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The impact of the Affordable Care Act on healthcare
How has the Affordable Care Act impacted the balance of supply and demand for healthcare
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Ever since the Affordable Care Act went into effect, the healthcare industry has experienced an increase in hospital mergers throughout the country. Even though Affordable Care Act has made it easier for many Americans to have access to preventing medicine and despite many efforts, the system remains in a complete state of disarray. Patient care has not improved in the industry. Nevertheless, hospital administrators argue that mergers are going to benefit their patients by reducing cost, provide better services and help them to achieve their desired outcome with the minimum use of resources and efforts. On the other hand, experts believe that hospital mergers will influence the healthcare market by causing medical costs to inflate. This article
Bigger hospitals increasing market share Loss of Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement Decline in revenue Loss of patients
If Canada wishes to improve upon the quality of health care and tackle down generic issues in health care, one should consider integrating services. Integrated health services are considered part of the solution for the recurrent problem, one example being the continuous problem of chronic disease in Canada’s health care system. Integrated services come in many formats; horizontal, vertical, clinical, and physician.
Shay, P. D., & Mick, S. S. (2013). Post-Acute Care and Vertical Integration After the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Journal Of Healthcare Management, 58(1), 15-27.
Davidson, Stephen M. Still Broken: Understanding the U.S. Health Care System. Stanford, CA: Stanford Business, 2010. Print.
When one examines managed health care and the hospitals that provide the care, a degree of variation is found in the treatment and care of their patients. This variation can be between hospitals or even between physicians within a health care network. For managed care companies the variation may be beneficial. This may provide them with opportunities to save money when it comes to paying for their policy holder’s care, however this large variation may also be detrimental to the insurance company. This would fall into the category of management of utilization, if hospitals and managed care organizations can control treatment utilization, they can control premium costs for both themselves and their customers (Rodwin 1996). If health care organizations can implement prevention as a way to warrant good health with their consumers, insurance companies can also illuminate unnecessary health care. These are just a few examples of how the health care industry can help benefit their patients, but that does not mean every issue involving physician over utilization or quality of care is erased because there is a management mechanism set in place.
A merger is a partial or total combination of two separate business firms and forming of a new one. There are predominantly two kinds of mergers: partial and complete. Partial merger usually involves the combination of joint ventures and inter-corporate stock purchases. Complete mergers are results in blending of identities and the creation of a single succeeding firm. (Hicks, 2012, p 491). Mergers in the healthcare sector, particularly horizontal hospital mergers wherein two or more hospitals merge into a single corporation, are increasing both in frequency and importance. (Gaughan, 2002). This paper is an attempt to study the impact of the merger of two competing healthcare organization and will also attempt to propose appropriate clinical and managerial interventions.
Health Maintenance Organizations, or HMO’s, are a very important part of the American health care system. Also referred to as managed care programs, HMO's are combinations of doctors and insurance companies that are formed into one organization. This organization provides treatment to its members at fixed costs and decides on what treatment, if any, will be given based on the patient's or doctor's current health plan. Sometimes, no treatment is given at all. HMO's main concerns are to control costs and supposedly provide the best possible treatment to their patients. But it seems to the naked eye that instead their main goal is to get more people enrolled so that they can maintain or raise current premiums paid by consumers using their service. For HMO's, profit comes first- not patients' lives.
Traurig, G., (2008/2009). Turmoil in the healthcare industry: what about the patients? The Americas Restructuring and Involvency Guide. Retrieved from http://www. americasrestructuring.com/08_SF/p100-106
Hospital Corporation of America (HCA). Staff Analysis Statement of Problem HCA, after following a conservative financial policy since its establishment, has entered the new decade preparing to make some changes in order to realign their financial strategy and capital structure. Since its establishment, HCA has often been used as a measure for the entire proprietary hospital industry. Is it now time for the market to realign their expectations for the industry as a whole? HCA has target goals that need to be met in order to accomplish milestones in the future.
