Providing Culturally Competent Services to Reduce Health Care Disparities

~Providing Culturally Competent Services for American Indian and Alaska Native Veterans to Reduce Health Care Disparities

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Introduction

The article is about a study conducted in veteran facilities in the western region for Alaska Native and American Indians veterans. The area where the research was done, is an area of a disadvantaged minority, and they can hardly access health facilities due to the geographical remoteness. They are also disadvantaged because they are poorly ranked when it comes to educational attainment, employment, income and home ownership (Noe TD, 2016, pg. 1). The research is about the various health facilities in this region and the characteristics that determine whether the facility is ready to provide culturally competent services to Alaska Natives and American Indians to minimize health care disproportionality.

The communities have reservations on seeking health care from the facilities set up for them due to the dissatisfaction of the services offered at the veteran affair health care facilities and as a result seek assistance from their fellow tribal healers. The researchers used the Organizational Readiness to Change Assessment method(ORCA) the determine a facility’s capacity and readiness to proportion community-specific services. The method has three main areas which are; evidence, context, and facilitation. They also utilized sampling method. They sampled the western region and from this sample, they selected a few veteran affairs facilities (Noe TD, 2016, pg. 4).

According to the researchers, the findings were that the variables of ORCA had a high score. The results proved a small portion of their hypothesis which was higher scores on the ORCA organizational readiness to change measures, had to be associated with a high chance of employees perceiving their facilities were catering to the needs of specific communities (Alaska Natives/ American Indians), and greater employment of community-specific programs. The study also showed the need for improvement in the facilities for to be able to cater for needs of the communities.

The research majored on a small geographical sample. However, the findings were conclusive, and they would be applied in the decision that would follow.  The method (ORCA) was, therefore, efficient and can, therefore, be employed to high populations to determine how effective change would be if it were to be implemented in an organization.

The ORCA method may be utilized for a study on health care issues and help come up with changes that may assist in the provision of better health care. Cancer can affect anyone but with social-economic disparity patients from poverty stricken areas have a higher probability of dying compared to those who are better and can be able to afford and manage the disease ("Cancer Facts & Figures 2014", 2016)

ORCA applied in the case of cancer patients among those who are not financially well of would be used by health providers, for example, a country in Africa. ORCA has a framework which is evidence, context, and facilities. For evidence, it is a fact that poor populations are likely to die in large numbers compared to the financially capable. Leaders in these countries if they were to zero in on providing the healthcare to their citizen, they would minimize the mortality rate. If a study is conducted using this method, it will be able to determine the workability of this proposition. The final step of the model would be facility assessment which would be defining the facilitation of the health centers. ("Organizational readiness to change assessment (ORCA) tool | Resource Details | National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools", 2016)

Application of Organizational Readiness to Change Assessment in this research has given the researcher more finding that would facilitate future decisions to be made. The research method would be appropriate for organizations which would want to implement changes, and they want to determine if the changes would work before the executing them.

References

Cancer Facts & Figures 2014. (2016). Cancer.org. Retrieved 18 June 2016, from

http://www.cancer.org/research/cancerfactsstatistics/cancerfactsfigures2014/

Organizational readiness to change assessment (ORCA) tool | Resource Details | National

Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools. (2016). Nccmt.ca. Retrieved 18 June 2016,

from http://www.nccmt.ca/resources/search/187

Noe TD, e. (2016). Providing culturally competent services for American Indian and Alaska

Native veterans to reduce health care disparities. - PubMed - NCBI. Ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

Retrieved 18 June 2016, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25100420