Health Care Delivery Models and Nursing Practice
Examine changes introduced to reform or restructure the U.S. health care delivery system. In a 1,000-1,250 word paper, discuss action taken for reform and restructuring and the role of the nurse within this changing environment.
Include the following:
Outline a current or emerging health care law or federal regulation introduced to reform or restructure some aspect of the health care delivery system. Describe the effect of this on nursing practice and the nurse’s role and responsibility.
Discuss how quality measures and pay for performance affect patient outcomes. Explain how these affect nursing practice and describe the expectations and responsibilities of the nursing role in these situations.
Discuss professional nursing leadership and management roles that have arisen and how they are important in responding to emerging trends and in the promotion of patient safety and quality care in diverse health care settings.
Research emerging trends. Predict two ways in which the practice of nursing and nursing roles will grow or transform within the next five years to respond to upcoming trends or predicted issues in health care.
You are required to cite to a minimum of three sources to complete this assignment. Sources must be published within the last 5 years and appropriate for the assignment criteria and relevant to nursing practice.
Sample Answer
Health Care Delivery Models and Nursing Practice
Healthcare models are very vital delivery of in-services. This is because they guide operations, helping manage the change (Veras & Oliveira 2018). To achieve safe and quality healthcare, laws, systems like pay for performance, nursing management, and leadership remain essential in managing this change in the nursing practice now and in the future.
Current Healthcare Law
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) enactment brought about an essential change in numerous aspects of healthcare in the US. Via the legislation, this nation adopted huge steps towards enhancing care quality and controlling the rising healthcare-based costs. ACA sought to increase the care coordination in order to improve the quality of care, reducing the expenses accredited to several prescriptions, recurrent diagnostic testing, and needless hospitalizations (Eguia et al., 2018). It is a fact that the nurses are set to lead and be part of these particular healthcare changes occurring in this sector. As the sector changes from fee-for-service, provider-based systems to patient-centered care, the nursing practice and the nurse’s responsibilities and roles adapt to new patterns. Pay for Performance (P4P), value Based Purchasing (VBP), and shared saving arrangements are examples of the approaches supported by the ACA. Applying these particular approaches was meant to transform the nation’s health care into one that’s rewarding to the care providers based on the measurable patient’s quality results and experiences. Thus, the nursing practice and roles have to change to afford the outcomes. Generally, the changes in the healthcare sector require a new or improved set of skills on population care and wellbeing.
Moreover, the nursing practice should renew its focus on coordination of care, data analytics, quality improvement, and patient-centered care. The nurses are also required to cooperate with patients and their loved ones to comprehend their social environment and, therefore, acquire patient-defined healthcare outcomes. Its thus obvious that as a result of ACA, the nurses have to assume responsibilities and roles to enhance care advancing the health of the population members.
How Quality Measures and Pay for Performance Affect Patient Outcomes
Pay for performance ( p4p) is a reward system that recompences the care providers financially for their performance based on particular measures in the medical practice. It’s a performance-based compensation method that intends to enhance patients’ delivery and quality of health care services. As such, this particular model also reproves the care providers for attaining poor outcomes (Mathes et al., 2019). For example, a psychologist who has a patient who fails to quit smoking at the end of their sessions doesn’t obtain financial rewards related to their role. In some ways, pay for performance enhances patient results since it encourages the doctor and nurses to provide high-quality-based services to their clients to guarantee they get financial rewards related to their responsibilities and the criteria applied for the performance analysis. Yet, there’s a risk to poor client results associated with this particular reward system, where it inspires patient dumping. This idea means that the patients with more complex health care problems with high risks tend to be referred to the periphery since the doctors prefer to emphasize the cases that likely are to be effective to obtain their bonuses and rewards. This practice primes to adverse patient outcomes since those in the periphery suffer from a lack of appropriate and on time medical attention.
Nurses who find themselves in such conditions must consider using ethical principles like non-maleficence, which means to cause less harm. These nurses could encourage doctors to admit and attend to clients with complex medical problems by applying this principle. Furthermore, nurses must remind other practitioners concerning Hippocratic Oath that binds them to duty to save clients’ lives. Patient dumping is a severe violation of the Hippocratic oath, and nurses’ accountability must be to remind colleagues of these ethical bids.
Professional Nursing Leadership and Management Roles
An emerging nursing leadership role that addresses trends would become knowledge on nursing informatics and technology use in nursing. Emerging trending health care is defined as the technology application into the practice, requiring nurses to learn and acquire skills in technology. For example, surgical robots are used in surgery whereby surgical nurses must be conversant with them, so their responsibility in the surgical room will be fulfilling (Yip & Das 2019). Another instance is the usage of alert alarms at the bedside to inform practitioners when a patient leaves their bed not attended, thus minimizing incidents of patient falls. Nurse leaders are therefore incorporated to make sure that nursing teams acquire technological knowledge as part of their mission. The nurse leader and the manager make sure training on technology use is available to improve professionalism in the nursing team. This results in nurses promoting the health and safety of the patients. For example, bedside alert systems minimize patient falls and learning ways to manage the EHR encourages the patient’s health and boosts their levels of professionalism because they conform with the HIPAA rules
