work
To complete this assignment, you will need to access to the following databases: CINAHL, MEDLINE, Cochrane Library, and the Joanna Briggs Institute. I
know you can do this work, so don’t go short cut and mess it up. Research each heading and complete.
See the article I attached. Find more articles to complete to complete this work.
As a writer, you should first write a good introduction for each topic briefly say the story you about to tell, the subjects you going to talk about.
You then tall this story by each subject.
You summarize all the story for conclusion
Don’t do lazy work no beginning , no end. Don’t be repetitive to fill the page
Don’t copy old work
Don’t give me somebody’s work. I will know.
Grammer has got to improve. I end up deleting all work in the process of editing. Most time work below college level. I mean it. And sometimes it can be accepted at masters level.
1: Distinguish selected factors affecting U.S. healthcare delivery systems and organizations
Introduction: Find good article
1.
2.
3.
2: Examine factors affecting healthcare finance and payment systems
Introduction
1.
2.
3.
3: Evaluate selected healthcare policy models and frameworks
Intrduction: Find good article
Suptopics
1.
2.
3.
4
5
6
7
4: Formulate strategies for coalition building and health advocacy
Intrduction: Find good article
1.
2.
3.
5: Synthesize selected policy analyses affecting advanced practice nursing
Intrduction: Find good article
1.
2.
3.
Inclusion of all story work
Examples
Increased health insurance coverage
Payer pressures to reduce costs
• Medicare physician services payments are based on fee schedule (Resource Based Relative Value Scale, or RBRVS).
Change from “reasonable cost” to prospective payment system based on diagnosis related groups for hospital inpatient services begins under Medicare
Interview conducted and issues highlighted. Find issues in the policy or issues you can associate to the yellow highlighted in box
High staffing turnover
Diabetics patients are noncompliant with medication is more predominant
The facility denies any safety concerns
There is high staff turnover
No diabetics education protocol or policy in
place for the old and newly diagnosed diabetics
Facility denies and sentinel event
Yes
The relationship is good. Staff are not expected to take short cuts
Management is open for suggestions or improvements
Examples:
Staff members are not mistreated
Electronic health Record is not in use, No plans for one. Still using paper medical records
No further issues
Diabetic education for noncompliant diabetics patients
Very good role model
The nurse leader will be good preceptor
Transformational leadership
yes
Category
Points
%
Description
Introduction
Introduces the interview, purpose of the interview, and provides rationale for engaged interview process.
To determine existing practice problem within the organization
Description of Policy Issue
Please discuss the organizational assessment and how you decided upon this particular policy. Also include any subtopics regarding selected healthcare policy issue. Use examples from the interview that support your assertions and relevant examples from your practice situation.
Presentation of Policy Analysis
Include eight subtopics regarding selected healthcare policy analysis pathway. Summarize your subtopics using examples from the interview that support your assertions as well as relevant examples from your practice situation.
Conclusion
An effective conclusion identifies the main ideas and major conclusions from the body of your report. Minor details are left out. Summarize the benefits of the selected policy analysis to nursing practice.
Clarity of writing
Use of standard English grammar and sentence structure. No spelling errors or typographical errors. Organized around the required components using appropriate headers.
APA format
All information taken from another source, even if summarized, must be appropriately cited in the report (including citation of interview) and listed in the references using APA (6th ed.) format:
1. Document setup
2. Title and reference pages
3. Citations in the text and references.
Total:
250
100%
A quality report will meet or exceed all of the above requirements.
There are more than 9000 billing codes for individual procedures and units of care. But there is not a single billing code for patient adherence or improvement, or for helping patients stay well.”
Clayton M. Christensen
Health care financing in the United States is fragmented, complex, and the most costly in the world. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 takes some steps to reshape how health care is paid for, but its primary purpose is to extend insurance coverage to approximately 30 million uninsured Americans through private insurance regulation, expansion of pubic insurance programs, and creation of health insurance marketplaces to foster competition in the private health insurance market. As the ACA is implemented, making health insurance more affordable and containing the rise in health care costs are significant ongoing policy challenges in system transformation. This chapter will provide an overview of the current system of health care financing in the United States, including the impact of the ACA.
Historical Perspectives on Health Care Financing
Understanding today’s complex and often confusing approaches to financing health care requires an examination of the nation’s values and historical context. Some dominant values underpin the U.S. political and economic systems. The United States has a long history of individualism, an emphasis on freedom to choose alternatives and an aversion to large-scale government intervention into the private realm. Compared with other developed nations with capitalist economies, social programs have been the exception rather than the rule and have been adopted primarily during times of great need or social and political upheaval. Examples of these exceptions include the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935 and the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965.
Because health care in the United States had its origins in the private sector market, not government, and because of the growing political power of physicians, hospitals, and insurance companies, the degree to which government should be involved in health care remains controversial. Other developed capitalist countries, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Switzerland, view health care as a social good that should be available to all. In contrast, the United States has viewed health care as a market-based commodity, readily available to those who can pay for it but not available universally to all people. With its capitalist orientation and politically powerful financial stakeholders, the United States has been resistant to significant health care reform, especially as it relates to expanding access to affordable health insurance.
The debate over the role of government in social programs intensified in the decades after the Great Depression. Although the Social Security Act of 1935 brought sweeping social welfare legislation, providing for Social Security payments, workman’s compensation, welfare assistance for the poor, and certain public health, maternal, and child health services, it did not provide for health care insurance coverage for all Americans. Also, during the decade following the Great Depression, nonprofit Blue Cross and Blue Shield (BC/BS) emerged as a private 173insurance plan to cover hospital and physician care. The idea that people should pay for their medical care before they actually got sick, through insurance, ensured some level of security for both providers and consumers of medical services. The creation of insurance plans effectively defused a strong political movement toward legislating a broader, compulsory government-run health insurance plan at the time (Starr, 1982). After a failed attempt by President Truman in the late 1940s to provide Americans with a national health plan, no progress occurred on this issue until the 1960s, when Medicare and Medicaid were enacted.
BC/BS dominated the health insurance industry until the 1950s, when for-profit commercial insurance companies entered the market and were able to compete with BC/BS by holding down costs through their practice of excluding sick (with preexisting conditions) people from insurance coverage. Over time, the distinction between BC/BS and commercial insurance companies became increasingly blurred as BC/BS began to offer competitive for-profit plans (Kovner, Knickman, & Weisfeld, 2011. In the 1960s, the United States enjoyed relative prosperity, along with a burgeoning social conscience, and an appetite for change that led to a heightened concern for the poor and older adults and the impact of catastrophic illness. In response, Medicaid and Medicare, two separate but related programs, were created in 1965 by amendments to the Social Security Act. Medicare is a federal government-administered health insurance program for the disabled and those over 65 years (Kaiser Family Foundation [KFF], 2014c), and Medicaid, until recently, has been a state and federal government-administered health insurance program for low-income people, who are in certain categories, such as pregnant women with children.
Government Programs
Current Public/Federal Funding for Health Care in the United States
In the United States, no single public entity oversees or controls the entire health care system, making the payment for and delivery of health care complex, inefficient, and expensive. Instead, the system is composed of many public and private programs that form interrelated parts at the federal, state, and local levels. The public funding systems, which include Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the Defense Health Program (TRICARE) for military personnel, their families, military retirees, and some others, continue to represent a larger and larger proportion of health care spending. Other examples of federal programs are the Indian Health Service, which covers American Indians and Alaskan Natives, and the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) Program, which covers all federal employees unless excluded by law or regulation.
Federal health expenditures for these programs totaled $731.6 billion or 26% of all health care expenditures in 2012 (Martin et al., 2014). Medicare outlays were $572.5 billion in 2012 and accounted for 20% of all national health care expenditures with Medicare Advantage (a Medicare-managed care program provided by insurance plans that can be chosen by beneficiaries instead of the traditional Medicare program) growing most rapidly (Martin et al., 2014). Medicaid outlays in 2012 were $412.2 billion and accounted for 15% of total national health care expenditures, and its spending growth also decelerated that year (Martin et al., 2014).
