Implications of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on the Healthcare Environment

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is one of the most important policy initiatives of the American government in the contemporary world. The first of its aims to ensure that there is collaboration between government, individuals, and employers in order to achieve near-universal healthcare coverage. The second aim is to ensure that al of those individuals who receive health insurance coverage are able to achieve a high level of fairness, affordability, and quality. Another aim is to ensure that individuals who have coverage are able to receive a high quality of care without wasteful spending through the improvement of efficiency and accountability to patients. This policy also aims at promoting the development of a situation where there is a strengthening of primary care with the objective of easier access to preventative healthcare; essentially encouraging the reduction of healthcare costs. The final objective of this policy is to ensure that there is investment in needed healthcare facilities in so that it can be possible to bring about the expansion of clinical preventative care that is useful in the creation of a stable healthcare system. Patient Protection and Affordable Care is essential in the fixing the healthcare system so that a majority of the population can have access to quality care.

One of the most fundamental aspects of the American healthcare system is that it is one of the most expensive in the world. Unlike in European countries, where there are strong social welfare systems that ensure universal healthcare, in the United States, prior to Affordable Care, it was quite difficult for individuals to access quality healthcare. Furthermore, there was a situation where very few individuals had health insurance; meaning that some treatable health conditions ended up becoming a burden on patients. Therefore, the move by government to ensure that there was the expansion of healthcare insurance as well as an increase in investment in medical facilities to cater for the needs of individuals in need of them. This legislation had considerable support from the Obama administration, which promoted it by proposing that it was not only a matter of government policy, but also a moral issue that could not be ignored. In addition, while there was an attempt by the Democratic majority in Congress to take on a bipartisan approach, this ended up not being the case because the policy faced considerable opposition from conservative elements in the Republican Party such as the Tea Party. Moreover, some lobby groups associated with the healthcare complex were also involved in pushing their agendas in the development of the policy.

Among the considerations that were made during the development of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was the establishment of a single-payer Medicare for All Act. However, this option was discarded because of the belief that it would not be able to acquire support within the Senate that was filibuster-proof. The Medicare for All Act would have been one of the most progressive accomplishments of the policy because it would have ensured that all individuals were able to have health insurance. However, this alternative was not considered because it would have met with considerable opposition, especially from the conservative elements in the Republican Party. Furthermore, there was the fear that if such an act was passed by Congress, it would encourage freeloading among those individuals who were not willing to pay their fair share of insurance premiums. Therefore, the most progressive aspects of the Affordable Care Act were discarded because of the potential of considerable opposition to it. Furthermore, the need to ensure that the bipartisan concerns were addressed so that the act could be passed meant that compromises had to be made in order to create a situation where it was possible for majority support to be comfortably obtained.

The implementation of the Affordable Care Act was conducted at the state level. However, it was not implemented according to its original design because of considerable resistance that the legislation received from its opponents. A consequence was that states were given the option of making the decision of whether or not to expand their Medicaid programs. Since the objective of promoting the full adoption of Affordable Care in the whole of the United States was not achieved, it has remained a considerable point of contention on both sides of the political divide. However, a number of states ended up expanding their Medicaid to such an extent that a large number of individuals who previously did not have the means to have quality healthcare currently have access to it. This situation shows that if there had been proper bipartisan support for the policy, it would have led to universal healthcare coverage in the country to such an extent that it would have promoted the health of all Americans while reducing costs. Those states that opted not to expand their Medicaid created a situation where the federal government had to revise its estimates concerning how Affordable Care would work. This meant that it was essential to reduce the expectations concerning the savings that would have been made following implementation in all states.

While the policy started with good intentions for the healthcare system, it ended up not being able to achieve its intended goals because of resistance towards it both at the political and state levels. However, it was able to solve a considerable part of the original problem because it allowed individuals who could not previously afford it to have healthcare coverage. The progress of this policy was interrupted because some states opted not to adopt it because of the belief that it would increase their Medicaid costs. The lack of bipartisan support for this policy, especially considering Republican resistance, meant that its chances of success were limited to those states that adopted it. A consequence was that because some states opted not to adopt Affordable Care, the cost savings ended up being much less than was originally projected. Thus, this policy can be considered to have been neither a success nor a failure because while it was able to achieve its objectives in some states, in others, it had a hard time gaining acceptance.

