...The Health care system within the past decade has experience significant changes. The changes with the health care system not only effects how health care is being delivered but also changes the cost of health care. The focus of this paper is to explain how health care has changed in the past ten years, the biggest change that will take place in the next ten years, and the role I will serve in the industry and how my skill will evolve. The paper will also explain how my perception of health care has changed, the role technology plays, and financial and economic issues that will affect the health care industry. How Health Care Has Changed The changes within health care are now having an effect on consumers and health care providers. The most significant change that has taken place within the health care system is the advancement of new technology. The new technology such as diagnostic, screening techniques, medical interventions, surgical techniques, and techniques for drug delivery has helped health care providers to adequately serve and diagnosis patients. The computer system is also a new technology that has not only helped entities to communicate efficiently but it has also changed the way health care providers perform his or her job duties. However, not all of the new technology will successfully emerge into the health care system because it is very costly to implement. Consumerism and patient empowerment is also a change that has taken place and this...
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...Health Care Reform Tina N. Hatton October 25, 2010 HCA 497: Health Care Studies Capstone Lori Bednarchik Reform 1 Introduction The Health Care Reform is said to be one of the most important pieces of legislation today. The Health Reform website says that health care reform will be the answer to uninsured Americans (www. Healthreform.gov). This paper will evaluate three issues involved in the collaboration of health care reform, the committee involved, and will explain teamwork and how it will contribute in efforts towards health care reform. Three Issues The three issues facing health care reform are accessibility, affordability, and sustainability (Shortell, 2009). The first challenge of health care reform is accessibility. Accessibility simply meant that insurers would have to expand insurance coverage to all Americans. This meant eliminating pre-existing conditions that prevented people from gaining insurance coverage, insuring portability across states, mandating the purchase of insurance coverage, standardizing claims to reduce paperwork and providing benefit and cost information to the American people allowing them an opportunity to choose a plan that best fit their needs (Shortell, 2009). The second issue is affordability. Affordability has left uninsured and low-income families helpless due to high premiums. The public option...
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...the Affordable Care Act was signed into law in October of 2010 by President Barack Obama. Obamacare came into effect with the goal of increasing the quality, availability and affordability of health insurance for all Americans. Obamacare is paid for by new taxes on larger businesses and the health care industry. Americans will have the option to buy private insurance, obtain insurance through the workplace, or pay an income tax penalty to not have health insurance. This puts enough money into the healthcare system to help provide better quality and bring costs down for low to middle income individuals. The Affordable Care Act increases the quality, accessibility and affordability of health insurance. In return most people, who can afford to get health insurance must get insurance by 2014 or pay a per month fee. The law eliminates pre-existing conditions, stops insurance companies from dropping you when you are sick, protects against gender discrimination, expands free preventative services and health benefits, makes larger employers insure employees, creates a place for Americans to buy subsidized insurance making it possible for Millions of individuals families and small businesses to get low cost health insurance, and decreases healthcare spending. Obamacare doesn’t create health insurance; it regulates the health insurance industry and helps to increase the quality, affordability and availability of private insurance. Most people who have health insurance can keep...
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...employment, the employers cost or the employer utility. The mandated benefits represent a tax rate equal to the difference between the employers cost of providing the benefit and the employers estimated market value. Reference Summers, L.; WHAT CAN ECONOMICS CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIAL POLICY? Some Simple Economics of Mandated Benefits, 2001 Page 324 #12 12. The five goals of Medicare are affordability, equity, adequacy, feasibility and acceptance (Jacobs & Rapoport, 2004). Affordability – improving quality to avoid unnecessary cost. Affordability is enhanced by the promotion of competition to improve quality and lower cost instead of directing more resources to less effective care. Equity – payment policies for providers that are consistent with improving quality and avoiding unnecessary costs; partnerships with governmental agencies and with nongovernmental partners Adequacy - assistance to practitioners in improving quality and efficiency through greater use of effective health information technology Feasibility – developing and using information about the effectiveness of health care technologies Acceptance - playing a crucial role in all of the above. Becoming an active partner in the effectiveness of healthcare technologies to move innovations to patients more rapidly References Leavitt, M., Report to Congress: Improving the medical quality improvement organization program-response to the institute of medicine study, 2006 Week Five Assignment Page 347 #4...
