HR315 Assignment: Improving Access to Maternity Care Act

Health Policy Change
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Health Policy Change
The United States Healthcare sector is in dire need of immediate repair. The solution lies beyond repair, and the US needs to know the public and then identify why and what exactly is in need of the repair. Most American citizens who posses healthcare coverage especially women do not know or understand what the coverage entails. This paper proposes that bill H.R. 315: Improving Access to Maternity Care Act needs to be rectified to increase its scope and power.
Background Information
There are several pockets of the America where the women have no access to the most needed ob-gyn care. Approximately 49% of US states lack an ACOG fellow, and 9.5 million American citizens live in the rural localities. Research shows that more than half of the women living in the rural areas take more than 30 minutes to reach the hospital that offers perinatal services. The number of ob-gyns is going down because of retirement, and at the same time, the female population is anticipated to incline 36% by 2050 which could lead to ACOG projects’ shortage of 18% by 2030s. NHSC places providers in health professional shortage areas (HPSAs), but no shortage area is alienated chosen for maternity care. According to reports, babies that are born by mothers who never received any prenatal health care are three times likely to be below the birth weight (Bhutta et al., 2009). They have five times like hood to die compared to the babies whose mothers’ accessed the care.
H.R. 315: Improving Access to Maternity Care Act
Maternity care shortages is a big thereat American women’s health and ability to enjoy timely prenatal as well as labor or delivery services. The bill requires HRSA to collect and even analyze data that can help create maternity health professional shortage area (HPSA) designation to be used by NHSC. The report should be based on the provider types, population characteristics, and geographic regions.
Currently, maternity health care professionals can participate in the National Health Service Corps (NHSC) but they are not always placed where they are most needed. The bill will help better place maternity health care professionals in areas with the greatest need for their services, (Civic Impulse, 2017).
According to this bill, the National Health Service Corps puts care professionals participating in their Loan Repayment Program that needs two-year commitment in localities that HRSA deem to be facing heath care professional shortage. The bill is also designed to allocate NHSC professionals maternity care providers who are already participating in the Loan Repayment program in areas that need maternity care most. However, the bill does not expand or change participation in the NHSC.
However, this bill cost nothing. HRSA already receives funding that helps in collecting data to identify the health professional shortage areas (HPSAs) in primary care, mental and dental health. The bill would only ask HRSA to apply the current system in refining its data analysis and identify the maternity care capacity of an area. The bill is not a mus...