In the United States, avoidable disparities in the commonness and burden of illness, morbidity, and fatality are witnessed among the socially disadvantaged minorities. In the article by Poghosyan et al. (2017), various minority groups that are on based race, ethnicity, gender, education level, income, and sexual orientation have been identified to be experiencing poorer health care outcomes compared to the rest of the population. These groups are more likely to experience higher disease burden, lower quality of care, lack of treatment services, and needless visits to the emergency departments. Besides, these racial and ethnic groups tend to live in areas that are medically underserved with an inadequate supply of caregivers, which resulted in the lack of access to timely and high-quality care.
The shortages of healthcare professionals may negatively affect the effort by clinicians and policymakers to improve healthcare delivery among these minority groups. However, with the population of the nurse practitioner workforce on an increasing trend since 1992, these professionals have the potential to increase the availability of quality health care services for the minorities (Poghosyan et al., 2017). By 2025, the nurse practitioner workforce would have increased to 110,540 (Poghosyan et al., 2017). If the advanced skills of these nurses are utilized optimally, they have the potential of reducing disparities and addressing the growing demand for primary care. According to Poghosyan et al. (2017), nurse practitioners are prevented from optimally contributing to reducing and eliminating disparities in healthcare delivery due to the inhibitory state sphere of practice regulation, dissimilar fund distribution guidelines, absence of diversity in the nursing practitioner workforce, and an incompetent organizational structure. Poghosyan et al. (2017) goes ahead and develops the nurse practitioner health disparities model that pinpoints the barrier to an opportunity for maximum use of the nurses, and thus helping minimize and eliminate racial and ethnic disparities.
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In summary, the article explores the current disparities in health care delivery, particularly among the racial and ethnic minorities who receive relatively poor quality of healthcare than the rest of the population. The health disparities model developed can help federal and state lawmakers and executive management in the healthcare sector eliminate the legislative and organizational barriers that can facilitate a higher quality of healthcare among racial and ethnic minorities.
Reference
Poghosyan, L., & Carthon, J. M. B. (2017). The untapped potential of the nurse practitioner workforce in reducing health disparities. Policy, Politics, & Nursing Practice , 18 (2), 84-94.
