Planning Part 2 Essay

The development of the long-term care facility involves a careful and detailed planning which should be the basis for the development of the facility. In actuality, the development of the long-term care facility should meet needs and interests of in-patients, health care professionals, the local community as well as potential patients that are living in the local community. At the same time, the planning of the development of the long-term care facility should take into consideration the existing regulations and technical needs of the facility to make the facility able to perform its functions properly and to ensure the high quality of health care services being delivered to patients. On the other hand, the planning should involve the cooperation between the long-term care facility and the local community because without such cooperation the development of the long-term care facility is doomed to failure. Therefore, the planning of the development of the long-term care facility should be grounded on existing legal regulations, close cooperation with the local community, meet needs of health care professionals and patients, and focus on the provision of health care services to all patients.

On analyzing the existing regulatory requirements, the equipment and design of the long-term care facility should primarily meet the needs and demands of patients and ensure the possibility for health care professionals to deliver health care services fast and at a high quality level.

To put it more precisely, the existing regulation implies that the equipment and design of the long-term care facility should be patient-friendly. What is meant here is the fact that patient should have access to health care services provided by the long-term care facility.

Patients should be delivered fast to the long-term care facility, especially in case of emergency. Patients with disabilities should not suffer from any form of discrimination and they should have access to all the services and areas within the facility available to other patients. On the other hand, health care professionals should also have an opportunity to work effectively and deliver health care services of the high quality. This means that the long-term care facility should be equipped respectively to the latest technological advancements. The equipment should be available and work properly so that all health care professionals could use it when they need it and save time on the delivery of health care services, especially in case of emergency. In addition, the design of the long-term care facility should allow health care professionals to have a rest during their work hours because they need to repose, especially when they work with a large number of patients, or when they have to work for a long time, or when they work intensively.

In this respect, every detail does matter. In actuality, even the choice of colors is of the utmost importance for the long-term care facility.

Basically, the choice of color is very important from psychological point of view because light and calm colors could inspire patients, distracting them from thoughts about their health problems and help them to recover. As a rule, white and light colors are used in long-term care facilities. Therefore, these colors are preferable to be used in the long-term care facility to be developed. The use of white and light colors is essential because it makes the interior brighter and lighter making patients more optimistic, while the use of dark colors can provoke depression in patients that is absolutely unacceptable in the long-term care environment (Diiulio, 1994). Moreover, it is possible to use a recreation room or area which patients can decorate themselves. In fact, the recreation area can be used as the facility for art therapy where patients can paint walls, create their own decorations that will help them to recover and to forget about their health problems.

At the same time, the equipment of the long-term care facility is crucial for the overall success of the development and functioning of the facility. The long-term care facility should include all types of medical equipment essential for the provision of the long-term care, including essential electronic items (Spiegel, 2003):

bariatric beds and walkers for interiors;

furniture;

diagnostic equipment, including medical imaging machines, ultrasound and MRI machines, PET and CT scanners, and X-Ray machines;

therapeutic equipment, including infusion pumps, medical lasers, and LASIK surgical machines;

life support equipment, including medical ventilators, anesthetic machines, heart-lung machines, ECMO and dialysis machines;

medical monitors, which could be used to measure ECG, EEG, blood pressure and dissolved gases in blood;

medical laboratory equipment to automate or help analyze blood, urine and genes.

In this respect, it should be said that the use of the aforementioned equipment will need the employment of biomedical equipment technicians who can maintain the equipment and assist health care professionals to use the full potential of the medical equipment.

The budget of the development of the long-term care facility should cover all the expanses essential for the construction and purchase of the equipment for the facility. In this respect, the long-term care facility is likely to need multiple sources of funding because the health care system cannot fund the project solely. Therefore, the support of the local community is needed. In addition, it is possible to attract charitable organizations and NGOs which are concerned with the provision of long-term care for all patients. In such a way, through the close cooperation between state funding, charity, local community and health care system funding, it is possible to fund the development of the long-term care facility and start its operations.

In such a context, the role of every stakeholder can hardly be underestimated. To put it more precisely, health care professionals should provide patients with the high quality of health care services but to meet this goal they need equipment. Therefore, the supply of the equipment increases the role of institutions and organizations responsible for funding of the funding of the project. In addition, the local community should provide the area for the development of the long-term care facility and cooperate with health care professionals to maintain the facility. All stakeholders should cooperate with each other to develop the long-term care facility and to make it useful not only to inpatients but also to the local community.

The Implementation Plan: