ESSAY: Health Care Reform: Is it Beneficial to NPs?

• Discuss your views on health care reform and how it will affect NPs.
• How will NPs be reimbursed under this plan?
o Include rationales for your assertions.

ANSWER

Health Care Reform: Is it Beneficial to NPs?

The Affordable Care Act is a U.S statute that emphasizes on care coordination, teamwork, value, and prevention. This has helped NPs to contribute a great deal of skills and knowledge in primary care. The nursing profession is therefore contributing greatly by impacting patient safety and improving quality of care through providing affordable, patient-centered, accessible, and quality care (Altman, Butler & Shern, 2016). NPs are the fastest growing primary care providers. They are increasingly offering preventive care to all citizens, which is ….

Over the last five years, approximately 27M Americans have benefited from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) because they have gained health insurance coverage. Although the widespread coverage of health reforms is beneficial to the citizens, NPs, and the government, this trend has contributed to one unfortunate challenge: It has exacerbated shortage of primary care physicians (Archibald & Fraser, 2013). In addition, the most challenging of these is the regulations of NPs scope-of-practice posed by the hospitals, state licensing boards, and Medicaid agencies. In fact, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts that the United States will experience …

It is evident that the current number of NPs may not be able to meet the rising demands resulting from the recent health care reforms. That is the reason why health policy experts are encouraging both the state and federal governments to broaden responsibilities of nurse practitioners (NPs) in the health care settings.  While the health reforms put significant strain on primary care providers, they are ….

References

Altman, S. H., Butler, A. S., & Shern, L. (Eds.). (2016). Assessing progress on the institute of medicine report the future of nursing. National Academies Press.

Archibald, M., & Fraser, K. (2013). The potential for nurse practitioners in health care reform. Journal of professional nursing, 29(5), 270-275. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2012.10.002

Poghosyan, L., & Aiken, L. H. (2015). Maximizing nurse practitioners’ contributions to primary care through organizational changes. The Journal of ambulatory care management, 38(2), 109-117.