Accountability and Evaluation in Health-Related Programs

Health Program and Evaluation
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Health Program and Evaluation
A lack of accountability and evaluation of healthcare programs can trigger adverse impacts in the industry. Healthcare services are primarily subject to evaluation and accountability measures to enhance efficiency, increase quality, and lower costs. It is on the grounds of accountability and program evaluation that stakeholders get value for the resources that they invest. To that effect, each stakeholder must be held responsible for a particular element of accountability or evaluation in healthcare. This paper explores health programs and evaluations with an emphasis on understanding accountability and evaluation in the context of various programs. Instilling efficient inputs in the evaluation and accountability of health programs should be fundamental, bearing the ills linked to a lack of such inputs.
Accountability and Evaluation in Health-Related Programs
Program managers are constantly motivated to assess the value and impacts of their programs. Such initiatives can only happen with effective mechanisms geared towards evaluation and accountability. Accountability is the principle that communities, organizations, or individuals are held responsible for their actions and can be required to explain their actions to others (Rogers et al., 2015). Accountability in healthcare is broad and can accommodate prospects that include governance, management theory and practice, ethics, law, and accounting. The common models for accountability in contemporary healthcare include eligibility for funding based on past performance, assessment of public health equivalents, pay-for-performance models, and accreditation and certification. All levels of the government or every stakeholder can instill inputs in ensuring accountability of health programs.
Conversely, program evaluation assesses the goals of a program and the outcomes. The evaluation process undergoes prospects, including asking questions, consulting partners, making assessments, and obtaining feedback (Rogers et al., 2015). The information collected in such initiatives can be employed to evaluate and improve the outcomes of a program. To that extent, evaluation accompanies examination of the significance, merit, and worth of a program. A program is any activity or a set of activities supported by a set of resources to achieve specific objectives or goals. Programs that do not reach the set goals or objectives in evaluation could be rendered irrelevant. Evaluation marks the basis of accountability in healthcare programs.
There is a range of programs that demand accountability in healthcare settings. Primary among the programs is the training or educational programs that aim at improving knowledge among stakeholders. Such a program can be evaluated and its accountability assessed based on the resources utilized or the goals achieved. Community mobilization efforts such as the efforts to improve the nutritional health of school-going children mark another category of programs in healthcare. The other categories of programs are like research initiatives aimed at establishing disparities in healthcare and advocacy work, such as campaigns to influence legislatures to...