Abstract External and internal influences are relevant in health care. These influences continue to affect the total operations of a health care facility. I will summarize the insights I have gained into the external influences of the new health care reform policy and quality initiatives. The recent health care reform legislation was passed in the house and senate this year. The senior vice president, that I have interviewed, states that health care reform is an “unknown” for organizations. In addition, I will research the quality improvement initiatives and how these external influences include implications for organizations and health care administrators. Introduction The Health Care Reform legislation passed on March 21, 2010. It promises to overhaul health care delivery in the United States and guarantee health insurance to millions of uninsured Americans. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), it will regulate private insurers more closely, banning practices such as denial of care for pre-existing conditions. The CBO states, that the legislation will cost the government about $938 billion over 10 years; reducing the federal deficit by $138 billion over a decade. (W. Lease, personal communication, July 23, 2010), the “unknown” of the recent health care reform legislation is an external influence that is most relevant to our organization, stated by William Lease, senior vice president of clinical support services. Mr. Lease states, that health care reform legislation will impact our organization in many ways; especially after 2014. While more employees will have health insurance coverage and there will be more patients to treat; the need for controlling costs and improving efficiency is i... ... middle of paper ... ...s will need to focus on pay-for-performance initiatives, as CMS will reduce annual payments by 0.4 percent if the ten quality measures are not submitted (Buchbinder & Shanks (2007). The next generation of health care administrators will be judged on these competencies as they continue to develop into experienced health care administrators. Works Cited Buchbinder, S.B., & Shanks, N. H. (2007). Introduction to Health Care Management. Sudbury, MA. Jones & Bartlett Publishers. Performance Improvement in Health Care. 5, 81-135. Congressional Budget Office. (n.d.). Health Care Reform. Retrieved from http://www.cbo.gov Cutler, D. (2010). How Health Care Reform must bend the Cost Curve. Health Affairs, 29(6), 1131-1135. ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health Source. (Document ID: 2061803841). Leap Frog Hospital Rewards. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.leapfroggroup.org
The health care organization with which I am familiar and involved is Kaiser Permanente where I work as an Emergency Room Registered Nurse and later promoted to management. Kaiser Permanente was founded in 1945, is the nation’s largest not-for-profit health plan, serving 9.1 million members, with headquarters in Oakland, California. At Kaiser Permanente, physicians are responsible for medical decisions, continuously developing and refining medical practices to ensure that care is delivered in the most effective manner possible. Kaiser Permanente combines a nonprofit insurance plan with its own hospitals and clinics, is the kind of holistic health system that President Obama’s health care law encourages. It still operates in a half-dozen states from Maryland to Hawaii and is looking to expand...
Papanicolas, I. & Smith, P. (2013). Health system performance comparison an agenda for policy, information and research. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
For the last five years of my life I have worked in the healthcare industry. One of the biggest issues plaguing our nation today has been the ever rising cost of health care. If we don't get costs under control, we risk losing the entire system, as well as potentially crippling our economy. For the sake of our future, we must find a way to lower the cost of health care in this nation.
Davidson, Stephen M. Still Broken: Understanding the U.S. Health Care System. Stanford, CA: Stanford Business, 2010. Print.
Reese, Philip. Public Agenda Foundation. The Health Care Crisis: Containing Costs, Expanding Coverage. New York: McGraw, 2002.
Institute of Medicine’s (IOM’s) 2001 Report, “Crossing the Quality Chasm”, clearly states that U.S. health care quality fails to meet the established industry benchmarks.7 In order to achieve quality improvement and affordability in health care, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA or Obamacare) was signed in the year 2010. With regard to PPACA the main purpose of this report is to study the following:
Once health care is put into place that is really effective you need to sit back and monitor it. By closing the feedback loop between quality and equity reporting and corrective federal, state, and local policies will be critical given the enormous complexity of reforms” (Fiscella, 2011). “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5: 17).
