Historical Healthcare Challenges
Historical Healthcare Challenges – Write a 2000-2500 word essay addressing each of the following points/questions. Support your ideas with at least three (3) scholarly citations in your essay. Use strict APA guidelines to format the paper. The cover page and reference page do not count towards the minimum word amount and an abstract and table of contents are not necessary and if included are not part of the overall word count.
Healthcare challenges have changed dramatically in the last ten years. Provide a discussion of how healthcare delivery has changed. Include the role of nursing leadership in the changes. Include a discussion on the likely role of nursing leadership in future challenges.
Sample Answer
Historical Health Care Challenges
Over the past ten years, the health care system has drastically changed, leading to new challenges in the field. Examples of factors that have brought about the challenges and change are; the changing US population, new technologies in the industry, and the influential IOM report. Legislation has also played an important part in making changes in the health care industry. For instance, the Affordable Care Act of 2010 brought about a substantial change in patient and providers experience (Morgan, 2020). These factors, among others, have caused new problems which the health care industry is working towards keeping up with. This paper will discuss changes in health care delivery over the last ten years, including nursing leadership role in the changes and the possible role of nursing leadership in the future challenges.
Changes That Have Occurred
Advancement in Use of Technology in Healthcare
Technology in health care has drastically changed in the last ten years, particularly with the coming of smartphones. Health care providers can communicate among themselves using smartphones to discuss about patient care. They can also exchange patients’ information using the phones, which has facilitated the flow of work in nursing. Wearable devices to screen patients’ health have also been discovered and changed the way society perception on care provision. Additionally, the use of mobile app for documentation of patient data has also changed the functioning of the healthcare system.
Additionally, Technology has increased options in telemedicine. The American Journal of Critical Care report states that telemedicine has changed how patient care is delivered in many intensive care units in the country. The report further says that there were approximately 45 tele ICUs in the United States with monitoring capacity, which impacted about 12% of ICU patients in the country (Kleinpell et al., 2016). This led to more efficiency in monitoring tendencies of vital signs, providing medical management, identifying unstable psychological status, improving the safety of patients, and preventing falls.
The advancement in healthcare technology, especially in information technology, such as the adoption of electronic health records, has brought about the lack of confidentiality and privacy for patients’ information. Additionally, such problems as legislation gaps, failure to trust the health care system, and lack of patient control over their electronic data have been introduced to the health care system by the increased Technology. Moreover, the increased use of technologies in health care means more expenses which the patients also incur, especially when enrolled in telemedicine services.
Affordable Care Act (ACA)
After the activation of ACA, there has been an increase in health care access. ACA led to a statistically noteworthy increase in access of healthcare at the sample mean pre-treatment uninsured rates in both states with Medicaid extension and those without. The states that adopted Medicaid expansion experienced a 9.5% surge in the insurance coverage. 3.4% of the people in these states reported having a primary care physician, and there was a 5.6% decrease in the chance of people reporting that cost was an obstacle to getting healthcare (Han et al., 2015). Generally, ACA increased patient insurance coverage and reduced healthcare disparities between different races and ethnicities.
