Disparity of Primary Care Physicians in New Mexico

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Low Ratio of Primary Care Physicians to Population in Colfax County

Primary care encompasses offering health care needs to people by professionals. Every health practitioner attends to a specific individual’s number. The ratio of practitioners to population size is an index measuring disparity of healthcare professional shortage. A high number of physicians serving 1,000 individuals indicates stable healthcare. In Colfax, one physician attends to 3,030 persons. Thus, Colfax faces shortage and ranks at the least (0-25%) level in health outcomes.

The Nature of Disparity and Its Impact

Primary care physicians encompass Doctors of Medicine and osteopathy, nurses specialized in clinical medicine, certified nurse practitioners and assistant physicians in the healthcare system. The area of practice for primary care specialists is general practice and pediatrics, family practices and medicine, and internal medicine. The practitioner is licensed and renewed and the number of practitioners readily available to meet specific healthcare demands is even below 3,030:1 ratio in Colfax. It is considered among the least healthy counties in New Mexico due to poor results.

Low Education Rate as a Determinate

The shortage of primary care practitioners in Colfax County is also attributed to low rates of higher education among individuals in the population. The rate of tertiary education is measured as the percentage of 25 years old persons have obtained post-high school academic qualifications. Higher levels of education are attributed to stable income generation, increased life expectancy and good social engagements. Thus, the demand for primary care in a population with a high number of learned people goes low. Moreover, many physicians would be trained to meet societal healthcare needs. However, among college attendees, 58 percent of individuals make it into complete higher learning programs. As a result, many people are not educated in the county, leading to income inequality and unemployment.

Child Poverty as a Determinate

Child poverty is a contributing factor to the disparity of primary care providers in Colfax County, New Mexico. Poverty among children is estimated as a function of their living standards in households below poverty levels set by the federal government. Colfax county has a population of children in poverty of 27 percent. Moreover, 39 percent of children in the population are under the care of single parents. As a result, the health service demands for children in the county escalate from factors such as malnutrition and physical inactivity based on the financial muscle of parents. Moreover, teenage pregnancies attributed to poverty among children’s imbalances the proportion of cases of health care demands to free hands for serving the population.

Plans for Addressing the Disparity

Primary care is an important factor for the holistic health of people in society. High-quality health care is essential for both patients admitted to hospitals and those discharged to achieve good clinical outcomes from treatments. It is necessary to have a strong team of primary care specialists to improve the living standards of people and reduce the chances of having overwhelmed hospital capacities in counties and states. Addressing the imbalance between the population to primary care specialists requires engaging professionals to focus on reaching people in local or rural areas. Therefore, developing a referral system focused on serving and doing follow-ups on patients would be a reliable approach to bridging the gap of practitioners’ shortage in Colfax. Moreover, in moving towards meeting the threshold of the population to primary care providers ratio, college students in the same field would be engaged in externship and internship programs to limit the chances of dropping out of the discipline.

Addressing Disparity through Training

The program for training more professionals should be implemented through scholarships and internships to allow easy access to education in the fields associated with primary care. Financial allocations for loans to enhance training community health workers should also be put in place to ensure that trained personnel are positioned in the community. Moreover, during the process of education, individuals should be given chances to familiarize themselves with the primary care work environment and duties to fulfill in their profession. Training more professionals will increase the number of practitioners and chances of accessing clinical care services by vulnerable or poor people in society.

Policies Supporting the Plan

The plan of establishing referrals and treatment follow-up systems is supported by the Affordable Care Act, which promotes Medicaid expansion to individuals with low income. The Affordable Care Act allows for the protection of inclusion of people with low income and individuals with pre-existing medical conditions in the health insurance program. As a result, public health and disease prevention funds are channeled toward offering quality services to practitioners. As a result, the federal government and states department easily detect and respond to healthcare crises promptly. Under the Affordable Care Act, the services offered in primary care became accessible to very many people, making private health coverage and marketplace insurance affordable to many individuals.

