Healthcare Disparities In Health

Introduction

Disparities in health are an inequality that occurs in the provision of healthcare and its accessibility across different dimensions including location, gender, ethnicity, age, disability status, citizenship status and socioeconomic group (Ubri & Artiga, 2016; Wallerstein & Durran, 2006). According to the health Resources and Service Administration of United States, health disparities are defined by population specific differences in the presence of disease, health outcomes and the accessibility to healthcare. Urbi and Artiga (2016) indicates that disparities in healthcare provision not only bring impacts to the group facing disparities, but also limit overall improvements in quality of care and population health as well as resulting

For example, the incident rate of cancer among African Americans is 10% higher than among whites. African Americans and Latinos are also approximately twice as likely to develop diabetes as white people are (Mandal, 2014). Moreover, they also tends have cardiovascular disease, asthma, cancer and HIV/AIDS compared to non-minorities populations. (Thomas, 2014). There are several factors that can lead to healthcare disparities includes poor access to healthcare, poverty, exposure to environmental problems, deficit knowledge, inadequate and unsafe housing as well as individual and behavioral factors. These factors increase the minority groups of being uninsured, lack of health care accessibility, receive poorer quality care and experiencing worse health outcomes, including low income individuals and black people (Ubri & Artiga, 2016). In United States, the healthcare disparities are very obvious and it can be clearly seen between urban and rural

The government has strived to achieve equity in access and provided a comprehensive range of affordable and quality care. At the same time, it has not neglected services that are in the realm of public goods. The importance of quality and standards of care is without question. Important quality and innovation will attract inward investment and generate income to the nation through many opportunities in the health sector and industry e.g. health tourism, but pose challenges in marketing and branding. The MOH has an established and transparent quality assurance programme but this is not the case in the private sector. Consumer bodies has frequently lamented on the high drug prices and alluded to expensive private hospital care making it unaffordable to the majority of the population. Professional bodies have alerted the authorities regarding bogus and unqualified personnel in private clinics and have maintained that the standards in the Private Health Facility and Services Act 1998 (PHFSA 1998) should apply through the board, private as well as public. There is an urgent need to ensure clinical governance in the private