Health Care Utilization By Immigrants
Introduction
Health care utilization has been of great benefit in effective management of chronic illness. The objective of this paper is to examine the ability of the utilization model of health care through analyzing the relationship between enabling, predisposing, and need factors. For a long period of time, the health care services researchers and the policy makers have been highly focused on reducing the disparity gaps in health care within the vulnerable populations. The Korean American Immigration (KAI) can not access health care easily because of cultural and language barrier and they have great chances of not being insured. Because of lack of accessibility to health care, this has resulted to poor quality of health care, low use of health services and poor health outcomes.
This people have higher chances of suffering from chronic illness unlike the white counterparts suffering from this chronic illness. One of the major factors affecting the prevention and effective management of the chronic illness is adequate health care utilization services. There is very little research which has been performed with the objective of investigating these problems, and promoting implementation of having better strategies which are going to certify that there, is sufficient utilization of the health care services by the ethnic groups like KAI.
Research questions
The research question that the authors set out to answer was the factors that affect an individual from using health care services. The factors that the authors had in mind were enabling factors, predisposing factors and the individual need of care. The predisposing factors were the characteristics of individuals that might motivate or hinder utilization of health care. The questions which were asked with regards to the predisposing factors were based on age, competing life priorities, marital status, and years in US. The authors considered asking the years of residence, because according to previous research, it had indicated that it had a strong predictor on utilization of health care for immigrants to US. The question on life priority would show how individuals prioritized health care over other issues in life.
The authors also wanted to find out the enabling factors that were affecting individual use of health services (Song, J et al 2009). These factors are referred to as personal resources. The resources include the ability of paying the cost of medical care, and the insurance cover status. The enabling factors were used in order to find out is the individuals were able to live comfortably with their present household income. The other question that the authors were set to answer were the need factors. The need factors are the perceived needs of the individual, and clinical measures of need (Song, J et al 2009). This question was used in order to find out if the individuals had ever had stroke, heart attacks or a history in their family on high blood pressure.
Research hypothesis
This study aims at determining the effects that enabling, predisposing and need factors have on utilization of health care among Korean American immigrants with high blood pressure. The researchers were also able to review the literature so as to find out factors which influence the utilization of health care by immigrants like the individual’s socio economic status, mental status, health insurance coverage, and physical status (Song, J et al 2009). This study is aimed at testing a comprehensive model for understanding the utilization of health care of KAI in management of chronic illness.
Study design
The study design that was employed in carrying out the study was use of descriptive statistics. Descriptive statistics are normally used in describing the basic features of statistics in the study (Song, J et al 2009). This design was used because it provides summaries about the measures, and samples. When descriptive statistics is used with graphic analysis, they form the basis of quantitative analysis of data. Descriptive statistics was used and Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used in order to describe the characteristics and bivariate correlation between variables that were being studied.
A path analysis was also used. This was necessary as it helped find out the unique indirect and direct contribution of each study variable to explain the utilization of health care in KAI. Descriptive statistics was used because it helped to measure the large number of individuals in a sensible manner. It helped to reduce the data into a simple summary. Descriptive statistics is important because it provides an extremely powerful summary which makes it possible for comparisons across units or people.
Univariate analysis and bivariate analysis
Univariate analysis is “the examination of across cases of a single variable at a time” (Trochim, W.M.K. 2006). 93% of the participants were married, and 89.2 % were well educated. The mean age of the participants was 52 years where more than two third of them come to US within the last twenty years. 35.7 % of the participants in the study supposed their level of income as comfortable which was capable of maintaining their living expenses. 39.1 % perceived their level of income as unfair, and 25.2 % perceived it to be uncomfortable which was not capable of maintaining their living expenses. 81.8 % of the sample was employed during the time of the study but just 40.9 % of these participants had a health care insurance which included Medicaid and Medicare.
97.3% of the individuals who had insurance were covered by private insurers. 64 % of the 78 % of the participants who were uninsured said they did not have health coverage for the reason that the premium was very expensive for them to afford (Trochim, W.M.K. 2006). 14% of the uninsured population reported that they were not being provided with health insurance by their employers.
Some of the reasons that people gave for not having health insurance were because of having good health. Out of the number of individuals who participated in the study, 59.8% rated high blood pressure and health care as being one of their most priorities in their life issues. The bivariate findings reported in table 2 indicate that those individuals, who were married, had been living in US longer. They had health insurance, they had medical conditions relevant to high blood pressure, and they were more probable of seeking health care. Individuals with higher levels of income, show to prioritize high blood pressure care over other issues in life and this individual stay long in the United States. These individuals have high chances of having health insurance and this resulted to frequently utilizing health care (Trochim, W.M.K. 2006).
Limitation of the study
Language barrier is one of the factors which limit the ability of KAI to get secure jobs in the society. Due to lack of securing jobs, these individuals choose jobs which don’t require extensive English skills. There are no efforts of assisting the community in being aware of the management of chronic illness, and there is no availability of community resources. The other limitation from the findings of the study is that the society does not have a build infrastructure that is going to support sustainable promotion programs on health care for control of high blood pressure (Song, J et al 2009). The sample of the study was carried out from just a single ethnic group and this tends to limit the degree to which assumptions can be drawn about other ethnic groups. More factors are supposed to be incorporated into the paper like language barrier level, and acculturation stress so as to interpret the utilization of health care better in the perspective of immigration.
Conclusion
From the study, the results indicate that the need and enabling factors tend to significantly contribute to utilization of health care of KAI. The key factors that explain the utilization of health care are the insurance status, and the high blood pressure medical history. The year of residence in the United States does not have any significant effect on the utilization of health care. The results of this study indicate that life priorities have an indirect impact on the utilization of heath care. Poor utilization of health care is usually a characteristic of immigrants, in spite of their insurance status.
Reference
Ryu, J Han, H Song, J (2009). Does access to care still affect health care utilization by immigrants? Journal of Immigrant Minority Health, 12
Trochim, W.M.K. (2006). Descriptive statistics. From http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/statdesc.php Retrieved 23rd July 2012
Trochim, W.M.K. (2006). Correlation. from http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/statcorr.php Retrieved 23rd July 2012
Trochim, W.M.K. (2006). The T-Test. from http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/stat_t.php Retrieved 23rd July 2012
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