Summary Commentary – 250 words each There are two posts given, one is my post other is a response to another student. For each post, you will need to: Please analyse and support your reasons for believing these to be the best contribution, and the best response to another’s posting. The editing of your online postings allows you to analyse and expand on the key issues, be critically analytical of them in retrospect, and support them with appropriate evidence. Please use excellent logical reasoning skills in focusing on key issues and retrospective analysis. My Post: According to World Health Organisation (WHO), the health system is defined as; “all the activities whose primary purpose is to promote, restore or maintain health” (WHO,2000). The six WHO dimensions are crucial in evaluating the safety, efficiency and quality of health care delivery (Vainieri et al. 2020). In my opinion, the continuous capable and sustainable dimensions are not redundant as it ensures the current needs are met with compromising future generations and currently improving the safety and quality of health care in Australia to health care planners, providers and users, as efforts continue to maintain and improve the performance of health care services (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2020). The three additional dimensions of assessing health systems, add value to the assessment of an extensive system as mentioned below. Continuous: focuses on evaluating the integration of services, aiming to improve care and communication between health workers to reduce hospital unplanned readmission (AIHW 2020). Capable: This allows training for healthcare professionals in the delivery of care. It measures their performance based on their skills and knowledge and evaluated by using accreditation status ( AIHW 2020). Sustainable: This allows the organisation to look at sufficient funding to provide infrastructure such as; workforce, training, equipment and respond to emerging needs (McKimm et al 2020) My Response to another student: Hi Courtney, I believe your post on Telehealth has covered most of the patient-centred focus. Telehealth defines as the ‘use of telecommunication techniques for the purpose of providing telemedicine, medical education and health education over a distance. The advanced telecommunication technologies are to exchange health information and provide health care services across geographic, time, social and cultural barriers, this is done over both long and short distances (Slavova-Azmanova et al 2020). People living in rural and remote locations of Australia experience disadvantages due to location and experience poorer health outcomes compared to urban counterparts. Bradford, Caffery & Smith (2016) mentioned, people in rural areas life expectancy is 4 years shorter than in urban areas. Therefore, using technologies to deliver care has several advantages as you have mentioned in your post. For these reasons, the use of telehealth has grown significantly over the last decade, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic (Telehealth: The advantages and disadvantages, 2020). Even though telehealth offers a convenient and cost-effective way to see your doctor without having to leave your home, it does have few disadvantages. You have mentioned most of the disadvantages however, I would like to elaborate more such as; the patient will still need to go and attend a health care facility for imaging tests, blood work and diagnosis that requires a more hands-on approach as these things aren’t possible to do remotely. Subsequently, insurance companies are increasingly covering the cost of telehealth visits during the COVID- 19 pandemics, some services may not be fully covered leading to out-of-pocket costs (Telehealth: The advantages and disadvantages, 2020). The most common issue that emerges is the lack of internet connection in remote areas and the availability of technical support and training. Consequently, the escalating costs of healthcare affect the issues with recruitment and retention of health practitioners in rural areas as well as training healthcare professional staffs (Slavova-Azmanova et al 2020). Overall, telehealth has demonstrated benefits by improving health status in rural Australia and is one of the mechanisms to help close the gap.
