Medicare and Medicaid provide medical treatment and help manage chronic
Issues Affecting the Health of Older Citizens 2 conditions, however, the day-to-day care resources are not as easily accessible for the older adults (Bennett & Flaherty-Robb, 2003). Older adults need emotional and educational support, and the health care system today does not work that way. Instead, the health care system promotes the medical treatment of health conditions, and ignores the emotional aspect of the care. Older adults need guidance on how to manage their various chronic health conditions. Another way to improve quality of life is to ensure that health care providers are educated within the geriatric field. Many providers are not geriatric-focused, which diminishes the quality of care. Currently, there is a shortage of nurses within the health care field and this shortage will continue to rise. Further, there are only 600 out of 100,000 medical schools that have geriatrics as the primary specialty (Shi & Singh, 2012). To prevent this downfall, the government and school systems must recruit and emphasis the importance of gerontological specialties (Bennett & Flaherty-Robb, 2003). The school system needs to become relevant with the times we are living in, and emphasize geriatrics and gerontology. The authors’ discuss that health care school programs (nursing, medical, pharmacy) should require students to take a specified amount of credits within geriatrics, since …show more content…
In addition, the authors state that health-related quality of care is referred to as an individual’s perception of health, their ability to function despite their limitations, and their feelings of happiness (Shi & Singh, 2012). The emphasis of the quality of care relates to shifting from the idea of treatments/intervention to providing emotional, educational, financial and supportable resources (Bennett & Flaherty-Robb, 2003). The implication for older adults is that quality of life, the expression of your values, and feeling a sense of happiness/satisfaction is a part of the health care process, and a lack of any of these is an issue. Identifying the issues and creating and implementing solutions will help build the stepping stones to revolutionize health care quality and American’s value system. Through the changes made we can signify the value of guiding older adults to receive and enjoy quality of care (Bennett & Flaherty-Robb,