The Role of Communication in Patient Safety

In nursing, communication is one of the most essential elements in ensuring that the safety of the patients has been met, because without it, then the patient outcome rates will be considerably low. For many years, effective communication has been linked to the positive outcomes of patients. It has been noticed that nurse communication has an effect on the length in which patients stay in hospital as well as the efficiency of their treatment. Adequate nurse communication in medical centers has the outcome of decreasing the duration of patients’ stay in hospital. It has also been found that there is a decrease in the number of medical errors made concerning patients. Furthermore, adequate communication also has an impact on nurses because they become more motivated in their work, which increases their efficiency. This efficiency helps the patient as it improves the care which they are given, and this leads to the patient’s swift recovery.

One of the factors which influence communication between nurses and patients is the complexity of the hospital and nursing systems, so that the larger and more complex they are, the higher the risk that the potential for patient errors will be increased. It is therefore necessary to ensure that adequate communication between the various hospital systems is instituted so that the number of such errors can be reduced or done away with. The quality of care depends completely on the accuracy and completeness of information being available to the nurses who care for the patients. While this is important, it should be noted that the accuracy of the information becomes outdated over time and this is the reason why more, up to date information has to be collected to ensure that the caregivers provide the best service possible to the patient.

Errors tend to occur when during the communication of a patient’s medication. This usually happens when there is a misinterpretation of the various abbreviations or acronyms to the drugs which have been prescribed to the patient. This creates a situation where there is the potential of a patient taking the wrong drugs, taking the drugs at the wrong time of the day, or even worse, taking an overdose of the prescribed drugs. It is therefore necessary to ensure that errors in the writing down of instructions for the patient or caregiver are avoided and that the person writing the said instructions is alert at all times to the potential of making mistakes. Among the recommendations that can be made is that there must be a standardization of all the abbreviations and acronyms for the drugs used in the medical field so that there can be no confusion over the type of drugs that have been prescribed. It has been found that many drugs have similar names which may lead to the nurse giving the patient the wrong medicine. To prevent such incidences, it has been recommended that capital and small letters be used to differentiate the drugs with similar names to avoid confusion. This will work to ensure that there is uniformity in the communication of medication and this will ultimately promote the safety of the patients to whom the medication is prescribed. With uniformity in communication, the work of the nurses will become less cumbersome because they will be able to be accurate in their administration of medication.

In many hospital systems, there is always a breakdown in communication due to the fact that the nursing staff is usually afraid to report errors because of the potential of being punished. This fear has made it difficult for errors to be corrected and has ensured that the outcome for patients is greatly diminished. The lack of adequate communication has created a scenario where nurses are not able to conduct their activities efficiently and this has come to have a devastating impact on the safety of the patients. Hospital management should create an environment where nurses and other hospital staff are comfortable enough to report any errors which they find without any fear of punishment. In order to achieve this, the management of the hospital should have frequent communication with the nurses who deal directly with the patients and know firsthand the needs and requirement of the latter. Such regular communication ensures that the nursing staff is free with the management, and because of this, errors which would not otherwise have been pointed out come to be dealt with quickly to ensure the safety of the patients involved.

The effort of the healthcare industry to improve the safety of patients is being hampered because of the poor communication between caregivers and patients as well as the lack of adequate tools for measuring the safety of patients. Furthermore, despite the availability of a wide array of medical equipment and practices, they cannot be effective without there being adequate communication between the caregivers and the patients. In order to make sure that medical care is efficient, there is a need for the establishment of mechanisms or structures which will enable medical staff to communicate with patients. This will ensure that medical staff  to acquire adequate and accurate data to help them make the correct judgment concerning how to deal with patients. This will create a situation where the number of errors are reduced and the effectiveness of treatment, hence patient safety.

While a few decades ago the incidents of errors being made by hospital staff were low, today, such errors have become common and the biggest cause of this is poor communication. This has become so widespread that it is a constant worry for the management of hospitals. The best way through which caregiver can ensure the safety of their patients is when they have adequate knowledge of the condition of their patient. This ensure that the caregiver is better able to communicate with the patient and it creates an environment where the patient is confident  in his or her caregiver and this helps to improve patient outcome.

Communication is an important factor in ensuring the safety and high outcome for patients and it is essential that nurses develop their communication skills. Communication is one of the most common problems facing the medical profession today and it is because of this that the number of errors has, over time, increased. It is therefore necessary for adequate communication to be developed with patients to ensure that they have a high standard of safety.

