Health Care Delivery Essay

Health Care Delivery Models and Nursing Practice
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Health Care Delivery Models and Nursing Practice
Introduction
The United States health care system has undergone various phases of transformation in the country’s history, with each government or political leadership seeking to improve the efficacy of the highly important sector. Among the areas of concern for initiating such changes include the cost of health care services, accessibility to health care services, and the quality of care delivered across the nation’s healthcare facilities. Despite the several attempts at addressing the outlined areas, the United States’ health care system faces new challenges that affect or rather influence the delivery of quality care services to patients. The demand for quality health care services is at an all-time high, and the rapid increase of the aging population are some of the factors posing a challenge to the health care system. Chronic illnesses are also on the rise and thus equally increasing the number of acute care patients in health care facilities across the nation. Consequently, the cost of health care is on a constant rising projection as individuals seek to get the best quality care for their health problems, and the government’s expenditure on the same mirrors the rising costs. Hence, it is important for all stakeholders to develop and implement health care reforms and restructure the nation’s health care delivery system. The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) makes for one of the recent government initiatives taking a holistic approach towards addressing the primary areas of challenge to the health care system; accessibility, cost, and quality of health care services CITATION SAL17 \l 1033 (Salmond, 2017). Provided herein are some of the effects and influences of the reform and restructuring initiatives to nursing practice as per the provisions of the Act.
* Effect of the PPACA on Nursing Practice
Among the proposed health care reforms as enshrined in the PPACA is the adoption of new models of health care and delivery systems for increased efficiency and reduced cost of health care on patients. The proposed health care delivery system is the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) and the Accountable Care Organization (ACO) models CITATION Kor16 \l 1033 (Korenstein, 2016). The Patient-Centered Medical Home thrives on the interdisciplinary collaboration among health care practitioners at the community level under the leadership of the state CITATION Kor16 \l 1033 (Korenstein, 2016). As the primary care providers, nurses form the front line of such a group and actively participate in the effective delivery of all the functions of a PCMH in collaboration with the physicians and other practitioners assigned to a particular patient. Accountable Care Organizations also build on the collaborative effort among practitioners in delivering quality cost-effective care to patients. Such organizations emphasize on the practitioners’ accountability to the outcomes of a patient’s medical problem or condition upon receiving medical attention from the former. The model promotes or rather encourages the delivery of quality care to patients a...