Developing An Essay On Healthcare Service Plan For Cancer Care.

Prepare a report on health care services and facilities planning.

The Healthcare Service Plan for Cancer Care

A health care service strategy helps to articulate the vision set out for provision of quality care service. The directions of the service that the health service plan will include will in a way help to broadly indicate the services that require development in order to meet the health care needs of the common people. This paper aims to develop a health care plan for provision of cancer care. The strategy of health care service is developed based on the previous clinical stream service planning activities which is undertaken by the State-wide Cancer Clinical Network (SCaCN) (South Western Sydney Local Health District – Home, 2018). This in responsible for providing a service direction in a state-wide basis which in turn helps to guide the enhancements wherever necessary especially to improve the local service delivery.

The healthcare service plan addresses the issues and the needs of cancer care mainly through the stakeholder consultation which was drawn upon service needs that reflected the national perspective from the National Service Improvement Framework for Cancer (2006). The policies and frameworks is intended on outlining the risks of cancer and what the health care system should be aimed at providing. The National Service Improvement Framework for cancer is responsible for describing the available high quality care for cancer. The policies and frameworks mainly focuses on what should be expected to happen for all people with cancer, based on optimal pathways of care (Publications.qld.gov.au, 2018).

The proposed framework for the healthcare plan in this paper should address the aim which will include the reduction of the risks of cancer. Next it should address the patient centred cancer services along with the needs of the people and the ideal survive. The framework also requires to state what is happening in the present that is the current practises in order to meet the consumer needs. Next priorities for improvement of care is addressed along with the national actions needed for the change to occur.

The determinants of health for the population of Australia includes the general socio-economic along with the cultural and the environmental conditions which in turn involves the living and the working conditions, unemployment, water and proper sanitation, the health care services, housing, agricultural and food production, education and work. There are also social and community networks that act as determinants of health in addition to the individual lifestyle factors comprising of age, sex and the factors of constitution.

Determinants of Health for the Population of Australia

The burden of the disease data for cancer shows that cancer is largest element of the total burden of disease along with injury mainly in the indigenous population of Australia. This tends to comprise of 19 per cent of all DALYs (disability-adjusted life years lost). By the year of 2016, it was detected that cancer remained the leading the burden of disease (Publications.qld.gov.au, 2018).

It was also reported that cancer was seen to be the largest cause of premature deaths which was reported to be about 39 % in 2010 and additionally it was seen to be the second largest cause of all deaths. Hence the mortality rate due to cancer in the above mentioned population was quite high. According to the morbidity rate, it was reported that the average five-year relative morbidity in 2004–2008 was 67 per cent compared to 64 per cent in 1998–2002 (South Western Sydney Local Health District, 2018).

The needs and the issues that are addressed by the proposed health care service plan helps to identify the following which includes the service profile included in the Local health district.

The relevant facilities includes Quality cancer service, End of life care, Information systems. The services includes Multidisciplinary care, Patient centric care, Service delivery models, Service networks and surgical oncology access. The models of care involves the multidisciplinary care, the inpatient and outpatient care, and other care services. The current inpatient and outpatient activity levels shows an increase of 20 per cent (17,204) in the four year period with the new patient clinic consults increasing by 57 per cent. The bed days by facilities showed that there were 41,507 overnight hospital separations occupying 266,463 bed days with an average length of stay of 6.4 days (New York State Department of Health, 2018).

The strategic issues and priorities includes certain service actions which are short term, medium term as well as long term in nature.

The short term strategies and priorities covering 1 to 2 years include establishment of cancer performance measures which are related to the clinical outcomes which in turn can be aligned with the national benchmarking. There should be contamination of cancer education program in order to provide comprehensive education across all fields especially in cancer care. The short term action also includes support training along with peer support from the clinical streams (Rowland, 2018). The medium term strategies involve the facilitation of the collaboration between the cancer services of public and private sector. It also includes the reviewing of and strengthening of the cancer workforce skills mainly at all levels along with the investigation and the obstacle removal that are presented to limit the access to research and education. This medium term action plan covers 2 to 5 years (Kotronoulas et al., 2014). Finally the long term action plan which covers nearly 6 to 10 years including any solution, or any option in order to be explored with the aim of implementation of an integrated oncology information solution incorporating a wide range of capabilities which in turn could help in supporting the patient referral along with the outpatients, training, clinical handover along with peer support. There is also data capture in addition to the provision of patient information that is critical for the whole journey throughout the health system. There is also inclusion of information collection which is mandatory for, staging, diagnosis as well as treatment and research. It also covers all the aspects of treatment which includes the medical, surgical and radiation oncology along with clinical haematology. Incorporation of access by rural, remote and cross-border settings is present. The system inter-operability in addition to the health systems with the aim of information sharing is also incorporated (Friesen, Comino & Powell Davies, 2014).

Burden of Disease Data for Cancer

The cancer care services are required to provide treatment in both inpatient settings and ambulatory setting which needs to be followed by transition to supportive or palliative care as might be required. The public sector cancer care services needs to be involved in provision of multidisciplinary service to manage most common cancers and be more specialised. There should be provision for the specialist children’s cancer services with proper outpatient consultative clinics. There should be easily accessible radiation therapy for children where radiotherapy might be provided to the children after proper consultation with the specialist children’s cancer service (Mathews et al., 2013).

Conclusion

In the conclusion of the health service plan some priority actions are required to be highlighted which includes the integration and networking of cancer services in order to improve the continuity of care for the reduction of risk at the end of life care. Establishment of accreditation of the services for cancer along with the credentialing of practitioners about optimal services that are outlined above in the action plan. Development of funding structure is important which in turn will help to improve and support the multidisciplinary care in hospitals and the community thereby uplifting the practitioner payment schedules. Finally there is a need to develop and establish an evidence-based consumer information regarding the environmental, along with behavioural as well as genetic risks of cancer in addition to the early detection, prevention, diagnosis, supportive care and treatment.

References

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