By identifying the health needs of the population the aim is to accurately find their health needs of service users. Most doctors are used to assessing the health needs of their individual patients. Through professional training and clinical experience, professionals have developed a regular approach to this assessment and use it before they start a treatment that they trust to believe to be effective. The health needs of individual patients coming through the consulting room door may not reflect the wider health needs of the community. If people have a health problem that they believe cannot be helped by the health service, then they will not attend.
Individual needs and the wider needs of the community is important in the planning and provision of local health services. If these needs are ignored then there is a danger of approach to providing health services, which relies too heavily on what a few people perceive to be the needs of the population rather than what they actually are. For example: A patient goes to his local GP to get advised on his weight. The service user gets told he is obese and to overcome this he will get a free pass to go gym and should do other exercising activities and not only rely on gym. Also this means to check what and how his eating, to be more specific and careful.