Medicare
Before the enactment of Medicare in 1965, older adults were more likely to be uninsured and more likely to be impoverished by excessive health care costs. Half of older Americans had no health insurance; but by 2000, 96% of seniors had health care coverage through Medicare (Federal Interagency Forum on Age-Related Statistics, 2000).
Medicare had a beneficial effect on the health of older adults by facilitating access to care and medical technology, and, in 2006, prescription drug coverage helped improve the economic status of older adults. The percentage of persons over age 65 years living below the poverty line decreased from 35% in 1959 (when older adults had the highest poverty rate of the population) to 9% in 2012 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2014).
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Americans are eligible for Medicare Part A at age 65 years, the age for Social Security eligibility, or sooner, if they are determined to be disabled. Medicare Part A accounted for 31% of benefit spending in 2012 and covers 52 million Americans. Medicare Part A covers hospital and related costs and is financed through payroll deduction to the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund at the payroll tax rate of 2.9% of earnings paid by employers and employees (1.45% each) (KFF, 2014a). Medicare Part B, which accounted for approximately one third of benefit spending in 2012, covers 80% of the fees for physician services, outpatient medical services and supplies, home care, durable medical equipment, laboratory services, physical and occupational therapy, and outpatient mental health services. Part B is financed through subscriber premiums and general revenue funding as well as cost-sharing with beneficiaries.
Medicare Part C, or the Medicare Advantage Program, through which beneficiaries can enroll in a private health plan and also receive some extra services such as vision or hearing services, accounted for 23% of benefit spending in 2012 and had more than 14.1 million enrollees, or 28% of all Medicare beneficiaries in 2013 (Medpac, 2013). Medicare Advantage enrollment has been increasing and is up 30% since 2010 (KFF, 2014a). Extra payments that the federal government has made to private Medicare Advantage Plans are due to be phased out by the ACA, raising concerns that insurers will drop their Medicare Advantage Plans as a result.
Medicare Part D is a voluntary, subsidized outpatient prescription drug plan with additional subsidies for low- and modest-income individuals. It accounted for 10% of benefit spending in 2012 and enrolled 39 million beneficiaries in 2013 (KFF, 2014a, 2014b). Figure 18-1 presents Medicare benefit payments by type of service in 2012 (KFF, 2014a). Medicare Part D is financed through general revenues and beneficiary premiums as well as state payments for recipients who get both Medicare and Medicaid, also known as “dual eligibles” (KFF, 2014b). The ACA phases out the Medicare Part D “donut hole,” a period of noncoverage for prescription drugs that left many seniors unable to pay out-of-pocket for their medications.
FIGURE 18-1 Medicare benefit payments by type of service, 2012. (From Kaiser Family Foundation. [2014]. Retrieved from kff.org/medicare/fact-sheet/medicare-spending-and-financing-fact-sheet/.)
The ACA authorized that certified nurse midwives (CNMs) be reimbursed at 100% of the physician payment rate. Other advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs), including nurse practitioners (NPs), are paid 85% of the physician rate 175for the same services. In addition, Medicare will not pay for home care or hospice services unless they are ordered by a physician. And, unfortunately, the ACA required physician orders for durable medical equipment for Medicare beneficiaries.
Medicaid
Medicaid is the public insurance program jointly funded by state and federal governments but administered by individual states under guidelines of the federal government. Medicaid is a means-tested program because eligibility is determined by financial status. Before changes by the ACA, only low-income people within certain categories, such as recipients of Supplemental Social Security Income (SSI), families receiving Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), and children and pregnant women whose family income is at or below 133% of the poverty level were eligible. To qualify for federal Medicaid matching grants, a state must provide a minimum set of benefits, including hospitalization, physician care, laboratory services, radiology studies, prenatal care, and preventive services; nursing home and home health care; and medically necessary transportation. Medicaid programs are also required to pay the Medicare premiums, deductibles, and copayments for certain low-income persons who are eligible for both programs. Medicaid is increasingly becoming a long-term care financing program of last resort for older adults in nursing homes. Many older adults have to spend down their life savings to become low income and be eligible for Medicaid. Family and pediatric NPs and CNMs are also required to be reimbursed under federal Medicaid rules if, in accordance with state regulations, they are legally authorized to provide Medicaid-covered services.
