Facilitating Change in Health and Social Care

 FACILITATING CHANGE IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
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FACILITATING CHANGE IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
Change is a process that most do not fully appreciate due to the effects it has on the society, with new ways of life replacing old ones. Baum (2016) defines change as the process of transition to something different from the norm. In healthcare, the primary focus is usually the welfare of the people, meaning that a vast group is considered, as such, the effects of change are varied and may impact people positively or negatively. Change brings about hope for a new lifestyle that provides new opportunities, while many feel that it may erode the past culture and increase the pressure in conducting specific duties. In healthcare, change is brought about by many factors, with the major one being government intervention and legislation. These elements each have their features that affect the people in healthcare services, and therefore, require to be managed well to ensure the delivery of health and social work services is conducive. Due to the many different reasons that bring about change, it is imperative to look into the external and internal elements that affect change in health care, and how they can be maintained to offer better services.
Government actions and legislation are a major cause of change in the health sector. Health is usually a national government duty in most countries, with the provision of health services requiring national mobilization from different levels (Baum, 2016).

This external factor is usually conducted due to public phenomena, with occurrences such as accidents and new diseases making governments respond by creating policies. Legislation affects health care through the different systems and laws set, including the public funding allowed for health service provision, employment, and health and safety management (McKimm, McKimm & Phillips, 2009). Another factor driving change in the health sector is technology, with the advanced tools seen today causing a difference in health activities to be noted (Baum, 2016). A significant device has been the computer, which has given rise to faster communication methods through the internet and server systems that store a lot of data on an individual. It is now possible to have a single health file on someone, showing their health status from birth to death. The growth of the internet has also led to the sharing of more information, meaning that staff and health students can learn more through the web. Lastly, there is the growth of science, which has led to new inventions and medical practices. New equipment is making health procedures faster and safer to conduct, such as the Lifeport organ transporter (Baum, 2016). This tool has increased the storage time of harvested organs, enabling people to have organ transplants more efficiently.
These changes in the health sector usually have many challenges facing their effective implementation. Some legislation passed by the government often causes health provision to be segmented, with various sections of society affected by specific laws. In the USA, President Trump’s changes to eliminate Obamacare have faced fierce resistance, with most of the public feeling it undermines their health insurance. The plan will force more people to pay for health services, with the deductibles increasing significantly due to the GOP bill. This bill is estimated to cover 22 million Americans less than Obamacare, showing that a massive chunk of the low-income society will now lack health services cheaply (Sarlin, 2017). This situation affects the health of the public since provision is not widespread in the community. The other factor, which is technological advancement, has been a significant issue to the health status of the society. Many of the world’s inventions today are causing health problems, with cell phone radio waves being noted to cause serious ailments. The growth in technology has also changed personal lifestyle, with people now using machines to do nearly everything for them. This change in lifestyle has seen the increase in fatal diseases such as cancer, which has been claiming millions of lives recently. The treatment for this condition is expensive, and not much infrastructure is available to meet the demand for this type of healthcare.
To measure the changes that have occurred in health and social care service provision, it is essential to use a model that can show a given criterion. One such model is the PESTEL tool, which analyses the political, economic, social and technological features of a subject (Miller, McBrewster, &Vandome, 2011). In healthcare, these factors play a huge role, and each has its own effects on the provision of social services to the public. The political factors usually affect the framework of health provision, as noted from Tump’s bill. Most governments provide health insurance schemes for their citizens to enable people to pay for health services easily (Brammer, 2010). They also control the medical professionals serving the people, ensuring they are registered and fit for service. The economic factors tend to focus on the community’s ability to pay for health services. When health insurance favors low-income societies, the state of health will improve since more people will have the financial support to access health services. The socio-cultural factors of the model in health care show how our society’s health is being affected by human activities, with certain conditions prevailing more than others. Our change in lifestyle has led to new fields of medicine cropping up, with psychology a good example. This development shows that we are now finding new ways to treat human conditions not only physically but mentally too. Finally, there are the technological factors, which looks into the new equipment used in healthcare provision. Many companies are focusing on creating health products that people can easily access, with smartwatches that monitor heart rates, needle-free vaccines, and bionic eyeballs a couple of new health inventions in recent years (Editors, 2018).
The factors gotten from the PEST model usually have varied effects, each with a different measure of impact on the provision of health and social services. As a manager, it is essential to know how to gauge these effects with the intended results to see the change process required. Gallop and Hafford (2012) state that there are ‘domains’ used to measure the value of specific features to change management. They are the policy, management, and service domains. The policy domain is concerned with the framework of an organization. Politicians and senior managers in the health sector are the key sources of change in this field, with new policies and laws set to provide healthcare services to all. Therefore, politicians and senior managers are a major cause of change in the policy domain of healthcare provision. In the management domain, managers focus on the efficiency and effectiveness of providing health care services. Health is a widespread role, meaning that many more agencies are involved in its provision. New health equipment comes from outside companies that invest in the creation of better technology to serve health experts and the public. Therefore, the manager should find a way to maintain these relations with health insurance providers, health equipment manufacturers, health learning institutions, and private health institutions to ensure healthcare provision runs smoothly with no obstacles. The final domain is service, which focuses on the quality of health care procedures. With the new technology being created for most sectors in the world, health has improved, with people now having a more proactive approach by having balanced diets, vitamin supplements, cheap medicines and new gadgets to check our body status. Also, with new high-end technology in the health sectors, more and more professionals are cropping up to manage and maintain these expensive machines. Medical staff now require more training on these tools to provide healthcare to the community (Frenk et al. 2010). These domains help measure the impact of change on the health sector, and show which issue should be dealt with promptly.
