IOM Report Discussion
The four recommendations proposed by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) produced a considerable impact on nurses and nursing organization across the U.S. The IOM report called The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health identified the four major issues in nursing that need to be addressed in the nearest future. Among them are: the usage of the full potential of nursing education, aspiration for higher education levels, interprofessional collaboration within health care system, and creation of information management infrastructure for better workforce planning and policy making (Institute of Medicine, 2010).
In Florida, the local action coalition took several steps to address those issues. In 2013, the education action team formed as a result of a Statewide Implementation Grant (SIP) conducted a survey among employers in health care, creating a database with relevant information regarding practices of leadership and mentorship to address the fourth topic set out by the IOM (Florida Center for Nursing, n.d.). Florida Blue Foundation created a grant program for nurses in search of a higher degree. In addition to that, Legislative workgroups were formed the same year to discuss and develop advanced nursing policies. Regional collaboration meetings for health care professionals were held in 2015 in order to raise awareness of the Florida action coalition’s work (Florida Center for Nursing, n.d.).
Additional nursing education grant programs were established by the Florida Blue Foundation to address multiple issues with education level, leadership, and nursing research (Florida Center for Nursing, n.d.). Overall, the Florida action coalition seems to work hard to achieve progress in the four areas stated by IOM. All four issues are being addressed by professionals and organizations with wide financial support being in place. Therefore, the state’s progress towards IOM goals achievement can be characterized as considerable.
ACA and AHCA Comparison
American Health Care Act (AHCA) presented by Trump’s administration and Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) demonstrate different visions of the parties on the role of government, rights, and responsibilities of citizens in the sphere of health care. Whereas ACA is set to achieve a nearly universal access to health care, AHCA strives to limit federal spendings and optimize the resource usage. The failure of the first version of AHCA was attributed to the alleged jeopardy, in which it would have put the insurance system in the U.S. One of the main reasons was substantial limitations proposed for ACA including less federal financing and extended privileges of states for discontinuation of service for those having ACA insurance (Hirsch et al., 2017). In addition, it did not address the major problem concerning all the U.S. states such as the increase in health care costs.
Presently, under ACA the state provides subsidized health insurance for the family of four if its annual income is below 97,000 dollars. Under AHCA that limit was raised to 150,000 (Hirsch et al., 2017). Another difference is that individual insurance that was eventually introduced to ACA was absent in AHCA. In addition to that, ACA ranged subsidies by income level, whereas AHCA initially proposed to substitute them for the age-based system, where the amount of benefit increased with age. The reform proposed by Trump’s administration was set to allocate the 15 billion from the Patient and State Stability Fund to address multiple issues including provision of assistance to high-risk patients, widening access to prevention services, increasing insurance coverage, and so forth (Hirsch et al., 2017).
References
Florida Center for Nursing. (n.d.) Florida action coalition 2010-2017. Web.
Hirsch, J. A., Rosenkrantz, A. B., Nicola, G. N., Harvey, H. B., Duszak, R., Silva, E., … Manchikanti, L. (2017). Contextualizing the first-round failure of the AHCA: Down but not out. Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery, 9(6), 595–600. Web.
Institute of Medicine. (2010). The Future of nursing leading change, advancing health: Report recommendations. Web.