In keeping with its goal to expand health insurance coverage to more Americans, the ACA expands eligibility for the Medicaid program to any legal resident under the age of 65 years with an income up to 138% of the federal poverty level. The intent of the health reform law was to have one eligibility standard across all states and eliminate eligibility by specific categories (Commonwealth Fund, 2011; Rosenbaum, 2011). The federal government has agreed to pay for nearly all the expansion costs to insure more low-income people. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, struck down the mandate to expand Medicaid and ruled that states could decide whether or not to expand the program. Figure 18-2 indicates that as of April 2014, 27 states had decided to expand Medicaid, 5 are still debating this, and 19 are not moving forward (KFF, 2014d). States that decide to opt out of the expansion can follow old federal guidelines for eligibility, leaving wide disparities in health insurance coverage between states and leaving uninsured large proportions of the population below 138% of the poverty level. Of the states that have opted out of expansion, all have Republican political leaders explicit in their opposition to the ACA, although Republican Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona pushed her state to expand Medicaid in 2013 so that 300,000 more poor and disabled residents of the state would have coverage (Schwartz, 2013). In many of the nonparticipating states, physicians, nurses, hospitals, and other health care organizations and stakeholders are pressuring their state governments to expand Medicaid as a way to improve access to health care for more low-income people.
FIGURE 18-2 State Medicaid expansion, November 2014. (From FamiliesUSA. [2014]. Retrieved fromfamiliesusa.org/product/50-state-look-medicaid-expansion; and Kaiser Family Foundation. [2014]. Retrieved fromkff.org/medicaid/fact-sheet/a-closer-look-at-the-impact-of-state-decisions-not-to-expand-medicaid-on-coverage-for-uninsured-adults/.)
CHIP was created in 1997 to help cover uninsured children whose families were not eligible for Medicaid. It has been funded through state and federal funds, but states set their own eligibility standards. The ACA commits the federal government to paying most of its costs, beginning in 2015, up to 100%. It also requires states to maintain their eligibility standards for CHIP (Emanuel, 2014). CHIP will be reauthorized in 2015, and, because it is expected that many more children will have gained coverage through family health insurance plans, debate is expected over the role of the program. CHIP is enrolling a record number of children now estimated to be one third of all children in the United States. Advocates want to maintain these high child health insurance rates until the ACA is fully implemented and full coverage for children under the provisions of the ACA is assured.
State Health Care Financing
State governments not only administer and partially fund some public insurance programs such as Medicaid and CHIP but they are also responsible for individual state public health programs. 176The definition of public health as compared with other types of health programs is not always well understood. The mission of public health as defined by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) is to ensure conditions in which people can be healthy (IOM, 1988). Whereas medicine focuses on the individual patient, public health focuses on whole populations. Medical care for the individual patient is associated with payment by health insurance, but population-based public health programs are funded by local, county, state revenues, often combined with grants from the federal government in areas such as maternal and child health, obesity prevention, HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, and environmental health. Even with a greater federal role in health care through the ACA, states will continue to have a major responsibility for the regulation of health insurance, health care providers and professionals, and public health activities.
Reduction of budgets for public health programs during times of fiscal constraint has resulted in the resurgence of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases in some communities. A series of natural disasters such as tornados also brought to light gaps in the public health system, especially the ability to respond, for example, to mass casualty events. Although the ACA authorized $15 billion for the creation of a Prevention and Public Health Fund to invest in public health and disease prevention, Congress reduced by one third the amount of funding mandated by the law in 2012 and President Obama signed the legislation to pay for other initiatives (Health Policy Brief, 2012).