Stakeholders of the Plan

Executing the plan requires the hands of the county government to facilitate healthcare initiatives with the federal government towards meeting the healthcare needs of people in rural areas. The health ministry within the county would be instrumental in implementing the suggested programs for long-term implementation. Ensuring that health care referrals as successfully achieved and services are given to satisfaction within and outside the county, directors of hospital departments would be a vital parts of the teams. To ensure that primary care practitioners are recruited into the county, a long-term plan of offering scholarships and mentorship programs will be implemented by the trained personnel already in the field through financial support from the ministry of health. Reaching out to rural healthcare needs will involve slotting for community healthcare workers and registering them with non-profit organizations receiving financial support from the county government.

Leadership Theory

Stakeholder management theory will be employed in fastening the commitment of team members engaged in every aspect of the plan to their duties. Moral standards will be emphasized to ensure that practitioners are focused on implementing the strategies at hand to enhance healthcare access to people in Colfax County. Leaders will be appointed to hospital levels to help in linking the service programs with county government plans. Moreover, non-profit organizations will be assigned representatives with the determination to fulfilling the planned goals. Scholarship and mentorship programs will be managed by appointed practitioners who are in the academic and referral hospitals to promote the full involvement of young professionals in healthcare practice. Thus, stakeholder management theory will bring diverse leadership with a focus on centralizing resources, market operations and political leadership in ensuring maximum primary care services through training practitioners, referring and following up cases of illnesses.

Monitoring Changes

After completing the background task and developing objectives to meet with the plan of eliminating disparity from the shortage of primary care providers, implementation and pilot test will be executed and evaluated. The methods developed will be checked for feasibility and reliability in bridging the healthcare gap. Criteria will be developed to monitor the changes by comparing the initial situations and current ones over time regarding the local primary care demands. Moreover, to ensure that more primary care specialists are recruited into the county’s healthcare system, scholars, trainees, and mentees will be engaged in surveys and meetings. Finally, seasonal reports will be written and discussed in conferences with stakeholders to ensure that maximum output is obtained from the plan.

The Designated End Goal

The end goal of this plan is to improve primary care access to residents of Colfax County. Therefore, bridging the gap of a low number of practitioners by promoting the engagement of young professionals in the field will balance the number of patients attended to by a single physician. Moreover, the referral system is aimed at alleviating the burden of healthcare demands at hand in the county through sourcing for efforts from outside. As a result, the number of cases attended to by the already existing practitioners will go down. The efficacy of the change will be evaluated based on primary care service flexibility, an increase in the number of practitioners enrolled, and a reduction in the number of individuals suffering from illnesses being attended to in hospitals within Colfax County.

Leadership Strategy and Theory

Transformational leadership theory encompasses building inspiration and initiating positivity in the stakeholders of a firm. The style of leadership not only entails developing the group but also encompasses cheering up each member to succeed in meeting life goals as well. The initiative in meeting public health needs at Colfax County will employ transformational leadership. It will aim at cultivating intellectual development among the stakeholders to meet the number of primary care providers at Colfax. Moreover, the leadership will aim to influence public health programs through creative thinking and innovation. Platforms for motivating participants in the program and promoting personal development with extra support will also be implemented. Thus, the program will aim at transforming the lives of people holistically.

References

Asbari, M. (2020). Is Transformational Leadership Suitable for Future Organizational Needs?. International Journal of Social, Policy and Law, 1(1), 51-55.

Carroll, A. L., Garcia, D., Cassells, S. J., Bruce, J. S., Merrell, S. B., & Schillinger, E. (2020). “Making It Work”: A Preliminary Mixed Methods Study of Rural Trauma Care Access and Resources in New Mexico. Cureus, 12(10).

Community Health Ranking and Road Maps. (2021). Building a culture of health, county by county. County Health Rankings.

Courtemanche, C., Marton, J., Ukert, B., Yelowitz, A., & Zapata, D. (2018). Effects of the Affordable Care Act on health care access and self-assessed health after 3 years. INQUIRY: The Journal of Health Care Organization, Provision, and Financing, 55, 0046958018796361.

Haederle, M., Fothergill, J., Jones, R. R., Muñoz, Y. L., Oliver, R., Sena, R., & Fuller, S. (2020). University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center Discovery Research Annual Report 2020.

Knight, P., Economics, B. A., & Bissell, A. (2018). Evaluation Plan for Las Cumbres Community Services.

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