Cultural differences in healthcare delivery and patient outcomes

Health Diversity

Promoting Diversity in Healthcare

The question of whether or not to allow -- or to explicitly forbid -- traditional and folk healing methods in a medical establishment is fraught with complications. First, unproven methods can be a distraction from treatments known to work, reducing the overall quality of healthcare. Second, even though the care any individual decides to seek out and accept might be a matter of personal choice, allowing any traditional or folk medicine practices to be used within a given medical institution implies the approval of such treatments by that institution, and this is not necessarily something to be desired by health care managers and executives. Thirdly, however, some traditional healing methods are also rooted in sound scientific principle, and can provide benefits in less invasive or risky manners. As a whole, it would be inappropriate to establish a firm blanket policy regarding traditional and folk healing methods, but rather a case-by-case determination must be made.

Proposed or sought out traditional and/or folk healing methods should be evaluated by Western physicians and, when available and applicable, traditional healers, and the risks presented by these methods -- both as treatments in and of themselves and in terms of the risk presented by choosing traditional methods as an alternative to Western medicine -- should be weighed against the possible benefits. Health should be monitored just as carefully for patients utilizing traditional remedies as for those who prefer only Western-style treatment options. In this way a more full freedom of choice can be granted to patients while ensuring that patient health and physician/institution reputation and ability are not harmed.

Healthcare manager involvement in diversity issues pertaining directly to healthcare should be as minimal as possible (ACHE 2010). While promoting and encouraging diversity in hiring and advancement policies and actions is a definite area of concern for health care managers and executives, and this necessarily has an effect on the diversity of care ultimately offered to patients, this latter issue should be dealt with between physicians and patients themselves as much as possible (IDHM 2010). Manager involvement in this issue should consist of a broader appraisal of the physician's attitude towards cultural diversity in the patients seen by the physician; it could be that the efficacy and quality of care being provided by this doctor is diminished by a lack of cultural understanding. Developing a full plan of care for the individual patient in question, however, is not something that a manager at the health care organization should become involved in directly.