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Local/County Level
Similar to state governments, local and county governments in many states also have the responsibility of protecting public health. Some provide indigent care by funding and running public hospitals and clinics, such as New York City’s Health and Hospitals Corporation and Chicago’s Cook County Hospital. Although receiving a subsidy from their local government, these hospitals, which have served primarily poor patients and those without health insurance, have gotten significant special payments, especially from Medicare to serve these populations. These disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payments are being gradually reduced under the ACA because it is presumed that eventually, under the ACA, many more people will gain health insurance coverage. Because public hospitals and clinics are so dependent on public funds, their budgets are historically squeezed during times of fiscal restraint by local, state, and federal governments, making them vulnerable to long-term sustainability. In fact, many public health hospitals have closed, and in many parts of the country, the populations they have served have been absorbed by other types of hospital providers (KFF, 2013).
The Private Health Insurance and Delivery Systems
The U.S. health care system has been predominantly a private one that operates more like a business and, more or less, according to free market principles. Private health insurance has been the dominant payer and, for most Americans, it is obtained as a benefit of employment in the form of group health insurance. However, until the passage of the ACA employers have had no obligation to provide employee health insurance, leaving many Americans uninsured or underinsured, especially those working in lower-wage jobs. As private health insurance premiums have risen, employers asked employees to pay for a greater percentage of their insurance premium, and to enroll in plans that required more cost-sharing in the form of copayment, deductibles, and coinsurance. Approximately 15% of insured Americans have purchased their health insurance from the nongroup individual insurance market. Typically, these plans were more expensive and insurers in all but a few states had been able to deny insurance to applicants with preexisting medical conditions, until the practice of discrimination based on medical history was outlawed by the ACA in 2010. Because private insurers are regulated by individual states, there are wide disparities in coverage from state to state, as private insurers are powerful political stakeholders who resist attempts at state or federal regulations to make insurance more accessible and affordable. Whereas private health insurance will continue to be a cornerstone of the U.S. health care financing system, public insurers such as Medicare and Medicaid are paying for an increasing percentage of health care costs.
It should be noted that health insurance is regulated by the states. Some states now mandate that NPs be considered primary care providers and eligible for credentialing and payment by private insurers. But there is wide variation in the extent to which APRNs are included in insurers’ provider panels. This variation can be seen among states, among insurers within a given state, and among the plans offered by an insurer (Brassard, 2014).
Most care in the United States is provided by nonprofit or for-profit hospitals and health care systems and private insurance plans (Truffer et al., 2010). Pharmaceutical companies, suppliers of health care technology, and the various service industries that support the health care system in the United States are part of what has been called the medical industrial complex (Meyers, 1970), and there is little government regulation of these industries. Although the private delivery system is dependent on payment from private insurers as well as government insurers, it has usually been resistant to government-directed efforts to expand access to care or cost-containment measures. Well-financed special interest groups representing industry stakeholders have had a great deal of influence over the political process at both the state and federal levels. For example, the medical device industry is lobbying Congress hard to repeal or reduce the medical device tax that the ACA levied to help pay 178for the expansion of insurance coverage under the health care law and has gained significant support in Congress (Kramer & Kasselheim, 2013).
The Problem of Continually Rising Health Care Costs
From the 1970s to the present, continually rising insurance premiums and health care delivery costs have strained government budgets, become a costly expense to businesses that offer health insurance to their employees, and put health care increasingly out of reach for individuals and families. Figure 18-3 depicts the annual percentage change in national health expenditures by selected sources of funds, 1960 to 2012 (KFF, 2014e).
FIGURE 18-3 Annual percentage change in national health expenditures, by selected sources of funds, 1960 to 2012. (From Kaiser Family Foundation. [2014]. Retrieved fromkaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/annual-percent-change-in-national-health-expenditures-by-selected-sources-of-funds-1960-2012-healthcosts.png.)
