The Affordable Care Act (ACA)

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will cause a large influx of patients into the health care system. For a variety of reasons, this will change how the front-line health care personnel provide care. Nurses will expand his or her scope and territory of care. Front line providers will change to include more advanced practice nurses because of the national shortage of primary care providers ("Department Of Health And Human Services," 2014). No longer will they just practice in brick and mortar hospitals. Because of the recently instituted Medicare, reimbursement regulations after patients are discharge from the hospital more nurses will be in the field performing well patient checks. These nurses will ensure the follow through of discharge instructions; assist in coordinating follow up physician and ancillary appointment all in the attempt to reduce transmission of nosocomial infections and re-hospitalization. The ACA allows Medicare to withhold payments for readmission of patients with certain diagnoses like myocardial infarction and pneumonia (The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2014). Another way the ACA will cause changes in health care is the mandate from Medicaid to increased quality and safety for reimbursement, all independent physicians will be required to convert to electronic medical records also known as Computerized Physician Order Entry (C.P.O.E) ("Department Of Health And Human Service," 2014). Medicare requires that the C.P.O.E have a meaningful use and this requires that all physicians practices have a C.P.O.R. in place and operational by June 01, 2014 or face hefty fines being leveled at them in 2015. The impetus for this requirement is to reduce errors and to begin to standardize patient records. Even though... ... middle of paper ... ...111publ152/pdf/PLAW-111publ152.pdf Koh, Howard K,M.D., M.P.H., & Sebelius, K. G., M.P.A. (2010). Promoting prevention through the affordable care act. The New England Journal of Medicine, 363(14), 1296doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp1008560 Lighter, D. E. (2011). Advanced performance improvement in health care: Principles and methods. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett Publishers. Rak, S., & Coffin, J. (2013, March). Affordable Care Act. The Journal of Medical Practice Management: MPM, 28(5), 317-319. Studer, Q. (2012). Straight A Leadership Alignment Action Accountability. Gulf Breeze, FL: Fire Starter. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (2014). Health Reform GPS. Retrieved from http://www.healthreformgps.org/ Wolper, L. F. (2011). Health care administration: Managing organized delivery systems. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.