Health Care Delivery Systems

Catalog description

This course focuses on formal and informal heath care systems within American communities by addressing their historical development, the major forces shaping their present status, and emerging directions of these systems. Throughout the course, the implications for the roles and actions of nurses within health care organizations are explored with respect to planning, policy formulation, financing, and evolving methods of delivering services to clients. Within a rapidly changing health care environment, it is imperative that students understand the actual and potential role of nursing at the local, state, and national levels from the perspective of geographic influences, socio-cultural demands, and environmental stressors impacting on communities and on the available health care systems. Current health care reform issues, concepts and models of health care delivery, directions for change, and methods affecting organizational change on individuals, groups, as well as the nursing profession will be examined and discussed. The purpose of this course is to prepare nurses as leaders in managing various resources for the delivery of quality, cost-effective care.