Analyze a Current Health Care Problem or Issue Patients face different barriers to health care

 Analyze a Current Health Care Problem or Issue 
Patients face different barriers to health care every day as discussed in assessment two. It may be lack of transportation, lack of insurance, unavailability of the provider, or even mobility issues that may delay a person from receiving care and for this reason patients will wait till the last minute to see a doctor or use the Emergency Room (ER) for non-emergency reasons. When patients misuse the emergency room as a primary care visit it places a great strain not only for the ones seeking critical emergency care but to the providers as well. Inaccessibility to health care then causes great strains on patients, it is particularly true for those who may not have insurance or have a newly diagnosed condition in which they need care for and are pending an initial consult with the provider. When the ER is used as a patients first choice to receive health care it can cause detrimental consequences, such as gaps in care or failure to acknowledge or comply with preventative care (Maeng, Hao, & Bulger, 2017). The emergency room is not the only element that could be affected, patients will be affected as well, and with limited access to healthcare patients may experience emotional distress, higher complications, increase treatment cost and increased hospitalizations to name a few (Healthy People, 2020). Therefore, this assessment will focus on how limited access to health care can create a strain to the patient as well as the whole health care system. Focus will be shown on how to mitigate this problem as well as ways to provide accessible and adequate health care to benefit the patient. Elements of the Problem/Issue Let’s first ask the question, why is access to health care so important? In the year 2020 a prevention agenda was created by the federal government, called the Healthy People 2020, their