In order to fully understand the uninsured and underinsured problem that hospital administrators face the cause must be examined. The health outcomes of uninsured individuals are generally worse than those who are insured. Uninsured persons are more likely to experience avoidable hospitalizations, diagnosed at later stages of disease, hospitalized on an emergency or urgent basis, and more seriously ill upon hospitalization (Simpson, 2002) Because the uninsured often lack an ongoing relationship with a health-care provider, they are less likely to receive preventive care and diagnostic tests (Kemper, 2002). Many corporations balance their budget through cost cuts and other moves, but have been slammed with an increasing load of uninsured patients, coupled with reduced payments from government and private insurance programs. In 2000, 564,476 uninsured patients came through Health and Hospitals Corporations health care centers, a 30 percent increase from 1996. In the same period, Congress reduced Medicare reimbursements to hospitals, while Medicaid reimbursements to primary care clinics remained basicall...
The hypotheses in this study indicated that the use of comorbidities along with severity of injury in trauma patients as compared with a severity score alone would help to determine the hospital ranking. The null hypothesis was accepted in this case as there was no difference in the comparison.
In today’s healthcare system, there are many characteristics and forces that make up the complex structure. Health care delivery is a complex system that involves many people that navigate it with hopes of a better outcome to the residents of the United States. Many factors affect the system starting from global influences, social values and culture. Further factors include economic conditions, physical environment, technology development, economic conditions, political climate and population characteristics. Furthermore the main characteristics of the Unites States healthcare system includes: no agency governs the whole system, access to healthcare is restricted based on the coverage and third party agencies exist. Unfortunately many people are in power of the healthcare system involving multiple payers. Physicians are pressured to order unnecessary tests to avoid potential legal risks. Quality of care is a major component; therefore it creates a demand for new technology. A more close investigation will review two main characteristics and two external forces that currently affect the healthcare delivery system. Furthermore, what will be the impact of one of the characteristics and one of the external forces in review with the new affordable care act 2010? The review will demonstrate the implications to the healthcare delivery system and the impact on the affordable care act 2010.
According to the Delivering Health Care in America, cost shifting is a method used by insurance companies to balance inadequate payments, mostly to bridge the gap from low government reimbursement (Shi & Singh, 2015). Cost shifting is when private insurance companies charge people more to make up for the money they lose. Hospitals and other health care providers are able to compensated for the services they provide for uninsured patients by increasing payments to private insurance (Coughlin, Holahal, caswell& McGrath, 2014). Government programs such as, Medicare and Medicaid reimburse hospitals at a very low rate, according to Potter (2015) the only way hospitals can be able to keep providing care and make up for their looses
The United States health care system is one of the most expensive systems in the world yet it is known as being unorganized and chaotic in comparison to other countries (Barton, 2010). This factor is attributed to numerous characteristics that define what the U.S. system is comprised of. Two of the major indications are imperfect market conditions and the demand for new technology (Barton, 2010). The health care system has been described as a free market in
Some economists suggest that the market for healthcare is different from other competitive industries and therefore cannot act the same way. In principles, we learn the basic assumptions of a competitive market, (1) goods offered for sale are homogenous, (2) there must be many buyers and sellers so that each has a negligible impact on the market price and (3) For markets to work efficiently there can be no significant information failure affecting the decisions of the producers and consumers. In perfect competition, product’s must be homogeneous which means that goods that individual producers cannot alter or differentiate to collect a higher price. Health care is a heterogeneous product because the patient can experience a range of outcomes. There is an ongoing battle between hospitals and insurance companies. In theory, insurance companies negotiate with hospitals for a reduced rate. One of my favorites quotes I stumbled upon is from economist Uwe Reinhardt in regards to Obama and Obamacare “I wish I had a half hour with him to explain it to him. If you pit hundreds of little insurers against each other, what makes any one think that each of them has enough market clout to bargain successfully with a hospital? So I don 't think this public health plan, adding yet one more competitor, is going to bring costs down at