Introduction Health care provided by primary care providers is essential to chronic disease control and prevention, as well as acute care visits. Regular checkups and screenings provide practitioners sufficient data to detect common conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, and hyperlipidemia in their patients. Without routine visits, conditions such as these would go undetected, and therefore untreated, and progress into more serious conditions. Within a primary care provider’s practice, patients have access to preventative screenings, immunizations, sick care, and reliability of a practitioner whom they trust. Patients who regularly visit a primary care provider also have lower overall healthcare costs and are more satisfied with …show more content…
The ACA also allows for more graduate medical education training positions and increased scholarships and loans for studying health practitioners. Community health centers have almost doubled their capacity since the ACA has come into effect. To attract doctor into a career in primary care at these centers, the ACA funds the National Health Service Corps to pay up to $120,000 in student loans for each doctor for giving four years of service (Mercer, 2013). Federally qualified health centers in Missouri receive federal funding to deliver care to patients regardless of their ability to pay. They increase access to healthcare, and therefore improve health outcomes. These centers have even been proven to perform just as well as non FQHC providers on measures of quality of care, access to care, continuity of care, and preventative services (County Health Rankings, 2016).
While the ACA is providing funding to the future practitioners who work in primary care, the number of new patients with health insurance, along with the aging population, offset the benefit of increasing primary care providers. The imbalance has led to longer wait times and shorter visits. Even with insurance, due to the lack of access to health care, patients are still ending up in emergency rooms for untreated illnesses that progressed into more serious conditions (Christensen, 2013). With poor reimbursements from patient with government insurance, primary care providers
Department of Health & Human Services, 2015). These provisions were aimed at providing new protections for health insurance consumers, lowering the cost and improving the quality of health care, and increasing access to health insurance and affordable care. While many of the ACA’s provisions had implications for community health centers, the ones that impacted them most directly were the expansion of Medicaid and availability of subsidized health insurance through exchanges and the creation of the Community Health Center Fund, which allocated $11 billion in new funding through fiscal year 2015 for operations, capital projects, and expansion of services to enable community health centers to serve an anticipated 20 million newly insured patients (National Association of Community Health Centers, n.d.; “Valley Community Healthcare,” 2015).
In Watership Down I think the theme of the book is leadership. Leadership played a big role in the book. Hazel was the leader of the group and he was tested throughout his adventures. Everyone leads differently and has different ways to. Just like how every coach coaches their team differently, but those that make the better decisions win the game. For example Bigwig may be more strong than Hazel, but Hazel's ability to think and make the smart decisions never failed the group which makes him and much more better leader. Hazel even risked his life to save the rabbits at one time so people respect Hazel and look up to him. Hazel faced many problems such as Woundwort. Although it seemed it was the end for Hazel and his group, he thought of a
“Still Separate, Still Unequal”, written by Jonathan Kozol, describes the reality of urban public schools and the isolation and segregation the students there face today. Jonathan Kozol illustrates the grim reality of the inequality that African American and Hispanic children face within todays public education system. In this essay, Kozol shows the reader, with alarming statistics and percentages, just how segregated Americas urban schools have become. He also brings light to the fact that suburban schools, with predominantly white students, are given far better funding and a much higher quality education, than the poverty stricken schools of the urban neighborhoods.
The primary care safety net, which is the first-line of defense, is provided by these 3 cohorts, and while 2/3 of their patients are uninsured – it only represents 8% of the total uninsured population in the area. Expansion is a huge need here.
The Affordable Care Act has drastically changed reimbursement (and subsequently patient care) for better and worse. While healthcare has become more accessible, quality of care and doctor-patient interaction has decreased. Statistically, hospitals have seen an improvement in compensation, but this doesn’t include private practice and outpatient centers. Government-run healthcare is slow healthcare, and to make up for this physicians have to work faster and longer. My mom’s work as a physical therapy assistant has her working 10-12 hour days in the off season months of summer, and my own work as a secretary at her office opened my eyes to the consolidation of providers to get better reimbursements, which leads to fewer private practices. While
The Obamacare/ACA, might have helped numerous of individuals in acquiring health care, but the health professionals are facing a shortage of reimbursement difference for their services. As a result, Hospitals and healthcare providers were force to layoff personal and come up with innovative solutions. This point is proven by the renowned author, Amy Anderson by stating as follows: “The American health care framework has had shortages of personnel for quite some time and would not be prepared to give the adequate service to this amount of patients in need of medical attention. Training new professional health services personnel could take years. There is a shortage of graduates from medical and nursing schools. Doctors, nurses and health professional are sharing responsibilities prospective patients will face a longer wait time”. (Anderson, 2014)
