The Health Of The Healthcare Industry

According to Health Resources and Services Administration If the system for providing primary care in 2020 were to stay fundamentally the same as today, there will be an estimated shortage of 20,400 primary care physicians ("Projecting the Supply and Demand for Primary Care Practitioners Through 2020," n.d.). In addition this projection doesn’t include the decreasing number of people perusing the medical degree and the baby boomers retiring form this filed of science. In the hand we are experiencing a significant increase in NPs and PAs. Considering this projected shortage, which is actually a very frightening situation the increasing number of NPs and PAs, can effectively be integrated; we could reduce the number of physician shortage by over 69 percent in 2020.

The new federal health-care law has raised the stakes for hospitals and schools already struggling to train more doctors. Evidence suggests there won’t be enough number of doctors to treat the newly insured millions under the ACA. At current graduation and training rates, America faces a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. The greatest demand will be for primary-care physicians. Emergency rooms, the only choice for patients who can't find care elsewhere, may grow even more with longer wait times under the new health law. That might come as a surprise to those who thought getting 32 million more people covered by health insurance would ease ER

The purpose of this paper is to address the issue of the physician shortage in Unite State of America. This is more exactly delineate as a gap between the population’s demand for primary care services and the capacity of primary care, as currently delivered, respond to the demand. According to Nile (2015), physician is person trained and licensed to practice medicine or an individual with a Doctor degree in medicine. Physicians play a central role in health care delivery. Although now, physicians are sharing patient care responsibility with a team of Physician assistant (PA) and Nurse Practitioner (NP), especially with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act implementations. The PA and NP are alternative to medical doctor or physician

The healthcare system in America started as a predominantly volunteer system where patients were required to pay little to nothing for treatment. Since it began, the healthcare industry has seen tremendous changes that have transformed it into a business entity which has operations like financial management, strategic planning and functional specialties to keep the industry viable. The industry is one of the largest in the country employing 15 million people with a projected increase of jobs with 3 million jobs annually. As the healthcare industry continues growing, services and personnel are changing, and various dynamics are coming into play to accommodate changes (Smith, Saunders, Stuckhardt, & McGinnis, 2013).

However, prior to the existence of the ACA, the American healthcare system left a lot to be desired and still today leaves room for improvement. The basic issues underlying efforts to improve the United States (US) health care system remain, as they have for decades, concerns for costs, access, and quality (Sultz, 2006). Even though knowledge, technology, and

“A Council on Graduate Medical Education document anticipated that there had, “been 242,500 PCPs within the United States in 2010, and nearly 25% (55,000) of them aged ≥56 years. The common reimbursement for PCPs is approximately only 55% that of other scientific specialties, main to a cumulative lifetime internet income gap of about $ 3.5 million per primary care physician” (Collins, 2012). This makes being a primary care physician less desirable since the incentive is so low. A similar associated issue is the very low percent of medical institution students who are choosing to become primary care physicians. Another issue is that about 59 million Americans live in regions with health professional shortages. Shortages in a number of other primary care healthcare specialists exist, especially with nurses. “In 2014, US schools turned away almost 70,000 qualified nursing applicants because they didn’t have the capacity for them. In fact, almost two-thirds of surveyed nursing schools cited faculty shortages as the reason for not accepting all qualified applicants into nursing baccalaureate programs” (Erickson, 2016). This greatly contributes to the shortage of nurses if they cannot receive proper education and training to join the workforce. Many healthcare service professionals shortages are in regions within

Moreover, insurers are mandated to cover and provide certain preventive services such as vaccinations without additional charge. The ACA is projected to provide an estimated 32 million uninsured Americans access to health care insurance resulting in more people seeking medical care. As a result of this policy, the demand for nurses is projected to grow at a higher rate (Spetz, 2014). In addition, nurses are confronted with critical changes in health care such as providing efficient and high quality care while keeping the cost affordable. According to Vincent & Reed (2014), the policy plans to enhance the role and expand opportunities in nursing. The law provides funding to expand the number of advance practice nurses and providers. Some experts claim that the growing number of people seeking medical care will not become an issue with the projected nursing workforce due to the many opportunities for expansion as part of the ACA’s provision. In another view, the shortage of Registered Nurses (RN) is projected to intensify as the Baby Boomers age and the need for health care rises in addition to the increasing number of uninsured people that have access to health insurance. Therefore, the increase of patient load due to the extension of health care coverages to millions of previously uninsured people as a result of the ACA will be unmanageable for nurses.

