Cultural Competency
Medicare is one of the major health insurers of people seeking health care services in the United States. The giant health insurer covers the whole country and for that reason should meet all the requirements of a major organization. The health insurer has to be culturally competent to match the ever growing demands of the healthcare industry. In an age where patient-centered care is at the forefront, a health care organization should meet all the requirements of the diverse patient community in the country (Weech-Maldonado et al., 2012). This paper will briefly provide a cultural competency analysis of Medicare using two different methods to establish if it fits the bill.
Using the five A’s we find that Medicare is available to a majority of the American population. There is, however, damning statistics that the insurer of health has failed to cover all Americans (Seeleman, Essink-Bot, Stronks & Ingleby, 2015). The poor, uninsured and underserved health population still exists in this country. Medicare is accessible to most but not all Americans as again there some hindrances that block the accessibility of Medicare. Affordability is the main aspect of the cultural competency Medicare where it fails to meet the demands of quite a significant number of Americans. The poor and underserved populations in America have been left out by the insurers (Weech-Maldonado et al., 2012). Regarding acceptability, most of the health communities have accepted the Medicare policy. Finally, the appropriateness of the health insurer ranks well among the Americans. It is, therefore, fair the cultural competency of Medicare as evaluated using the 5A’s is just above average and has a lot of ground to cover (Seeleman, Essink-Bot, Stronks & Ingleby, 2015).
Using Leininger’s Theory of Culture Care Diversity and Universality to gauge Medicare as a health care organization in the United States reveals the following; The health care team is widely diverse in its operations across the country. The service provision caters for all religions, races, and cultures of the United States people (Leininger, 1988). Regarding universality, however, the organization ranks fall from conventional standards; their insurance policies are not universal (Leininger, 1988). It only covers the U.S. A comparison between the two reveals that Leininger’s theory rates the cultural competency of Medicare a bit higher than the 5 A’s method.
References
Leininger, M. (1988). Leininger’s Theory of Nursing: Cultural Care Diversity and Universality. Nursing Science Quarterly, 1(4), 152-160. doi:10.1177/089431848800100408
Seeleman, C., Essink-Bot, M., Stronks, K., & Ingleby, D. (2015). How should health service organizations respond to diversity? A content analysis of six approaches. BMC Health Services Research, 15(1). doi:10.1186/s12913-015-1159-7
Weech-Maldonado, R., Elliott, M., Pradhan, R., Schiller, C., Dreachslin, J., & Hays, R. (2012). Moving towards culturally competent health systems: Organizational and market factors. Social Science & Medicine, 75(5), 815-822. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.03.053
