Social isolation impact on the patients' treatment in Poland medical institutions

Abstract

Purpose – to demonstrate the links between social exclusion and the higher costs of treating customers depending on this social sector, unlike other customers who are neither unemployed nor live in poverty. Design/Method/Approach of the research. In the external study, a survey method was used, supplemented with a method of observation at the study site. The authors of the publication carried out research using the qualitative method, formalized interview with medical staff. This research was done in University Hospital in Wroclaw in 2018. Findings. Any health organization must create good relations inside the organization and mostly from outside. One of them is a patient that the author calls a "customer" as every person spends money on health organization leading to the proper hospital functioning. Decision-makers within the system continuously must make choices and seek alternative ways to measure illness costs. One of the factors that harm the optimization of the health services' scale is the social exclusion phenomenon, which is significantly affecting society. Socially isolated people's problems are deprivation, as a lack of access to the necessary level of high-quality, safe, and effective medical services, and cultural competence to provide such medical services. The ex-post analysis conclusions show that relationships between the analyzed areas and the social exclusion phenomenon have a medium and even large dependency and demonstrate cause-effect relationships. Management of customers with the disfunction of medical personnel social requires using other means of communication and building relationships on facts. The communication model between medical personnel and the customer should be founded on a moderate paternalistic model, which is based on facts and documents. The result will be a reduction in service time, which will affect consultation time, financial savings, and an increase in medical personnel efficiency. Originality/Value. In the research of socially isolated people's health problems, three aspects was distinguished: health problems caused by social isolation, health problems that cause social exclusion, and health conditions that are difficult to treat due to social isolation. Paper type – empirical.