Health Care Policy Initiation and Implementation

The main purpose of health care policies, like geographic maps, is to provide routes and directions to best achieve specific goals. Their design involves many variables and go through many steps that often begins with a problem that needs to be solved or addressed. To demonstrate such concept, this paper discusses the steps taken to adopt a new health policy in North Carolina; the main goal of the new policy is to implement Evidence-Based Practice (EVP) in mental health care and to redirect the service to its target population. The paper highlights the role of management, implementers, stakeholders, and professionals in the initiation and implementation steps of health policies.

Impetus for the change

In the case of changing the mental health policy in North Carolina, the impetus for the change seems to be adopted by the State Auditor’s report beside other reports of many entities confirming the deviation of mental health service away from its original goal. According to these reports, mental health services are still delivered via traditional health delivery models rather than coordinated well-managed ones. Interestingly, these reports analyze the spectrum of mental health services nationwide with the exception of the State Auditor’s 2000 report Study of the Psychiatric Hospitals and the Area Mental Health Programs which was specifically designed for the North Carolina.

Change advocates

According to the response of the State’s legislation, the change involves the four regional mental health hospitals that operate independently without common policies to regulate or synchronize their efforts. Although the legislation is evidence-based, it does not depend on local resources driven from within the mental health organizations inv...

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...communication channels to synchronize efforts and set the grounds for policy change to success.

Works Cited

Evans, B. A., Snooks, H., Howson, H., & Davies, M. (2013). How hard can it be to include research evidence and evaluation in local health policy implementation? Results from a mixed methods study. Implementation Science, 8(1), 1-9.

Kleintjes, S., Lund, C., Swartz, L., & Flisher, A. (2010). Mental health care user participation in mental health policy development and implementation in South Africa. International Review of Psychiatry, 22(6), 568-577.

McLaughlin, C. & McLaughlin, C. (2008). Health Policy Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Boston: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.

Shera, W. & Ramon, s. (2013). Challenges in the implementation of recovery-oriented mental health policies and services. International Journal of Mental Health, 42(2/3), 17-42.