Social Factors Affecting The Healthcare System

A good and functioning healthcare system comprises of a group of people or institutions that come together to deliver health-related services to a community or population. These services are expected to be readily available at any point in time. There are many variables that affect the type of health care that is available to the public, some of which are social factors like income, ethnicity, education, transportation, insurance, housing, and food access, etc. just to name a few. The social factor that has affected the healthcare system tremendously is income. According to the census bureau, the average American family makes around $51,000 a year. Almost one household out of every four makes less than $25,000 a year, which
Low education leads to low health care literacy. This causes the inability of patients to adequately research health care resources. Low education also leads to less knowledge about the proper ways to be healthy. Some researchers say that people with a college degree are more likely to be particular about their general health by watching what they eat, going to the gym regularly, and keep away from negative lifestyle behaviors such as smoking and unsafe sex practices. When people are not educated it can make diagnosing harder for physicians, it can lead to miscommunication between patients and doctor, a patient might overdoes on medication because they could not read or understand a medication instructions, healthcare professionals might have difficulties delivery care to non-English speaking patients. By hiring a multi-cultural staff that can be of services to a diverse community, can be one major step to eliminating communication issue between patients and health care professionals. Health care institution can be an advocate for good health through community health care literacy education, spread the importance of education, and provide educational resources and educational scholarship to the community. Healthcare institution can educate their staff on how to communicate medical terms and diagnoses as simple as possible for easier understanding to their
Geographical location of patients can create barriers to a healthcare access and delivery system. When a patient resides in a certain geographical location many factors can affect the patient's ability to achieve sound health. For residences of a certain geographical area to achieve sound health, the importance of quality housing and living conditions has to be encouraged. Poor living conditions such insect and roach infested housing, lead-based housing, the presence of mold and poor ventilated housing can lead to many health risks such as pneumonia, asthma and many other respiratory diseases. Aside from poor living conditions, there are some environmental factor such as, temperature, pollutants, and altitude in a certain geographical area that influences health and the healthcare delivery