Stakeholders in small and large businesses, government, organized labor, health care providers, and consumer groups have convened over the years to tackle the problem of rising health care costs, with little lasting success. Although a range of strategies was employed to curb rising health care costs over those 40 years, health care expenditures as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) increased steadily over that time. Although multiple factors are responsible for rising health care costs as a percentage of GDP, the key one is that, unlike other capitalist democracies, the federal and state governments have little, if any, role in regulating what can be charged for health care services and supplies. Prices are largely negotiated between health insurances and providers, resulting in wide variances in prices for similar or exact services, largely based on the market clout of providers to negotiate higher prices. Other contributing factors to high health care costs include the complex administrative systems of insurers and providers, the use of expensive medical technology and medical specialists, and 179the incentive in fee-for-service reimbursement for providers to increase their volume of services and provide unnecessary health care. Consumers have also lacked knowledge of the actual cost of their care, leading to an inability of the market to accurately respond to cost and differential health care prices by region, type of hospital, or health care facility.
Future costs will also be impacted by the aging of the population and increasing number of people with complex chronic illness who use a disproportionately high percentage of the health care dollars. For example, from 1977 to 2007, a very stable 5% of the population who had complex chronic illness accounted for nearly 50% of the health care expenditures (KFF, 2010; Stanton, 2006), despite efforts to control costs among this population. In 2009, the costliest 5% of beneficiaries accounted for 39% of all Medicare fee-for-service spending. The least costly 50% of beneficiaries accounted for 5% of all spending (Medpac, 2013). The majority of those in the high-expenditure group are not older adults but rather those with complex chronic illnesses (Stanton, 2006).
All other industrialized countries spend significantly less on health care but have better health outcomes and a longer life expectancy. For example, the United States ranks among the worst of industrialized nations on important health indicators such as infant mortality, maternal mortality, and life expectancy at birth (Squires, 2014). Yet, in 2012, it ranked first in health care costs per capita at approximately $8915 per person (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2013b). This amounted to close to 18% of its GDP, compared with The Netherlands, which ranked second at 12% of its GDP (OECD, 2013a).
Cost-Containment Efforts
Over time, several approaches have been used to contain costs, including the following.
Regulation Versus Competition.
During the 1970s, modest government regulation attempted to contain health care costs through state rate-setting agencies and health planning mechanisms, such as Certificate of Need (CON) programs and regional Health Systems Agencies (HSAs), which evaluated and approved applications for the construction of new facilities, beds, and new technology. During the 1980s and early 1990s, when proponents of competition and free market health care became politically more influential, rate setting and CON programs were weakened and HSAs were eliminated. While free-market principles, as they apply to health care, have few similarities to a fully competitive market in economic terms, the rise of managed care programs and competition among health insurance plans in the 1980s may have temporarily slowed the growth of health costs before they began to rise again. As health insurers expanded the use of copayments, deductibles, and coinsurance as economic incentives to discourage care, the onus of cost-containment fell more heavily on the consumer/patient. However, ample research shows that low-income people may avoid necessary care because of copayments and deductibles. Chapter 17 more fully describes the mechanisms underlying the market system in health care.
Managed Care.
The origins of today’s managed care plans were in early prepaid health plans of the 1920s, which evolved into Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) in the 1970s, and into a variety of models in the subsequent 30 years, including Preferred Provider Organizations (PPOs). A managed care system shifts health care delivery and payment from open-ended access to providers, paid for through fee-for-service reimbursement, toward one in which the provider is a gatekeeper or manager of the patient’s health care and assumes some degree of financial responsibility for the care that is given through a capitated budget in which to pay for the patient’s care. Managed care implies not only that spending will be controlled but also that other aspects of care will be managed, such as quality and accessibility. In managed care, the primary care provider has traditionally been the gatekeeper, deciding what specialty services are appropriate and where these services can be obtained at the lowest cost. In the 1990s, negative media attention concerning the incentives to restrict care in the managed care model fueled a political backlash. Consumer and provider demands for 180greater choice for services and access to providers caused managed care plans to loosen gatekeeper requirements and provide more direct access to specialists. As a result, managed care became less effective in holding down expenditures and fueled a rise in health insurance premiums.
In addition, concerns of consumers and providers cha
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