Economics and health were two independent subjects in high school, but nothing is truly independent in the real world. Supply and demand, one of the principals of economics, perfectly sums up the problem with primary health care. The supply of primary care physicians, also known as PCPs, is lacking by almost 52,000 providers to be able to fulfill the demand of the public within the next couple of years, and this isn’t a new issue (Petterson et al., 2012). Since the 1970’s there has been a shortage of PCPs, and it is becoming a bigger problem as the population grows and ages (Wilensky, 2014). The number of PCPs currently in the United States is not enough to meet the needs of the population. The view of primary care physicians and their salaries need to change in the U.S. to encourage more medical students to enter this much-needed field of practice. This paper will explore the reasons behind the shortage of PCPs and how the Affordable Care Act and the American Nurses Association are addressing this issue.

Recent changes in health insurance coverage and the changing face of the patient population have converged to create a unique healthcare marketplace, rife with opportunities not only for patients but for providers as well. With the passing of the Affordable Health Care Act, 32 million Americans who previously could not afford health care insurance coverage became eligible to purchase affordable healthcare. These patients, therefore, will be able to receive services they have perhaps needed but were previously unable to afford. (Furlow, 2012) The American population includes 75.4 million Baby Boomers, who will be enjoying the retirement years but will be managing chronic health conditions such as COPD, heart disease, and diabetes. (American Hospital Association, 2007) While this increased patient population seeking healthcare services is causing concern for a problematic shortage of physicians, (Raines, 2014) it also heralds new and exciting solutions which include opening doors for midlevel providers, such as Nurse Practitioners and Physician’s Assistants, to succeed as primary healthcare providers in the world of a rapidly changing healthcare system.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) introduced by the Obama administration is expected to provide health insurance benefits to approximately 30 million Americans. Nonetheless, coverage expansion is not synonymous with actual care expansion, and this dissimilarity is becoming much clearer. When the national health law was passed by Congress, it unleashed tsunami mayhem of insured new patients and a consequent flooding of a system of deliver that was already fragile and strained. For decades now, the American health care system has experienced exponential workforce shortages and is hardly prepared to meet the huge influx of patients efficiently or effectively. Successful training of new nurses, physicians as well as other health care professionals takes several years or eve decades. With less graduates from medical and nursing schools and an increase in innovation for sharing responsibilities and roles among doctors, nurses and other medical personnel, patients and families will be susceptible to extended wait times, extreme difficulty in accessing healthcare providers, shorter time with providers, further costs and other new frustrations with health care delivery (Anderson, 2014).

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.

Despite the growth of the health care delivery system in the United States, economic and social forces have impacted the physician and nursing workforce. Impending retirements of older physicians and nurses, declining physician working hours, nursing deficits, aging populations and population health have and will continue to cause significant shortages in physician and nursing staffing (AAMC, 2017). The demand for care and reform for population health, supply will be greatly needed. These projected shortages will have a profound impact on the delivery of care, patient access, and economic effect. Currently, the country has approximately nine-hundred thousand practicing, full-time physicians, about half specialists and the other primary care

Shortage of healthcare workers in US is a well-known phenomenon. With the baby-boomer generation coming to its retirement the acute shortage of talented workforce is a major challenge before the US health care. There are a number of trends in health care that are currently affecting the workforce dynamics. The use of technology in health care has increased over time and increasingly health care organizations are adopting new technologies to make their services better. It is an important trend that has also affected the health care workforce. Increased use of Information Technology in the health care organizations has led to related changes in the composition of the workforce too. But not just this, there are also a number of other

Health care expenditures have risen drastically in the United States during the past 30 years. Much of the growth in health care spending can be linked to modifiable population risk factors such as obesity, which in turn gives rise to diseases. Rising disease prevalence and new medical treatments account for nearly two-thirds of the rise in spending. (see Per capita spending exhibit 2) It is for this reason that I feel healthcare reforms should focus on health promotion, cost-effective use of medical care, and public health interventions.

Before we can begin the staffing plan process, we must first answer a few questions in order to find what it is we are looking for. For example, how much time do we want the individual to dedicate to the job? Do we want full-time, or part-time employees? What is the length of service that we are