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patient safety in the hospital setting
patient safety in the hospital setting
Policy Analysis of the Affordable Care Act
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The implementation of the Affordable Care Act has been everything but a smooth transition. The news media enjoys featuring issues found within its policies on a weekly basis. The frequent stories about policy holders losing coverage has the potential to mislead the American public into thinking the insured population is decreasing; however, the truth is that there is a growing problem in the patient to healthcare provider ratio within hospitals.
The influx of insured patients due to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) needs to be met with an increase in health care providers to ensure adequate and safe patient care. Currently, there are issues regarding safe staffing within hospitals that leaves the patient’s and healthcare providers’ safety at risk. Recent studies have proven that more errors are likely to occur when there is under staffing, or an overly stressed staff. The purpose of this document is to expose current flaws in policy, professionalism, leadership, and management regarding safe staffing to ensure safety for patients and healthcare providers.
Unfortunately, the policies within the ACA do not call for increased staffing, but encourage the opposite. Because insurance companies are now forced to “guarantee issue”, a budget deficit is forming that needs to be corrected. A budget deficit becomes the insurer’s responsibility, which causes businesses and hospitals to look for ways to find money, and one the most common way to do that is to cut back on employees. To meet increased premium prices under the ACA, insurers and employers have the potential to restrict provider networks to save money (Nix, 2014). I believe that policies need to be created or reformed to insure incentive to increase, not decrease staffing and plac...
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Nix, Katheryn. (2014). Less Choice at Greater Cost. The Heartland Institute. Retrieved from http://heartland.org/policy-documents/less-choice-greater-cost.