How does the Affordable Care Act affected nursing?
The Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, is in full effect and now news of its impact on the nursing industry has come in. Some reports are good, such as job growth; whereas others stress that nurses have bigger patient loads resulting in diminished care for patients.
What are your responsibilities under the Affordable Care Act?
Under the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare, the Employer Mandate requires that employers with over 50 full-time equivalent employees must provide health insurance for 95% of their full-time employees and dependents up to the age of 26 (at minimum), or face a significant fine. While this was meant to be implemented in 2014, the confusion and ...
Is Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act actually the same?
Obamacare And The Affordable Care Act Are The Same Thing. We heard there was a little confusion about this! A Huffington Post investigation reveals that the “Affordable Care Act,” it turns out, is exactly the same thing as “Obamacare.” They aren’t two different things. There is only one, believe it or not. We’ve triple-checked this.
What is the role of the Affordable Care Act?
- There is evidence that it has improved access to health insurance coverage for approximately 20 million Americans. ...
- Marketplace enrolment has been lower than expected: The Congressional Budget Office estimated that 21 million people would be enrolled on the exchanges. ...
- From the public perspective, its impact was not perceived as fully beneficial. ...
What is the role of the nurse in implementing the Affordable Care Act law?
In the near term, nurses can support the health of families and communities by serving as sources of much-needed information on how to access the health insurance coverage that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) offers.
How does the Affordable Care Act affect healthcare professionals?
Health care workers are facing mounting stress and instability as the Affordable Care Act forces industry changes that overburden health professionals. The ACA will impose 190 million additional hours of paperwork annually, limit time with patients, and insert government into the patient–provider relationship.
How does the Affordable Care Act affect advanced practice nurses?
Under the ACA, new nurse-managed clinics to train APRNs (i.e., nurse practitioners) to work in underserved communities have been approved. There are also plans to build new clinics and to renovate and expand the services of existing community clinics all over the United States.
How does the Affordable Care Act affect hospitals?
The ACA reduced the annual increases in payments to hospitals under the traditional Medicare program. It also reduced payments to Medicare Advantage plans. Partly because of these measures, increases in Medicare expenditures have been 20 percent lower than projected since the law was enacted.
What are the three benefits of Affordable Care Act?
Increased health coverage. Better access to health care. Better health outcomes, including fewer premature deaths. More financial security and opportunities for economic mobility.
What are the three main features of the Affordable Care Act?
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) has 3 main objectives: (1) to reform the private insurance market—especially for individuals and small-group purchasers, (2) to expand Medicaid to the working poor with income up to 133% of the federal poverty level, and (3) to change the way that medical decisions ...
What are the 10 essential benefits of the Affordable Care Act?
The 10 essential health benefits include preventive care, emergency services, hospitalization, prescription drugs, mental health services, and pregnancy care. Plans also must offer dental coverage for children and may provide other benefits.
What is the significance of the Affordable Care Act?
The ACA helps cut high U.S. health care costs. In addition to increasing insurance coverage, the Affordable Care Act makes investments in programs designed to reduce the cost and improve the quality of health care.
How did the Affordable Care Act improve quality of care?
The ACA has reduced the number of uninsured people to historically low levels and helped more people access health care services, especially low-income people and people of color.
What are the major problems with the Affordable Care Act?
The Problem: Affordability The ACA set standards for “affordability,” but millions remain uninsured or underinsured due to high costs, even with subsidies potentially available. High deductibles and increases in consumer cost sharing have chipped away at the affordability of ACA-compliant plans.
What are 4 provisions of the Affordable Care Act?
On September 23, 2010, a number of ACA provisions took effect, including the elimination of lifetime limits on coverage, restrictions on annual limits on coverage, prohibition on rescinding coverage except in cases of fraud, and the elimination of pre-existing condition exclusions for children.
How does the Affordable Care Act affect individuals?
Make affordable health insurance available to more people. The law provides consumers with subsidies (“premium tax credits”) that lower costs for households with incomes between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level (FPL). Expand the Medicaid program to cover all adults with income below 138% of the FPL.
How does the cares Act affect health care?
In short, the CARES Act has provided funding to help make up a portion of the lost revenue and additional expenses healthcare providers have experienced during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Why is ACA increasing demands for healthcare workers?
The ACA provided funding for payment and care delivery reforms, which coincided with increased demand for care among newly covered patients. These initiatives included efforts to increase efficiency, quality, and workforce capacity; many were funded by the ACA-created Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation.
Has the Affordable Care Act improve healthcare quality and accessibility?
The ACA has reduced the number of uninsured people to historically low levels and helped more people access health care services, especially low-income people and people of color.
How does the Affordable Care Act affect nursing?
The Affordable Care Act and Its Impact on the Nursing Profession. The ACA places a greater focus on outcomes, with more pressure on nurses to show they can give effective care. This means the demand for advanced practice nurses (APNs) and nurse practitioners (NPs) has also increased.
What was the purpose of the Affordable Care Act?
The law's purpose was to lower insurance costs and ensure that no American went without health insurance.
How does the ACA affect healthcare?
Since the ACA increased access to healthcare, the quality of care has changed along with it. Under this law, health insurance now covers far more chronic health conditions, including behavioral and mental health disorders. One significant consequence of the ACA involves preventative care. More people are caring for their health before they get sick. For example, many receive flu shots or cancer screenings before they become ill. This means that fewer people end up in emergency rooms or suffer preventable death. It also puts less of a financial strain on the healthcare system. In addition, the Medicare payment system shifted to value-based care. "The Medicare program adjusts payments based on the value of the care," says Deborah Weatherspoon, an advanced practice nurse and nurse educator. "The better the quality of care, the higher the payment." If a hospital does not meet certain benchmarks for factors, such as 30-day mortality rates or high readmission rates, the system lowers payments for that hospital, Weatherspoon explains.