Healthcare is one of the most dynamic industries in our great nation. To truly understand just how dynamic the industry is, one needs to understand that healthcare in and of itself is a living, breathing industry that is ever changing and conforming to meet the ideals set forth from a broad group of stakeholders. When one looks at the evolution that healthcare has undergone in the past 165 years, the picture of the true dynamics of this industry is painted. One must take this evolutional history into account when looking at the next ten years in our industry. When looking at these evolutional processes, one can see that the systems have changed as our country and its people have required it to (Williams & Torrens, 2008). When looking at how this industry will change or evolve over the next decade, one can ascertain that it will be by the demands of those involved that change will come.
As I began watching Reinventing Healthcare-A Fred Friendly Seminar (2008), I thought to myself, “man, things have changed since 2008.” And as the discussion progressed, I started to become irritated by how little had changed. The issues discussed were far-reaching, and the necessity for urgent change was a repeated theme. And yet, eight years later, health care has made changes, but many of its crucial problems still exist.
The CMS develops the Quality Strategy guides, which is built on the foundation of the CMS Strategy and the U.S. Health and Human Services National Quality Strategy for Improvement in Health Care (NQS). The CMS Quality Strategy guides focus on Medicare payments for hospitals by quality of services not quantity of services with three strategies: improvement of the quality of care by creating healthcare environment more reliable, accessible, patient-centered, and safe; reducing the cost of care while providing high quality services; increasing the health outcomes by developing interventions to enhance the social, behavioral, and environmental characteristics of healthcare. The NQS further instruct that hospitals should reduce the issues that may
Over the last few decades, various laws have been established with the main purpose of making the system equal and more efficient for all. The U.S. hospital system has become more complex and less efficient due to significant political and monetary interference along with the passage of these laws. The most recent amongst those laws is the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which was signed into legislation by President Obama in 2010. Various provisions in the ACA includes universal health insurance coverage, significant changes in the payment for health services and changes in the health care organization delivery and workforce policy. Thus, ACA has a significant influence on the current U.S. healthcare system.
Overall, the increase within health care costs is effecting our nation significantly. Not only does it affect consumers but also organization. As it continues to increase everyone is finding themselves unable to pay for such changes. Reducing such growth within the health care costs requires a collaborative, inclusive, and dual-party approach. Strategies for reducing the costs include but not limited to: promoting prevention and healthy living, improving patient safety, and promoting transparency on medical costs and quality. If the nation works on such improvements, hopefully we will be able to turn the health care system into something we can all afford once again.
Module two deals with external influences in healthcare administration and the conflicts that may cause lack of growth in the organization. External influences can range from society, stakeholders, staff, and patients. Health administrators should be in agreement with staff and physicians to maintain proper ethics and safety for everyone. Society has a big influence of healthcare organizations with spending their money towards health insurance, medication, treatment services and exams. As long the healthcare organization has a well reputation built on trust, then consumers will spend on that healthcare organization. The stakeholders that take part in external influences on ethics are the vendors, technology specialists, maintenance, insurance
There are new challenges every year in the health care field. Research on the future of U.S Healthcare System is of paramount importance to the entire Health care industry as well as the citizens of the U.S. To begin with, the research will discuss how challenges for future healthcare services can be enhanced by reducing the costs of medication. By creating a better quality of health care, Information technology advancements, including future funding, lower rising costs, the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The research will also discuss the challenges of market shares for different ages of populating and maintaining a skilled work place. It will further discuss the tentative solutions to these challenges. The role that the government plays to ensure that these challenges are mitigated and that health care is available to all American citizens is also discussed. Among these problems poor quality of care is perhaps the most visible and troubling, resulting in nearly 100,000 preventable deaths each year (Institute of Medicine, 1999) and reduced quality of life for millions of Americans due to non-fatal yet serious adverse events such as wrong-limb amputation, hospital-acquired infection, and medication errors (Institute of Medicine, 2006; Leape, 1997).
Competitive advantage matters greatly to those responsible for the management of healthcare institutions. Together with rapidly escalating healthcare costs, increasingly complex medical technologies, and growing regulatory and legal pressures, healthcare organizations face a critical need to improve the quality of care at reduced costs (Cu...