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Challenges and Opportunities in Healthcare Delivery Practices in Treatment of Patients with Obesity- A Systematic Review
The prevalence of obesity is increasing within the country’s population. The health care costs of obesity is high. In addition to cost, treatment of patients who are obese can present complications, can require special skills from healthcare providers and require infrastructure and equipment that accommodate obese patients. However, there are no structured literature that synthesizes the challenges and opportunities in providing healthcare delivery practices to obese patients
Objective:
The goal of this systematic review is to conduct a comprehensive search of the current literature on healthcare delivery practices in treatment of patients with obesity.
Methods:
The search will be carried out on Google Scholar and PubMed databases. Search in Google Scholar is being conducted since November 2015. The review focuses on ambulatory transportation, hospital architecture, medical equipment, medical procedures including imaging, and surgical operations. Following search terms will be used to include articles that detail issues pertaining to healthcare delivery practices to obese patients. The process will involve pairing the search terms “obese,” “non-obese,” “normal”, “patient,” and “hospital” with one of the following search terms: “architecture,” “equipment,” “transportation,” “medical imaging,” “medical procedures,” “emergency procedures,” and “surgery.”
Results:
The systematic review process is still ongoing, but it is expected that challenges with treating obese patients with regards to the aforementioned areas of hospital services will be found. This review will also find if higher body weight provides opportunities for some kind of treatment procedures.
Implication:
We expect that the results found will provide healthcare providers and professionals an organized, up-to-date source that can accurately depict the current issues with delivering health care services to obese patients. The study will identify if there is a need of structured research in the area of health care delivery challenges in providing treatment to patients with obesity.