Overall, the effect of a change in health has been immense, and certain actions may be required to control the impact it will have on the society. The changing of legislation for starters is a major impact of different structural policies that segregate economic classes in the community. The provision of health insurance should consider the low-income workers, and help fund them by allocating more health provisions to their cover to promote better health conditions in society. The governments should focus on making arrangements with insurance providers to help offer better health care options that will benefit all classes of society. The growth in technology should also be monitored, with health officials responsible for showing how some of the new tools we use in our day to day life may affect us physically and mentally. With a more tech-savvy generation cropping up, more time nowadays is spent in front of a screen, whether a smartphone, smart TV, tablet or computer. The effect of this has been an unhealthy society with many physical issues due to a lack of exercise, and new psychology issues like cyberbullying and suicide. The new technology in medicine is also very complicated to use and make, thus making it expensive. Not many people can afford some of the medical tests needed to form an accurate diagnosis, making it hard to offer the required medical help. Finding a way to provide financial support to the low-income community who need such medical tests would improve the situation, offering a way to get top-notch health services with little cost from the pocket.
To understand change, it is important to look into the principles of change management to implement change effectively. The laws, as outlined by Dr. John Kotter, are used to help the change process in an organization to ensure the intended results of a change process are met (Kotter& Cohen, 2014). The first step is creating urgency, where the whole organization meets and discusses the issues affecting them that they think should be modified. The second step involves forming a stable coalition, with the key stakeholders used to initiate the change needed for the whole organization. The third step is creating a vision, where a strategy for change is laid out. The vision is short and describes the change intended in summary. Next is communicating the vision, where the manager addresses their change strategy to the people it will affect and getting feedback on its implementation. Step five involves the removal of obstacles, where the barriers affecting the change process so far begin being eliminated with strategic solutions. To motivate the people involved in the process, step six involves creating short-term wins for the change team. Projects that can be completed quickly should be focused on to do this. The penultimate step is accelerating the change process, which is done by analyzing every success in the change process and improving it for better results. The final step is instituting the change, where the change process is made into a core feature in the organization. The stakeholders who made the change possible should be recognized and appreciated in the organization to ensure they continue supporting the change management process.
Using Kotter’s model, it is possible to strategize how a change in the health and social care sector is initiated (Kotter& Cohen, 2014). The first step of creating urgency occurs where a health problem is affecting stakeholders, like the effect of the GOP bill on the Americans. Discussing its impact on the society will help recognize the stakeholders needed for the second phase, where the key people in society affected are recognized. The vision required for change is created, with the strategies lined up and formed to create an idea. In the GOP bill case, a new method is needed to offer the low-income people with better insurance coverage. The managers, who will be the government and stakeholders from health agencies will then be required to communicate the vision to the people. The public is notified of the changes being implemented, and how they will be affected by it. The government will then work to eliminate barriers affecting the change process, like interest rates and deductions. To ensure the project’s success, short-term plans should be set, like the number of people to be put under a new insurance cover within a particular time frame. This helps gauge the progress of change while improving morale in the organization. Afterwards, assessing the completion of different milestones helps note the progress of the whole change process, upon which the method used to implement change becomes the norm and is implemented into the core of society to become a needed process for the community.
The process of change in the health sector is a complex framework that involves many agencies and a large community that is impacted differently by the change. Many factors affect change in the health and social care, with government policies and legislation changing the framework of healthcare provision. New technology has also affected the medical staff and society, with new inventions improving health care services while others have affected the health situation of the society. These changes have caused challenges in the health sector, with an increased demand for health services due to new health ailments, reduced financial support for the low-income groups in society and additional training programmes for new equipment needed for medical staff. These issues can be measured using the PEST model, which shows the political, economic, social and technological features on the health care situation in the present day. These factors can then be assessed using the domain criteria which groups them into different domains that each have their level of importance to the change process. Change requires being strategized, thus requiring the use of Kotter’s model of change management. The principles found here help guide the change process needed in the health and social care sector, with each having a key role in the change process. Change is, therefore, a requirement for the betterment of our lives, and the principles of change management help show how to do so efficiently for any size of an organization.
References
McKimm, J. P. K., McKimm, J., & Phillips, K. (2009). Leadership and Management in Integrated Services
Gallop, L., & Hafford-Letchfield, T. (2012). How to Become a Better Manager in Social Work and Social Care: Essential Skills for Managing Care.
Brammer, A. (2010). Social work law. Harlow, England: Pearson Longman.
Baum, F. (2016). The new public health (No. Ed. 4). Oxford University Press.
Frenk, J., Chen, L., Bhutta, Z. A., Cohen, J., Crisp, N., Evans, T., & Kistnasamy, B. (2010). Health professionals for a new century: transforming education to strengthen health systems in an interdependent world. The lancet, 376(9756), pp. 1923-1958.
Sarlin, B. (2017). Major Health Care Changes in the Senate GOP Bill. NBC News. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/major-health-care-changes-senate-gop-bill-n782691
Miller, F., McBrewster, J., & Vandome, A. (2011). PEST Analysis. VDM Publishing.
Editors. (2018). 10 Health Inventions That Will Improve Your Life. Retrieved 26 January 2018, from https://www.rd.com/health/wellness/10-health-inventions-that-will-improve-your-life/
Kotter, J. P., & Cohen, D. (2014). Change Leadership. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.