The Impact of the Affordable Care Act on the Health Care Workforce, Research Paper Example

In light of the recent debates over the requirement for all citizens of the United States to be covered by health insurance, it is important to discuss the changing legal and regulatory environment of health care. This event demonstrates that the choices that the federal and state governments make concerning health have a large impact on health care administration, and these impacts can possibly vary from state to state. Therefore, it is essential to determine how governmental actions impact the vast majority of citizens in addition to how these legal implications alter how hospitals are able to treat their patients, both in terms of staff practice and providing access to affordable care.

While changes that occur in the legal and regulatory environment of health care certainly impact the populace that require health care services, it is important to emphasize that this is primarily a consequence of how hospitals are required to modify their practices. Even though the requirement for residents in a majority of states to obtain some form of health coverage, it is difficult to determine the extent to which changes will need to occur in hospitals across the United States. However, predictions of these changes can be made based on an understanding of the requirements that were implemented as a consequence of the introduction of HIPAA.

When HIPAA was initially implemented, many hospitals were not making many patient protection security measures that we consider to be normal today. Even though many of these institutions attempted to do so prior to the enacting of the law, they did not have many of the resources necessary to do so in a maximally effective manner. Hospitals were required to adjust to these extreme changes by creating employee training programs that would help them understand how to properly store patient files, in addition to educating them about who can and cannot be provided with this information. After hospitals adjusted to this initial regulatory change, they were faced with the need to alter practice again after the introduction of a variety of expansions. In particular, hospitals that utilize technology were required to ensure that these systems were protected as well. Therefore, to adjust to regulatory changes, hospitals would benefit by looking to past changes to determine how to compensate for these new requirements and challenges.

One of the major concerns that arose when HIPAA was approved was that hospitals believed that it would be very expensive to enforce (Solove, 2013). Ultimately, the major challenge that occurred in the implementation of this regulation is that establishing the infrastructure to support it in each hospital was both expensive and time consuming. However, it is necessary to consider that the alternative to compliance would have involved facing relatively high fines and potential lawsuits, which would have been even more detrimental. In this situation, we can conclude that the government’s policy was not only protecting patients, but also the hospitals. Civilians had attempted to file a series of lawsuits against hospitals that had presented others with their information without prior consent, which caused a series of problems. Therefore, it was advantageous for the hospitals to comply, both to protect their image and to avoid unnecessary legal fees. This was also advantageous because it promoted a system of accountability.

It is expected that the Affordable Care Act will result in many of the same administrative issues that occurred while HIPAA was implemented. Of primary concern in this situation, is the design of educational programs that will help health care workers understand how the plan impacts them and their work. To ensure compliance, it is foremost essential that employees are made aware of the legal and regulatory changes in addition to the consequences for noncompliance. Since the employees are representatives of the hospital, it is their performance that will reflect the hospital as a whole, which is necessary to emphasize during the training process. Therefore, the implementation of regulatory changes like HIPAA and the Affordable Care Act will require that funds are invested in employee training programs to ensure that governmental fines will not be issued.

While it is essential for hospitals to avoid fines that are implemented as punishment for failure to comply with legal and regulatory alterations, it is also costly for hospitals to adjust to infrastructure changes that are necessary to ensure that fine avoidance is possible. The particular forms of insurance that hospitals are required to offer varies from state to state, but it is necessary for each hospital to consider how they will establish relationships with new insurance companies or maintain their relationships with the old in light of these changes. Hospitals may be required to work with new organizations, and it will take time to establish mutual agreements.

This change in health insurance will impact many large and small hospitals in terms of the profit that they are able to make per patient. While many large hospitals are able to accommodate these changes, it is necessary for all hospitals to reorganize their budget to ensure that they are sustainable. One of the major complaints against the Affordable Care Act is that hospitals in small rural areas are unable to keep all of their services available (Janney, 2014). It is important for the administration of these hospitals to readjust and determine where spending can be cut to prevent this from occurring. Since there will likely be more legal and regulatory changes in the future, it would be beneficial for hospitals to have a plan in place prior to the implementation of these rules that will help minimize impact.

Overall, legal and regulatory changes are often passed by the government in order to improve health care practice. As a whole, they are meant to bring more services to a greater amount of people. In practice, however, this does not always occur. Based on the current data that has been generated on the Affordable Care Act, it appears that larger hospitals are able to cope with these changes, while smaller hospitals are not. It is important to consider, however, that it will take time for hospitals to be able to develop fully effective plans to both support the Act in combination with other regulatory requirements, as the proposed plan is relatively new, so there is little data concerning how this could best be done. However, it is essential to determine how hospitals have adjusted to such regulation in the past in order to determine how they can best achieve sustainability.