The aim of the ACA is to provide affordable health care to all Americans, but it still leaves some issues unaddressed that will impact the access to health care. Covino (n.d.), “Though the intentions of the legislation are good, the Affordable Care Act does little to improve the actual health care delivery system” (para.1, page 2). According to the American Medical Association, we are facing an increasing Physician shortage. As of 2010 we faced a shortfall of 13,700 physicians, the estimate is that number will increase to 62,900 by 2015, 91,500 by 2020, and 130,600 by 2025 (Krupa, n.d.), with primary care taking the largest impact. Health Care coverage will be of no benefit if there are no doctors to treat the patients. An example of this occurred in 2002 when Thailand’s’ “30 Bhat Scheme” added (CNN n.d.) “14 million people to the country’s health care system, resulting in long waits and subpar service” (Your health is covered, but who is going to treat you?) Several factors contribute to the physician shortage. Many physicians are reaching the age of retirement, the Association of American Medical Colleges estimates nearly 15 million physicians will be eligible for Medicare in the coming years (CNN n.d.). The increasing cost of malpractice insurance also deters many from pursuing a career in medicine, and is forcing some doctors to retire. Also contributing to the physician shortage is a lack of spots in residency programs. “In 2011, more than 7,000 were left
Many chronic conditions can greatly affect an individual physically with some sort of chronic pain, mentally with depression, and socially by rendering them unable to work (Harris & Wallace, 2012). These effects can thus put strain on families and society as more individuals suffer from various chronic conditions. In recent years, many of those working as health care professionals, such as primary care providers (PCPs) are affected greatly by the widespread prevalence of chronic disease in the US. For PCPs, approximately 75% of their patients schedule visits for multiple chronic illnesses (Zamosky, 2013). This has caused a shift in health care to focus on tertiary prevention in limiting comorbidities and issues associated with chronic diseases. PCPs face challenges by having less time to treat chronic disease because they only having have approximately eighteen minutes to deal with on average seven issues for each patient (Zamosky, 2013). Since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was implemented, insurance companies can no longer deny coverage or charge more for people with preexisting conditions which includes those with chronic diseases (ObamaCare Facts, n.d.). The ACA helps people with chronic illnesses to obtain insurance; however, since these people are insured
Health System Reform in the United States: Impact of Rising Premiums and Opportunities for System Improvements to Enhance Access to Healthcare Services
The Affordable Healthcare Act is expected to increase medical coverage to include an additional 30 million people. What has become clearer is that just because coverage was expanded does not mean an expansion of actual care. “When Congress enacted the national health law, it unleashed a potential tsunami of newly insured patients, flooding a delivery system that was already strained and fragile. The American health care infrastructure has had workforce shortages for decades and is not prepared to meet such a vast influx of patients effectively or efficiently” (Anderson, 2014). It takes years to train nurse and doctors of which the healthcare act does not take into consideration. What ends up happening is
The U.S. health care system faces challenges that indicate that the people urgently need to be reform. Attention has rightly focused on the approximately 46 million Americans who are uninsured, and on the many insured Americans who face rapid increases in premiums and out-of-pocket costs. As Congress and the Obama administration consider ways to invest new funds to reduce the number of Americans without insurance coverage, we must simultaneously address shortfalls in the quality and efficiency of care that lead to higher costs and to poor health outcomes. To do otherwise casts doubt on the feasibility and sustainability of coverage expansions and also ensures that our current health care system will continue to have large gaps even for those with access to insurance coverage.
The Issue is that physician payments in Medicare and Medicaid, are already well below the prevailing rates in the private sector. On the average, physicians who take Medicare are paid 81 percent of private payment. Doctors who take Medicaid are paid 56 percent of private payment. This type of payment plan (Obamacare) has resulted in access problems for Medicare patients, and the even lower Medicaid payments have already caused serious access problems for lower-income people and made hospital emergency room overcrowded. During recent research study on the The Affordable Care Act they found that 67 percent of primary care physicians said that under current laws and conditions new Medicaid enrollees will not be able to find “suitable primary care
The Affordable Care Act set forth millions of dollars to address the problems and concerns that are associated with existing physicians shortages. The Affordable Care Act also has provisions that are aimed to improve the education, ongoing training as well as to help with the recruitment of nursing, physicians, doctors as well as other health care personnel. In addition, there are provisions in place that help to increase workforces’ cultural competency, enhance faculty training of healthcare professionals, and diversity. The provisions also play a vital role because of the fact they are put into place to examine innovative reimbursement and care delivery models that highlight primary care services value and offer in improvement in the patient care coordination.
In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, concerns have been raised regarding the Republicans’ desire to repeal the Affordable Care Act, informally referred to as Obamacare. The ACA was originally enacted into law in 2010 and has been annually provisioned to expand its ability to not only improve the nation’s access to health care, but also to reform the health care delivery system. Through the ACA, private and public insurance has become more available and affordable, new health care delivery models have improved quality of care, and several workforce policies have made primary care a more desirable profession for medical students.
One of the major challenges facing the health delivery system today is governmental policies; the availability of doctors for the increasing number of patients. Currently the United States spends approximately $2.2 trillion on healthcare (Sayles, 2013). Healthcare has become multifaceted, this includes more specialists for chronic health care issues and the inclusion on technologies in the delivery of healthcare (DeVry University, 2015). The Affordable Care Act was developed to improve people’s access to health insurance and healthcare in the United States. However, this policy change enables millions more individual to get healthcare without and an immediate increase in the number of physicians and specialists. 2.8 million more healthcare