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...access of care? Access of care is the ability for a patient to receive the health services they need in a reasonable amount of time. The services need to be affordable and effective, in most cases these services would be administered by the person's primary doctor (Shi & Singh, 2015). In a 2015 New York Times article they describe access as “all people receiving the quality health services they need, without being exposed to financial hardship”(Site NY website) In the article they examine the access of care individuals have to basic essentials such as child immunization, access to clean water and sanitation, family planning and prenatal care. The article also found that almost 400 million individuals lacked access to at least one of these essential basic care clearly highlight the issue that there is a lack of access of care not only in our nation but in others as well. 2. How does service availability affect access of care? Service availability is a very important factor in access of care because the provider needs to offer the services a patient needs in order for them to be effective. Some of these factors are the doctor's ability to treat preventative and primary services, transportation, and ability to understand the language the patient speaks (Shi & Singh, 2015). If the health plan has enough specialty physicians and a patient is able to visit the doctor any time of day or year then it successful in providing an affective and available access of care. 3. How...
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...Health Care Law and Regulations University of Phoenix Louise Underhahl HCS 545 Health Care Law and Ethics 2012 Health Care Law and Regulations One of the areas that are currently affecting the Health Care industry is Regulatory agencies. There is much dissatisfaction over the current state of healthcare in the U.S. Within all of our organizations, regulatory agency surveys are conducted to better the organizations as well as its employees. The purpose of the regulatory surveys is to focus on the areas that need improvement as well as promoting better health care access to the people in the community. Regulatory agencies serve as authority as well as enforcement to regulate laws from the government. Some examples of regulatory agencies are Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and Occupational Safety Health Administration (OSHA). There are many examples of laws and regulations that are currently being faced in health care. Analysis of health care laws and regulations help one understand their influences on the provider. There are many ways that laws and regulations affect our lives and community. The FDA is responsible for the oversight of drugs, medical devices, vaccines, blood products and biologics, establishing rules for testing, clinical trials and approval of new products. The AHRQ is a federal agency under Health & Human Services working to improve the quality, effectiveness and safety of health care...
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...affordable health care under the updated health insurance reform legislation passed by the House. "The Affordable Health Care for America Act or H.R. 3962, blends and updates the three versions of previous bills passed by the House committees. "(Kruger, M. 2010) This bill is expected to ease the out-of-control costs of health insurance, introduce competition into the health care marketplace that will help maintain coverage affordability, protect people’s choices of doctors and health plans, and guarantee all Americans access to quality, consistent , affordable health care. The Association of American Medical Colleges stated in a Mar. 21, 2010 article; "we have taken the first step towards truly transforming health care in this country. This historic vote by the House of Representatives sets into motion long-overdue efforts to cover 32 million uninsured Americans and to assure their access to high-quality care. The nation's medical schools and teaching hospitals have expressed their full support for this bill to President Obama, and now stand ready to work with the administration and Congress to carry out these significant changes to our health care delivery system." (AAMC, 2010) The health care reform bill creates a shared responsibility for health care among individuals, employers and the government to ensure that all Americans have affordable essential health benefits. Two of the key components, and possibly the most debated or criticized of the Affordable Health Care for America...
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...Vulnerable Populations in Current Events Paper Nursing 440- Health Assessment and Promotion for Vulnerable Population July 21, 2014 Deanna Radford Vulnerable Populations in Current Events Paper According to De Chesnay and Anderson (2012), there has been an increased recognition of not only identifying and understanding vulnerability but in gaining the skills needed to help these populations. Furthermore, De Chesnay and Anderson (2012) states that there is a call to go beyond just helping the vulnerable, empowering them in an effort to provide more sustainable outcomes. A discussion was made recent periodical on a vulnerable population. The vulnerable population is defined, and barriers from obtaining needed services are discussed. The author describes experiences with vulnerable populations in her own life. Vulnerable Population Recent periodical discussing a vulnerable population The manuscript by Sanders, Schneiderman, Loken, Lankenau, and Bloom (2009) identifies gang youth as a vulnerable population. Sanders et al. (2009) discusses risk factors of being in a gang, examples of which are deprived socioeconomic backgrounds, living in communities with a long history of drug sales, crime, and gang activity. This gang youth are considered vulnerable as are 60 times more likely to be killed than the rest of the population. Sanders et al. (2009) considers gang youth to be a vulnerable population “because of their relatively poor social and economic...
