Unit 2 Escalating Costs in Healthcare

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is inspired by the continuously rising healthcare cost, which threatens the healthcare consumers economically. Nurse practitioners will contribute to containing the rising cost of healthcare by assuming the provider roles and responsibilities within the health care workforce to deliver better quality care at affordable cost than other providers’ comparable services (Abrams, Nuzum, Zezza, Ryan, Kiszla & Guterman, 2015). For instance, a nurse practitioner can make a wide-reaching impact on the ACA model by providing quality, accessible, patient-centered, and affordable care. Advanced nurse practitioners have completed the graduate-level study and have the requisite clinical skills and knowledge to deliver direct quality patient care (Huang, 2015). Besides, nurse practitioners provide equivalent or superior quality of healthcare services compared to physicians in the prevention and wellness care, diagnosis, and management of chronic and common uncomplicated acute diseases (Abrams, Nuzum, Zezza, Ryan, Kiszla & Guterman, 2015).

 Also, access to healthcare services increases with the adoption of nurse practitioners. This addresses the influx of patients following the Affordable Care Act’s enactment, particularly in areas characterized by a shortage of physicians and a high number of underserved patient populations. The nurse practitioners can function as an alternative or complementary provider. Nurse practitioners playing alternative provider roles help address workforce deficiency while improving or maintaining quality care (Huang, 2015).  The swapping of nurse specialists for more costly providers brings down the cost of delivering care without diminishing quality (Abrams, M., Nuzum, Zezza, Ryan, Kiszla & Guterman, 2015). Input substitution offers a significant insight to attain the cost-effectiveness goal of healthcare reforms.

References

Abrams, M., Nuzum, R., Zezza, M., Ryan, J., Kiszla, J., & Guterman, S. (2015). The Affordable Care Act’s payment and delivery system reforms: A progress report at five years (The Commonwealth Fund Pub. 1816, Vol. 12). New York, NY: The Commonwealth Fund.

Huang, L. (2015). Cost-Effectiveness of Nurse Practitioners.

Discussion: Unit 3 the Aging Process

Discussion: Unit 4 Appropriate Prescribing

Subjective (S)

CC: 65 y/o F is a new patient who came to the facility requesting for her blood pressure to be checked.

References

Sumathi, M. (2015). A Study to Assess the Effectiveness of Family Focused Nursing Interventions on Knowledge and Functional Health Problems among Older Adults and their Caregivers at Selected Rural Community Setting (Doctoral dissertation, The Tamilnadu Dr. MGR Medical University, Chennai).

Zhao, Y. L., & Kim, H . (2015). Older adult inpatient falls in acute care hospitals: intrinsic, extrinsic, and environmental factors. Journal of gerontological nursing, 41(7), 29-43.