Why do nurses vote in 2020?
It can sometimes feel overwhelming to deal with the numerous complexities and challenges of the healthcare system. That's precisely why voting matters. It's one of the ways that nurses can use their expert knowledge to change the system for the better. And the 2020 election is a major opportunity to steer the future of healthcare in the United States. Weatherspoon believes that nurses have the numbers to make a tangible difference. "The nursing profession is more than three times the number of physicians in the U.S.," she says. "It is time our collective voice is heard and respected for the knowledge of healthcare we possess." View our Nurse's Guide to Voting to learn more about where presidential candidates stand on healthcare issues ahead of the 2020 election, as well as details on how to register and vote by mail.
How did the ACA help the health care system?
The ACA achieved many of its goals. The federal government helped with state funding for Medicare, with 37 states expanding Medicare after the ACA became law. Individuals without insurance from an employer could obtain insurance from a private marketplace, and insurance companies could not charge extra for preexisting conditions. Additionally, the price of premiums decreased as the law stabilized. One of the most controversial aspects of the ACA involved the individual mandate, which required everyone to possess insurance or pay a penalty. The rationale behind the mandate was as follows: if both healthy people and unwell or at-risk people buy from the same health insurance pool, then costs would stay low. Otherwise, the cost of healthcare plans could increase significantly for older, vulnerable individuals, or anybody with a chronic health condition.
How did the Affordable Care Act change healthcare?
The ACA achieved many of its goals. The federal government helped with state funding for Medicare, with 37 states expanding Medicare after the ACA became law. Individuals without insurance from an employer could obtain insurance from a private marketplace , and insurance companies could not charge ...
Why do nurses work in healthcare?
Because of their profession, nurses have a unique perspective on the healthcare system. Just as they care for patients, they also work with medical records and insurance systems. It can sometimes feel overwhelming to deal with the numerous complexities and challenges of the healthcare system.
How does the Affordable Care Act affect nurses?
Part of the Affordable Care Act’s impact on nurses is that they can serve as trusted, unbiased advisors to patients, allowing them to feel at ease regarding their healthcare options.
Why is the Affordable Care Act important?
Many believe it’s the United States government’s responsibility to help find a solution to curb the costs and increase the quality of healthcare in America. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is one such effort.
How many states allow nurse practitioners to treat patients independently from physicians?
As of 2019, 28 states and the District of Columbia allowed nurse practitioners to treat patients independently from physicians. This number is expected to increase in the near future as more states review their scope of practice laws for NPs in response to the growing need for primary care providers.
What role do nurses play in healthcare delivery?
Being on the front lines of healthcare delivery — especially during COVID-19 — nurses can play a role in encouraging patients to seek information on insurance coverage through the ACA.
Why do nurse practitioners do telehealth?
Due to a lack of consistent medical care , many of the new ACA enrollees enter the medical system with chronic, untreated conditions and/or little understanding of medical processes and treatments, so the knowledge a nurse practitioner brings can often be a matter of life or death for the patient.
Why is it important to have a nurse practitioner?
NPs fill an important need in communities where there is a shortage of family medicine physicians.
Why do people choose to see a nurse practitioner?
Many patients prefer to see an NP because of their focus on whole-person care, which encourages appropriate medical decisions and better lifestyle choices.
What was the ACA of 2010?
The ACA of 2010 enacted a large group of laws that brought change to processes, systems, payers, and users of healthcare. This is not the fi rst time that reform of our private, market-based healthcare system has been attempted. Presidents Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton all ventured into lobbying and legislation for reforming healthcare delivery. These leaders, and others, settled for incremental changes to the system and no comprehensive reform occurred; this left us with fractured, disconnected, and competing systems paying and providing healthcare to our nation. This magnitude of collaboration and broad inclusion of stakeholders of the ACA is creating forward thinking health planning and something that will most likely be seen as uniquely American.
What is an ACO in Medicare?
Accountable care organizations (ACOs), a Medicare Pilot Program under the ACA, is a way of organizing care delivery that establishes a system of value-based payment contracts for large populations of the insured . The ACO model allows Medicare, and other payors of healthcare, to contract with providers for services based upon benchmark health outcomes for their clients. Though still a fee-for-service model, the ACO payment structure is based on fi nancial incentives to improve benchmarks. For example, an ACO may negotiate that a majority of their clients will have controlled blood pres-sure levels. If the ACO attains the agreed-upon bench-mark for their population of their clients, the ACO will share in the savings achieved rather than the insurer keeping all those savings. Incentivized, benchmarked, value-based outcomes system is the heart of creating an ACO framework as a method of healthcare reform. To set and measure benchmarks for quality and cost, we must fi rst reach agreement on accurate measures of quality. This requires available informatics systems ca-pable of tracking and reporting outcomes data in an ACO. This highlights the importance of new health in-formation technology requirements rolled out in the ACA. Many clinical groups and providers did not have
Why are nurses important?
Nurses are ethically bound to engage in efforts of improving health and healthcare delivery and, even more important, nurses recently have been called out as key leaders in the reform of healthcare delivery, including many components of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, its history, and what healthcare will look like during and after implementa-tion are addressed in this article. A discussion of the role and value of nurses in healthcare reform accompanies knowledge-buildingandaction-oriented resources available to nurses and clients.