Status of One of the IOM Recommendations
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has introduced multiple changes to the healthcare system of the United States, supposedly improving access to health-related services. The regulation allowed implementing improvements at a range of levels, including legal and financial ones (“The Affordable Care Act turns six,” 2016). The specified changes have affected the focus and scope of modern nursing, as the Delaware Board of Nursing (2010) reports.
Specifically, the need for “reconceptualizing the role of nurses within the context of the entire workforce, the shortage, societal issues, and current and future technology” (p. xiii) appeared. When viewing the identified IOM through the lens of the current situation in nursing and healthcare, one has to admit that understaffing remains problematic in the nursing setting. The observed issue persists due to the lack of opportunities for providing nurses with educational options and chances for receiving appropriate benefits for nurses.
Indeed, a closer look at some of the modern realities of nursing will indicate the need to address an increasing shortage of nurses in most healthcare organizations. The lack of nurses in hospitals and nursing organizations affects the quality of care, leading to a rise in medical errors, patient dissatisfaction, and negative outcomes (Nantsupawat et al., 2017). Therefore, the current status of the specified IOM recommendation leaves much to be desired.
From the perspective of consumers, the specified situation reduces the willingness to adopt the proposed healthy behaviors. Other health professionals, in turn, start viewing interdisciplinary cooperation with nurses as barely possible due to the low level of professional and conflict management skills. Finally, organizations suffer significantly from the specified problem since their performance rates drop drastically, causing a drop in patient satisfaction rates and the subsequent devastating reduction in their revenues.
ACA: Pros and Cons
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has introduced a range of opportunities for improving care, yet it has also created a range of challenges for maintaining its quality high. Therefore, an overview of the positive and negative aspects of ACA is overdue. Although the current health politics seems to align with most of the aspects of ACA, certain changes might need to be made for the regulation to have the expected effect on the well-being of Amerian citizens.
For instance, the 2016 report indicates that the opportunities for protecting customers’ rights have been missed, leading to the infringement upon the rights of healthcare service buyers, instead (Jost, 2018). Thus, it is critical to align alterations in the healthcare system with the improvement of the existing economic principles so that patients could feel secure and acquire the products that they need to maintain good health (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, n.d.).
Therefore, when determining what is fundamentally wrong with ACA and what prevents from integrating it into every domain of the current healthcare and political environments, one must mention a shift in the current framework for legal and economic relationships (Ho, 2018). Specifically, the state has to ensure that buyers are provided with irrefutable rights. The specified step will allow avoiding the situations in which the ACA principles are abused by organizations.
For this purpose, the U.S. government will have to introduce multiple changes on the state and federal levels. Integrating different areas of economy and finances will also be required. The specified alterations are likely to take at least five years for the key changes to settle. In the specified process, a nurse will play the role of an educator and mediator between the healthcare institutions and the representatives of the economic, legal, and financial fields.
Furthermore, opportunities for providing nurses with the required educational and financial options have to be created. As a result, the rates of turnover in healthcare facilities will drop, and the understaffing issue will be eventually addressed. Furthermore, the proposed step will help improve the quality of nursing services. Thus, the existing system for providing care to U.S. citizens will be upgraded.
References
The Affordable Care Act turns six. (2016). Web.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services. (n.d.). Affordable Care Act: Working with states to protect consumers. Web.
Delaware Board of Nursing. (2010). The future of nursing: Leading change, advancing health. Washington DC: The National Academies Press.
Ho, V. (2018). Refinement of the Affordable Care Act. Annual Review of Medicine, 69, 19-28. Web.
Jost, T. (2018). The Affordable Care Act under the Trump administration. Web.
Nantsupawat, A., Kunaviktikul, W., Nantsupawat, R., Wichaikhum, O. A., Thienthong, H., & Poghosyan, L. (2017). Effects of nurse work environment on job dissatisfaction, burnout, intention to leave. International Nursing Review, 64(1), 91-98. Web.