The author of a recent paper explains that the Affordable Care Act requires an increase of health care workers that results in decreased satisfaction, longer wait times, and shortened time with caregivers (Anderson, 2014). It is certainly correct that a reduction of staff will cause these related problems, but a solution to this problem would be new legislation that encourages individuals to enter health care as a profession. Furthermore, hospital administrators can solve this problem by hiring a greater number of support staff, such as nurse assistants, to help take on more of the workload, thereby allowing physicians, physician assistants, and nurses to maximize the time they spend with their patients.

Others believe that the legal and regulatory environment of health care has contributed to the improvement of the field. A measurable way to determine the efficacy of a particular regulatory alteration is to determine the quantitative increase or decrease of a population’s health. Hospitals in Ohio, for example, have been encountering a greater number of patients, which is predicted to contribute to a general increase in health in the members of the community (O’Brien, 2014). It appears that this particular plan was successful because the hospitals were able to provide adequate staffing to accommodate for the regulatory changes, therefore demonstrating that many regulatory changes are for the benefit.

Aside from laws like HIPAA and the Affordable Care Act, it is necessary to focus on the impacts that federal agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has on health care. The FDA is responsible for enacting a series of policies that all hospitals must follow since they directly work with pharmaceuticals provided to patients. These laws change periodically, and it essential for the hospital administration to keep track of these regulatory changes. Ensuring that laws are met in accordance to FDA policy become especially important for hospitals that are involved in drug testing research.

It is important to consider that hospitals deal with a large quantity of drugs on a daily basis, and this requires the ability of health care professionals to appropriately prescribe patients the drugs they need in the correct dose and quantity in addition to checking to ensure that there will not be any unanticipated drug interactions. In hospitals that participate in drug studies, this obligation also involves correctly randomizing patients to the experimental or placebo groups. Therefore, this demonstrates hospital administration must provide oversight into a wide variety of regulatory operations. While it can be generally assumed that the health care professionals at the given institution were well trained, it is important for the staff to remind them of new policies and how it will impact their ability to treat their patients. Of particular interest would be knowledge of banned drugs or new evidence of contraindications. Furthermore, it would be beneficial for the health care team to implement training programs to ensure compliance with FDA regulations to ensure that all aspects of these statutes are well-understood and that the hospital is not at risk for fines (FDA.gov, n.d.).

Ultimately, it is essential for hospitals to comply with legal and regulatory changes, even if they believe that it will be challenging to do so. It is the responsibility of the health care administration team to determine how best to make these alterations work for both the hospital staff and their patients. Ways to ensure that compliance can be met is by implementing employee training, altering staffing, and restructuring the budget. Employee training programs should be designed in a manner that programs that allows the administration to confirm employee understanding of the regulatory change and be repeated with frequency. Furthermore, staffing should be done in a manner in which health care support staff, such as technicians and nursing assistants, are hired preferentially over nurses and physicians so that lower level responsibilities can be taken over completely by these individuals, thereby saving funds. The budget should also be organized effectively to ensure that all resources are being allocated in an ideal manner and that there is no waste. It is essential for hospitals to do so in a manner that does not limit the quantity and quality of services that are offered to patients.

In conclusion, to ensure that hospitals are adequate prepared for legal and regulatory changes that can occur, it is helpful to examine how hospitals have effectively adjusted to these changes in the past. Utilizing a strong hospital as a model can help other health care teams determine which actions to take in light of these alterations. It is not the responsibility of the hospital to determine whether the changes will be advantageous or disadvantageous, but to simply ensure that the care that is offered to patients will be strengthened in light of the new policies. Previous policy implementations, such as HIPAA and those issued by the FDA, can be examined to determine the infrastructure and staffing needs that changed before and after it’s enacting to analyze what changes were necessary in addition to the positive and negative impacts it had on health care overall. This information can be extrapolated in order to gain a greater understanding of the changes that the Affordable Care Act will bring, in addition to any future health care legislation that may be passed. Overall, it is the responsibility of hospitals to always be prepared for these changes.

References

Anderson A. (2014). The Impact of the Affordable Care Act on the Health Care Workforce. The Heritage Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/03/the-impact-of-the-affordable-care-act-on-the-health-care-workforce

FDA.gov. (n.d.). Regulatory Information. Retrieved from  http://www.fda.gov/RegulatoryInformation/Guidances/ucm125126.htm

Janney C. (2014). Small rural hospitals face big changes under the Affordable Care Act. Journal  Star. Retrieved from http://www.pjstar.com/article/20140125/News/140129435

O’Brien D. (2014). Affordable Care Act Has Healthy Effect on Hospitals. The Business Journal. Retrieved from http://businessjournaldaily.com/health-care/affordable-care-act-has-healthy-effect-hospitals-2014-11-12

Solove DJ. (2013). HIPAA Turns 10: Analyzing the Past, Present and Future Impact. Journal of AHIMA, 84(4): 22-28. Retrieved from http://library.ahima.org/xpedio/groups/public/documents/ahima/bok1_050149.hcsp?dDocName=bok1_050149