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...Health Care Spending By: Davida McKnight HCS/440 Pranab Root February 16, 2015 Health Care Spending In today’s society the purpose of our nation’s health care practices has shifted from supplying and meeting the medical needs of patients to the supply and demand of fee-for-service care. Our growing health care crisis is the results of medical organizations working with third party payers and private insurance sectors focusing more on the assets of funding instead of the quality of care for patients. As a result the rising cost of health care is continuously huge issue affecting our economy making it difficult for many Americans to live comfortably within our economy less known afford insurance services. The quality of care is not a priority of many health care professionals but the necessity of meeting quantity over volume is the mission of many health care groups. Health care organizations has lost their dedication for healing and helping patients to avoiding and profiting patient volumes. The trending rates of inflation, increased health insurance coverage, demographics, provider merging, technology and the lack of health provider-patient care ratios are enormous contributors as well affecting our nation’s health care spending. The National Health Care Expenditure The National Health Expenditure Accounts (NHEA) are the official estimates of total health care spending in the United States. Dating back to 1960, the NHEA measures annual U.S. expenditures for health...
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...Affordable Care Act For the first time in U.S. history, every American will have access to quality, affordable health care under the updated health insurance reform legislation passed by the House. "The Affordable Health Care for America Act or H.R. 3962, blends and updates the three versions of previous bills passed by the House committees. "(Kruger, M. 2010) This bill is expected to ease the out-of-control costs of health insurance, introduce competition into the health care marketplace that will help maintain coverage affordability, protect people’s choices of doctors and health plans, and guarantee all Americans access to quality, consistent , affordable health care. The Association of American Medical Colleges stated in a Mar. 21, 2010 article; "we have taken the first step towards truly transforming health care in this country. This historic vote by the House of Representatives sets into motion long-overdue efforts to cover 32 million uninsured Americans and to assure their access to high-quality care. The nation's medical schools and teaching hospitals have expressed their full support for this bill to President Obama, and now stand ready to work with the administration and Congress to carry out these significant changes to our health care delivery system." (AAMC, 2010) The health care reform bill creates a shared responsibility for health care among individuals, employers and the government to ensure that all Americans have affordable essential health benefits. Two of...
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...HEALTH CARE [Author Name] In the article “Health Care Study Calls Risk Pool Money Lacking” Kevin Sack discusses some of the issues of healthcare finance. He says that the new law of health care does not properly allocate money for 5.6-7 million Americans with medical conditions that are pre-existing and have high risk insurance pools. The insurance plans carried out by the Government are a stopgap until 2014 after which the insurers cannot deny from providing total medical coverage to people. But according to a study by a nonpartisan research group, the Center for Studying Health System Change, $5 billion will only cover 200,000 people in a year. As a result, there would be a huge number of people having serious medical problems but the amount allocated for health care won’t cover them. Also, prompted officials of the 20 states would decline to establish their own financial pools which would put the burden of the task to Washington. In these states, the officials and the Republicans fear the intense pressure that they will have to face in case they are short of money. High risk pools will be established in some of the states by July1. The existing pools charge high rates which make them unaffordable to many; the new pools should have standard charges. Even then we won’t know how many uninsured won’t be able to afford those standard rates. Another analysis in this week concludes the states should be satisfied with new amendment and expansion of law. The...
