Health services are the actions taken to promote and preserve human health, treat diseases and injuries, reduce disabilities and infirmities, and maintain people’s quality of life. They can be preventative, diagnostic, therapeutic, or rehabilitative. Most of them are provided by professional medical and public health institutions, which are often funded through national, regional, or provincial budgets and contributions to a mandatory state healthcare insurance fund. Individuals may also pay for private or commercial health services out of their own pockets.
Increasingly, the provision of health services is becoming dependent on the availability and quality of information technologies (IT). These enable teleconsultation, remote monitoring, telesurgery, robotics for assisted living, and many other healthcare innovations. They also require strict quality of service (QoS) requirements such as data rates, latency, energy efficiency, positioning accuracy, and security.
The development of newer IT-based health services depends on advances in several areas such as computer science, informatics, medical information systems, and biomedical engineering. They are designed to meet the growing demands of patients and providers for high-quality, personalized, and cost-effective healthcare. They also help to improve the quality of healthcare delivery, enhance medical education and training, and improve access to care.
The main entry point to the health system is primary health care (PHC), which provides a gatekeeper function in which a patient is initially assessed for the type of disease and the need for referral to specialists. The goal of PHC is to make the health system more effective by providing better access for everyone to healthcare, especially those who are isolated and deprived in their communities.
Access to healthcare is defined as a person’s ability to obtain, use and benefit from medical, social, and other community-based resources. This is influenced by many factors such as financial limitations, geographical and logistical barriers (such as transportation costs or the inability to take time off work), personal limitations (such as health literacy or low income), and sociocultural expectations.
Generally, utilization of health-care services reflects need, but this is not always the case. Many factors affect utilization independently of need, such as biological or environmental differences in groups (e.g., disproportionate residence in polluted environments or lack of affordable healthy foods and housing), cultural preferences (e.g., belief in traditional herbal remedies or the effectiveness of prayer), or educational and behavioral characteristics (e.g., low health-related self-esteem or low educational achievement).
There are a number of ways that professionals can advance in their career in the field of health services. These include returning to school for additional degrees, pursuing certification and licensure, completing continuing education courses, networking with other professionals, and joining professional organizations. However, no one path suits every professional or meets every need. It is important to consult with a career counselor or supervisor to determine the best way forward. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 32% job growth between 2019 and 2029 for medical and health services managers. In addition, the number of jobs in the field of health and human services is expected to grow by about 7% in the decade between 2022 and 2031.