Discussion: The Affordable Care Act and Improvements
The Affordable Care Act defines the conditions under which American citizens can ask for healthcare insurance and care in regards to their health needs (Blumenthal & Collins, 2014; Sommers, Gunja, Finegold, & Musco, 2015). According to the ACA, healthcare experts have to improve the population’s health, shape health outcomes of patients, and follow the measurements established by the government. The implementation of new strategies can promote a better understanding of population health.
The establishment of new services where the continuum of care can be offered (continuous care can help to gather enough information about different groups of people), deep research of patients’ cases from different parts of the world (such research discovers the essence of population health), and improvement of communication between nurses, students, and patients (it helps to reduce costs for patients) are the main strategies. Population health is the goal that has to be achieved through cooperation between medical workers, patients, and communities they serve (Carlson, Kline, & Zangerle, 2016; Harris, 2017).
Regarding such changes to the ACA, I believe that the role of Advanced Practices Nurses can be changed because much attention has to be paid not to patients and their families only but to the communities they are involved in. Nurses have to learn how to work with large communities and investigate their health outcomes. On the one hand, this change can lead to several positive results regarding the possibility to develop deep research and involve many people. On the other hand, no clarifications are given in regards to the benefits nurses can get as soon as they are involved in population health research. Therefore, public awareness, education, and training have to be reconsidered by the ACA regulations.
References
Blumenthal, D., & Collins, S. R. (2014). Health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act—A progress report. The New England Journal of Medicine, 371, 274-281.
Carlson, E., Kline, M., & Zangerle, C.M. (2016). AONE competencies: Preparing nurse executives to lead population health. Nurse Leader, 14(2), 108-112.
Harris, D.P.M. (2017). From health policy to population health: Impressions and highlights of recent conferences. Population Health Matters, 30(2), 10.
Sommers, B. D., Gunja, M. Z., Finegold, K., & Musco, T. (2015). Changes in self-reported insurance coverage, access to care, and health under the Affordable Care Act. JAMA, 314(4), 366-374.