Health Care Reforms: A Critical Analysis
Instructions:-
Assignment Option 1: The U.S. Healthcare System: Analysis of a Healthcare Sector
Your portfolio assignment focuses on a specific sector of healthcare and its relation to the current U.S. healthcare system. Choose one of the healthcare sectors listed below for your portfolio assignment:
Hospitals
Long-term Care
Mental and Behavioral Health
Ambulatory Care
For-Profit/Public Health Care.
Write a ten to twelve page paper where you address the following:
Describe of the sector’s historical development and current role in healthcare delivery.
Explain how the political influence in the U.S. healthcare system impacts how this sector provides healthcare to specific communities.
Evaluate how quality, safety, and competition within this healthcare sector impact patient care.
Examine what major challenges exist for this sector for the system over the next decade from healthcare reform and other factors. Discuss a minimum of three challenges and offer your recommendations on how healthcare leaders and administrators can manage them.
Provide a conclusion summary of your findings and of the project experience.
Your paper should meet the following requirements:
Be ten to twelve pages in length, not including the cover or reference pages
Be formatted according to the CSU-Global Guide to Writing and APA Requirements
Provide support for your statements with in-text citations from a minimum of eight scholarly references – four of these references must be from outside sources and four may be from course readings, lectures, and textbooks. The CSU-Global Library is a good place to find these references.
Utilize the following headings to organize the content in your work.
Introduction
Historical Development and Current Role in Healthcare Delivery
Political Influence
Quality, Safety, and Competition
Future Challenges and Issues
Recommendations
Conclusion
Solution
Health Care Reforms: A Critical Analysis
Introduction
On 3/23/2010, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was established and focused on the making healthcare services available for the low-income household as well as everyone in America. As such, it is evident that the quality of health care has significantly improved over time as a result of healthcare reforms such as the ACA. Additionally, the economics of accessing medical care have massively increased as a consequence of these reforms. Furthermore, patient safety, being the core objective of healthcare professionals, has improved as a result of healthcare reforms. This essay transcends a critical analysis of three articles that depict how healthcare reforms have improved quality of health, economics as well as patient safety.
Health Care Reforms and Quality
Health Quality refers to the equity of health care services among individuals regardless of their level of income. According to Koh and Sebelius (2010), the Affordable Care Act has brought improvement in the quality of care through its ability to promote prevention. As such, Koh and Sebelius (2010) analyze precisely how the quality of health has improved after the approval of the ACA. In their article, they stipulate that ACA provides for free access screening for chronic illnesses such as breast cancer, HIV, diabetes, and other chronic diseases. With this policy in place, individuals can now experience quality care since they can assess their health status as they are screened earlier for preventable diseases. Second, the article articulates that ACA authorizes substantial investments to bolster primary care workforce. For instance, the law allocated $1.5 billion to the National Health Service Corporation in the fiscal year 2015 and 2011.
Furthermore, Obama et al. (2016) suggest that ever since the enactment of Medicaid and Medicare, the ACA has enabled a significant number of the American populace to access care and health insurance cover. Notably, Obama et al. (2016) report that the number of uninsured persons in the US has declined from 49,000,000 in the year 2010 to 29 million in the year 2015. This statistic apparently relates to the fact that most Americans are now accessing care which contributes to higher quality of life for the nation.
Health Reforms and Economics.
According to Obama et al. (2016), the cost health care significantly affect the economy as well as the federal budget coupled with the financial well-being of an American citizen. Arguably, the authors in this article stipulate that ever since 2010, the cost of health care has reduced significantly following the establishment of the ACA. As such, it is documented that Americans account for medical cost irrespective of their income. Additionally, Senkubuge, Modisenyane, and Bishaw (2014) suggest that an economy deteriorates as a result of increase and re-emerging of diseases. Also, the authors suggest that there need for each and every government of put plans in fostering better health care for its populace to boost productivity. In relation to the case with America, it is evident that most individuals are offered a chance to accept Advanced Premium Tax Credit (APTC) – a subsidy that allows for a reduction of premiums for individuals based on household income(Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Treasury, 2013). As such, APTC can be owed back to the federal reserve dependent on the actual income at the end of the year (Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Treasury, 2013).
Evidently, it can be concluded that the health care reforms such as Medicaid, Medicare, and ACA have significantly improved the health status of individuals in America. As suggested by Senkubuge, Modisenyane, and Bishaw (2014), the general health status of a worker in a healthy nation relates to their productivity levels. Now, American are working on a 24-hour system indicating the economy of America has significantly improved. Also, accessing health care services has become cheaper for the low-income earners as well as high-income earners.
Health Reforms and Patient Safety
Patient Safety refers to a rigorous effort within health care to reduce injuries caused while on treatment as well as reduction of medical errors. Patient safety being a major goal in health care has been addressed in the most health care organization. As Leape (2015) suggests, patient safety needs a change of systems to avoid harm to patients at all cost. Even though change is difficult, the health care reforms stipulated in the America have focused on reducing harm to a patient through medical errors. Reforms have focused on the implementation of Electronic Health Records that reduce human error as well use of standardized medication that satisfies federal laws. Arguably, the government has focused on articulating that organizations must follow standards of practice about the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. As such, the physician and the nurse are accountable for any harm done on the patient. Furthermore, patient information must be kept private and confidential regarding these health care reforms (Wu, Ahn, & Hu, 2012).
Conclusion
Conclusively, as the ACA
continues to be implemented across the nation. It is a necessity for policy makers to
make changes that must improve the current state of the healthcare sector. As such, policies must be stipulated in relation to
the cost and benefit assessments regarding
patient safety, economics, and quality of
health as well as access to health. It is indeed evident that health care
reforms have enabled improved care delivery and a stable economy.
References
Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Treasury. (2013). Health insurance premium tax credit. Final regulations. Federal Register, 78(22), 7264–7265.
Koh, H. K., & Sebelius, K. G. (2010). Promoting Prevention through the Affordable Care Act. New England Journal of Medicine, 363(14), 1296–1299. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp1008560
Leape, L. L. (2015). Patient safety in the era of healthcare reform. Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, 473(5), 1568–73. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11999-014-3598-6
Obama, B., GF, A., ES, F., ES, F., EA, M., RA, C., … S, K.-S. (2016). United States Health Care Reform. Jama, 27(6), 1718–1727. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2016.9797
Senkubuge, F., Modisenyane, M., & Bishaw, T. (2014). Strengthening health systems by health sector reforms. Global Health Action. https://doi.org/10.3402/gha.v7.23568
Wu, R., Ahn, G.-J., & Hu, H. (2012). Towards HIPAA-compliant healthcare systems. Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGHIT Symposium on International Health Informatics – IHI ’12, 593. https://doi.org/10.1145/2110363.2110429
