Final Care Coordination Plan

Assessment 1: Preliminary Care Coordination Plan

           People with mental illness face patient safety issues while receiving healthcare services. The Healthcare industry is continuously advancing, but unfortunately, healthcare providers are unaware of such unique issues at all levels. People receiving healthcare services at any facility expect positive treatment. Regardless of the disease or illness, patients need physical, mental, emotional, and psychological assistance for rapid and long-term recovery. People receiving mental health care at hospitals or clinics need a healthy and peaceful environment. But several individual and systemic factors contribute to patient safety incidents and pose challenges to patients' mental health. Research indicates that only individual factors cannot pose such complications. Still, it is a result of several system failures that pose challenges to patients' mental health. Lack of effective interaction between people, workflows, staff, technology, and operational processes causes system failure, leading to patient mistrust of healthcare complications (Emanuel et al., 2018).

           Furthermore, beyond individual healthcare organizations, patient safety in mental health is highly compromised because of systematic factors. For example, fragmented care delivery for mental health patients contributes to patient safety incidents. Gaps in information sharing, staffing shortages, bed shortages, and lack of community resources lead to compromised care delivery. Mental health services are available in different healthcare settings such as clinics and hospitals. Every healthcare facility delivers care in various methods that pose challenges for mental health patients. Healthcare professionals must understand the importance of mental health conditions and the needs of patients with mental disorders on time.

           Stigma is a systemic factor contributing to patient safety incidents with mental health patients. Stigma is a system issue that devalues a particular group based on shared beliefs and stereotypes established about that group. The stigma can directly affect an individual's ability to access quality care and timely emergency care delivery. Stigma about mental health patients affects their interaction with healthcare professionals, which leads to patient safety complications and enormous outcomes. One common stigma about mentally ill patients is that they complicate things, which is why everyone avoids interaction with them, causing harm to their mental health and complicating recovery (Emanuel et al., 2018). Within healthcare organizations, stigma should be addressed through equity-based programs, and healthcare professionals should be guided about patient care delivery.

Physical and Psychosocial Needs of Patients' Mental Illness

           Patients with mental illness often struggle with a lack of physical and psychosocial support from healthcare organizations. Patients with mental illness need extra care compared to physically ill patients. Mental health is more important than physical health; mental health takes time to recover. Thus, health organizations should focus on the timely delivery of physical, emotional, psychological, and psychosocial support for patients with mental illness to avoid distress and depression. Research indicates that numerous patients show psychosocial concerns, and timely delivery of these concerns helps in rapid recovery and patient well-being (Hooker et al., 2020). The lack of adequate patient care facilities in healthcare organizations leads to patient satisfaction. For example, a lack of community resources, training, effective collaboration of interdisciplinary experts, and technology interventions would affect patients' fulfillment of physical needs. And ineffective satisfaction of physical needs would lead to patient mental health complications. Thus, a patient-centered treatment needs time to address patient safety incidents.

Goals to Address the Patient Safety Issue in Healthcare Organizations

           The role of healthcare organizations is not ordinary in delivering quality healthcare services to mentally ill patients. Healthcare organizations can help improve healthcare outcomes for mentally ill patients by inputting equal facilities and improving access to care.

           Following are some specific goals established to enhance the role of healthcare organizations in addressing the patient safety issue;

i. Recovery-Oriented Care 

Recovery-oriented care focuses on the needs of patients and understands their conditions to deliver required healthcare treatment for rapid and long-term recovery. Recovery-oriented care is a collaborative care model in which an individual patient is valued and respected by healthcare providers along with his mental health condition. In a recovery-oriented care plan, healthcare providers involve patients in treatment planning to know their care and recovery plan choices. This approach promotes well-being and fastens the recovery process in two ways. The first way is to involve the patient as a partner in his recovery process. And secondly, by allowing the person to make his own treatment choices. This approach will minimize patient stress and complications and develop a positive relationship between the patient and the provider. This shows that a recovery-oriented approach is good in fulfilling the psychosocial needs of patients (Emanuel et al., 2018). When the patient and provider establish a positive relationship, it would be easy for the patient to share everything that he feels and experience with the provider.

ii. Culturally Responsive Care 

Culturally responsive care recognizes the culturally unique needs of patients that impact those behaviors to a specific treatment decision. For effective mental health services culturally, responsive care is the best method. Culturally responsive care aims to integrate cultural expertise as a core process for care delivery to ensure individuals' mental, physical, emotional, and psychosocial well-being. Healthcare organizations can deliver culturally responsive care by recruiting culturally diverse staff members representing various cultures that can contribute to planning the care process for patients with illnesses. Healthcare organizations should hire culturally competent staff who understand the needs and demands of mentally ill patients in healthcare facilities (Emanuel et al., 2018). A culturally diverse mental health team should be organized to access, prevent, and manage patient safety issues and ensure a productive environment for their recovery.

iii. Interprofessional Communication and Collaboration 

Communication builds understanding between patients and care providers. Thus, effective communication procedures should be employed within the healthcare facility to engage patients in recovery. Interprofessional collaboration is key to supporting patient safety and reducing the risks of gaps in care delivery for mentally ill patients. Along with this, interprofessional communication and collaboration help create an inclusive care model within which mental health becomes a priority for healthcare professionals (Emanuel et al., 2018).

Community Resources

           Communities provide different types of assistance for people with mental health issues. The community's range of services and assistance programs is referred to as a continuum of care. Other communities offer different types of care based on available resources and awareness of the issue. Intensive care management units, specialty mental health care providers, family support service programs, therapeutic community-based services, crisis residence, and partial hospitalization are some programs and services offered by the community as an effective continuum of care (AACAP, 2018).

Conclusion

           To conclude, this paper addresses mental health as a patient safety issue. Despite advancements and innovations in the healthcare industry, focusing on such unique issues still poses challenges for mentally ill patients in different healthcare facilities. The paper analyzes the subject and explains some long-term goals for healthcare facilities to address the problem and ensure positive outcomes. The paper also provides an overview of community resources that address patient safety issues.

References

AACAP. (2018, March 10). Continuum of Mental Health Care. Retrieved from https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Families/FFF-Guide/The-Continuum-Of-Care-For-Children-And-Adolescents-042.aspx

Emanuel, L., Taylor, Hain, Combes, J., Hatlie, M., Karsh, B., . . . Shaw. (2018). Mental Health Care: An Introduction to Patient Safety Issues. PESP, 10-28.

Hooker, S. A., Sherman, M. D., Lonergan-Cullum, M., Sattler, A., Liese, B. S., Justesen, K., . . . Levy, R. (2020). Mental Health and Psychosocial Needs of Patients Treated for Opioid Use Disorder in a Primary Care Residency Clinic. NIH, DOI: 10.1177/2150132720932017.