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...provision of quality health services is fundamental to the success of any society; the government, development agents, experts as well as the society play an important role in promoting quality health. Quality health requires various pertinent tools and resources for instance: Technology, qualified personnel, and financial resources form the imperative components of health improvements. The Foundational Frameworks for Quality Health Improvements There are various fundamental designs that are formulated and implemented by various stakeholders to facilitate quality health improvement. These designs vary in their level of efficacy as well as the amount of resources needed for their successful implementation. To begin, stakeholder such as the government has been increasingly applying the concept of partnerships as a framework for improving quality health provision. This more like a collaborative approach whereby stakeholders such health specialists and local communities work partnership in identification of health problems and formulating effective solutions. Another framework that plays an important role in improving quality in the health sector is the research and innovation; this involves the provision of a platform to various stakeholders to develop new ideas and concepts that can facilitate the provision of quality health to the society. Governments, donors, and various communities can play great role in promoting research and innovation in the health sector through provision...
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...Final Draft June 20, 2014 Health Care: Profit Motive “Is the physician a healer of the sick or a maker of money?” In book 1 of Plato’s The Republic, Socrates questions about the physician being a healer, or a maker of money and trying to balance the two is much easier in our time than it was in Plato’s (www.literaturepage.com). The famous Hippocratic Oath affirms that doctors should protect the sick, and not only just from being sick, but also from injustice and harm, and instructs physicians not to prey on patient’s vulnerability for their own gain (medterms.com). Today, few medical schools require their students to take the oath, the principle of placing the benefit of the sick above one’s own self-interest remains at the center of the medical profession, so we think? Treating the sick and offering quality care to those who suffer are acts of compassion, which to this day are being destroyed by profit driven health care. We ask ourselves how could there be over 45 million people in the United States who do not have health care. Well, first let’s see how we can actually define Universal Health Care, which is also known as Universal Health Coverage, is a specific type of health care where everyone is provided coverage regardless of their income, race, age, pre-existing conditions, gender, or wealth. If you are a legal resident of the United States you are eligible for universal health care. When we think of the purpose of universal health care, it’s to provide all people...
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...Running head: HEALTH CARE LAWS, POLICIES, AND REGULATIONS Health Care Laws, Policies, and Regulations Frank Frimpong Manso HCS 545 July 4, 2016, 2016 Prof Elam Health Care Laws, Policies, and Regulations Health Law, Regulation, and Policy has become the means of health protection and prevention for the American people. The government highly regulates these laws improving the health of the public by developing programs, resources, and tools, aiding in health care access, however, there are also different private bodies involved in regulating the healthcare sector. Health care regulation is focused on three main roles; cost control, quality control, and access expansion and control. This paper will discuss the impact of ACA on health care organizational policies. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a health care regulation signed into law on the 23rd of March, 2010. The law’s main focus had been to increase the affordability and quality of American health insurance. Its policies were focused on lowering the rates imposed on the uninsured through the expansion of both the private and public insurance covers. It had also aimed to reduce the health care costs incurred by the government along with citizens. Barely seven days after its enforcement had a new health care law come into effect with amendments to the ACA. On March 30, 2010, the president of the United States signed into law the Healthcare and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. The law had been...
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...MEMORANDUM ON MANAGED CARE TO: Dr. Forney Fleming and the Class of Fall’14 for American Healthcare System FROM: Iyappan Somasundaram DATE: September 10, 2014 RE: Managed Care, Markets and Rationing Briefing Paper MANAGED CARE: An organized way to deliver healthcare services by efficiently utilizing healthcare resources to provide quality patient care. Managed care principles have been used for over 100 years in the U.S. The major goals of managed care include improving quality and accessibility of health care, improving outcomes and overall quality of life for patients and containing costs. The growth of managed care in the U.S. was spurred by the enactment of the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973. The organizations that use the above techniques or provide them are called “MCO” or “Managed Care Organizations”. Managed Care organizations are broadly classified into two categories viz. HMO, PPO & POS. During the last quarter of the 20th century, HMOs emerged as an important alternative to traditional medical indemnity insurance plans, and largely supplanted them. This was largely known as the “managed care revolution”. HMOs have had a profound effect on every aspect of the practice of medicine-professional, scientific, social, economic, and legal. HMO (Healthcare Maintenance Organizations): HMOs are comprehensive health care delivery systems that offers a wide range of healthcare services through a network of providers who agree to supply services...
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