Nursing Shortage

Nursing shortage is a global problem which, of not checked, is fast spreading to levels where it can no longer be managed. Nursing is a profession that is least understood by many in the world, even those who are considered to be the most educated. In most cases, it is a profession which is taken for granted, with nurses having to work in conditions that can only be considered to be inhospitable for them. What many governments and policymakers fail to understand is the fact that nurses are a crucial factor in the healthcare system and that without them, this system will most likely collapse. Nurses are needed in the care for individuals in hospitals as well as the general population of the world because of their unique ability not only to save the lives of their patients, but also for the purpose of improving their outcomes. When one considers the current situation, it can be said that the shortage has mainly been caused by the public misunderstanding of exactly what nurses do. In most cases, the public holds take the duties that nurses perform for granted, giving more importance to doctors than to nurses. This has given rise to the notion that the nursing profession is not important, therefore influencing the decision of many people who would have gone into the profession to choose other professions which are deemed to be more important. The shortage can be said to be caused by three main factors which include poor working conditions, limited funding available for research, and finally, the short staffing in hospitals.

The nursing profession has been taken for granted for a long time and it is only recently that its importance has come to be recognized as a shortage has developed. This shortage in the number of nurses in hospitals has created a situation where there is understaffing meaning that the available nurses have to work long hours (Mee & Robinson, 2003). These long hours has a tendency of taking a toll on the physical and mental wellbeing of the nurses involved and may, in fact, lead to a reduction in their performance levels. This reduction in their performance means that the wellbeing of their patients is placed in jeopardy since some of them may require more attention from the nurses in order to make a quick recovery. A nursing shortage, therefore, creates a situation where patients are not provided with the best healthcare available and this is mainly due to the low nurse to patient ratio that the shortage creates. If this shortage is not countered with efficient policies, then it will most likely end up costing the health systems of many countries dear. This is because of the fact that without nurses, there will be a low patient outcome since the patients will not be receiving the care they need to recover effectively. Furthermore, as the aging population continues to increase and the demand for nurses also increases, there is the possibility that the mortality rate of the human population will be quite high in the coming years.

The nursing shortage has dire implications on the future of the nursing profession and among these is the possibility that in future, there may be a shortage of teachers to teach the new generation of nurses. This is mainly due to the fact that the number of experience nurses available to guide the younger generation of nurses into the profession will be extremely low. This will create a situation where it will be impossible for nurses to work effectively most of their action will be done through trial and error, ensuring that the patient outcome remains low. The future of this profession is quite bleak because it has for a long time been associated to women, who in the modern times have a wide range of career option open to them. This means that the idea of nursing as the premier professional option for women is fast fading away. It is therefore prudent for healthcare policymakers to make the profession more attractive to the younger generation through improving the working conditions, providing enough funds for education and research, and in this economically motivated world, ensuring that nurses are given salaries that are decent.

For many years, the safe staffing of nurses has been linked to the positive outcomes of patients. It has been noticed that nurse staffing has an effect on the length in which patients stay in hospital as well as the efficiency of their treatment. Adequate nurse staffing in hospitals has the outcome of decreasing the duration of patients’ hospital stay. It has also been found that there is a decrease in the number of medical errors made concerning patients. Furthermore, adequate staffing also has an impact on nurses because they become more motivated in their work, which increases their efficiency. This efficiency helps the patient as it improves the care which they are given, and this leads to the patient’s swift recovery. Adequate nurse staffing in hospitals reduces the patients’ mortality rates due to the fact that they have the full attention of the nurses throughout their convalescence. It is, therefore, important for hospitals to ensure that they have adequate nurse staffing so that only the best possible care can be provided for patients. Moreover, with a balanced nurse to patient ratio, the patients’ hospital stay will be reduced, meaning that more attention will be given to the remaining patients.

It is a fact that nurse staffing does indeed have an impact on the quality of care that patients receive. If the ratio between nurses and patients is well balanced, then the patients will have the best care and their recovery will be quite swift. However, if there are fewer nurses in relation to the patients they serve, then the latter will have very poor service. In fact, their recovery rate, will be very low while their mortality rate will go up significantly. Nurse staffing should always be given priority when dealing with matters concerning healthcare to ensure that services of good quality are provided for patients.