based Outreach Strategies

Technology-enabled outreach initiatives serve as panaceas for surmounting accessibility and availability challenges bedeviling both consumers and providers. In light of infrastructural inadequacies and paucities in specialized personnel, technology emerges as a potent equalizer, obviating geographical barriers and augmenting service accessibility. Consumer-centric impediments, typified by geographical remoteness and scarcities in primary care and specialist provisions, precipitate heightened rates of opioid overdose. Notably, rural counties in the United States contend with a dearth of physicians, underscoring the imperative of interdisciplinary collaboration facilitated by technology.

Telehealth and telemedicine represent linchpin strategies in this regard (Butzner & Cuffee, 2021). These modalities empower healthcare provisioning and consumption through mobile and digital health solutions, enabling remote diagnoses via video conferencing and electronic health records. Wearable devices and sensors furnish invaluable adjuncts for catering to the needs of Potter County’s elderly populace, while remote monitoring affords enhanced care provision for disabled individuals and expectant mothers.

Possible Telehealth Legal Issues

Potter County’s evolution into a technologically adept community necessitates preemptive measures to forestall potential legal encumbrances attendant upon Telehealth provisioning. While the indispensability of Telehealth services is acknowledged, apprehensions may abound among older demographics and less educated cohorts. Notably, issues pertaining to licensure loom large, with physicians mandated to operate within delimited jurisdictions, engendering compliance conundrums vis-à-vis Telehealth’s boundary-agnostic purview.

Establishing patient-physician rapport assumes primacy, advocating for in-person consultations as the gold standard for care provision. Tele-prescribing engenders legal quandaries, as prescribing controlled substances sans in-person evaluations contravenes regulatory precepts. Moreover, the specter of fraud and abuse looms large, necessitating meticulous adherence to state and federal protocols. Safeguarding patient privacy and confidentiality assumes paramountcy, with breaches precipitating legal repercussions.

Continuation of Ethical Care in the System

Potter County’s populace contends with a litany of challenges spanning accessibility, availability, and acceptability concerns, perpetuating the scourge of opioid-related morbidity and mortality. Telehealth emerges as a salient recourse for addressing availability and accessibility exigencies, albeit underscored by imperatives of ethical stewardship. Anchored in the cardinal principles of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice, Telehealth services aspire to engender patient-centric treatment modalities, predicated upon informed patient consent and inter-disciplinary collaboration (Solimini et al., 2021).

Telehealth’s deployment assumes added significance in ameliorating healthcare disparities afflicting disabled, low-income, and geographically remote demographics, thereby safeguarding against potential financial and health-related detriments. The universal right to affordable care finds resonance within Potter County, epitomizing

Telehealth as an accessible resource for fostering community welfare.

Conclusion

Potter County, ensconced within Pennsylvania, confronts a surfeit of challenges attendant upon opioid use disorder, with non-Hispanic whites constituting the demographic majority. Despite being sparsely populated, the county contends with entrenched poverty and low literacy rates, exacerbating healthcare access disparities. Noteworthy strides have been made in fortifying interdisciplinary care provisions at Avera Gettysburg Hospital, buttressed by technological integrations and cultural competencies. Telehealth initiatives, while pivotal for surmounting accessibility challenges, are beset by legal intricacies necessitating judicious navigation. Ethical imperatives dictate the continuation of Telehealth services, premised upon principles of patient autonomy and beneficence, thereby underscoring its pivotal role in fortifying healthcare resilience within Potter County.

References

Barboza, G. E., & Angulski, K. (2020). A descriptive study of racial and ethnic differences of drug overdoses and naloxone administration in Pennsylvania. International Journal of Drug Policy, 78, 102718. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2020.102718

Butzner, M., & Cuffee, Y. (2021). Telehealth interventions and outcomes across rural communities in the united states: Narrative review. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 23(8), e29575. https://doi.org/10.2196/29575

Hilty, D. M., Gentry, M. T., McKean, A. J., Cowan, K. E., Lim, R. F., & Lu, F. G. (2020). Telehealth for diverse rural populations: Telebehavioral and cultural competencies, clinical outcomes and administrative approaches. MHealth, 6(6), 20–20. https://doi.org/10.21037/mhealth.2019.10.04

Martin, P., Pighills, A., Burge, V., Argus, G., & Sinclair, L. (2021). Promoting interprofessional education and collaborative practice in rural health settings: Learnings from a state-wide multi-methods study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(10), 5162. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18105162

Opioid Epidemic. (2019). Department of Health. https://www.health.pa.gov/topics/disease/Opioids/Pages/Opioids.aspx

NURS FPX 6616 Assessment 2 Summary Report on Rural Health Care And Affordable Solutions

Panter, M. (2021, January 25). Potential Legal Implications of Telemedicine and Telehealth. Law Technology Today. https://www.lawtechnologytoday.org/2021/01/implications-of-telemedicine-and-telehealth/

Pew Research Center. (2018, May 22). Demographic and economic trends in urban, suburban and rural communities. Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/demographic-and-economic-trends-in-urban-suburban-and-rural-communities/

Qudah, B., Maurer, M. A., Mott, D. A., & Chui, M. A. (2022). Discordance in addressing opioid crisis in rural communities: Patient and provider perspectives. Pharmacy, 10(4), 91. https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy10040091

Solimini, R., Busardò, F. P., Gibelli, F., Sirignano, A., & Ricci, G. (2021). Ethical and legal challenges of telemedicine in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. Medicina, 57(12), 1314. https://doi.org/10.3390/medicina57121314

NURS FPX 6616 Assessment 2 Summary Report on Rural Health Care And Affordable Solutions