Optimal Healthcare Delivery in the United States

Healthcare Delivery Models and Nursing Practice
Student Name
Institutional Affiliation
Introduction
Optimal healthcare delivery in the United States (US) relies on high-quality care services appropriately coordinated within the robust healthcare system. Despite the legislative and regulatory policies focused on the healthcare provision system, it remains unclear how policymakers incorporate reforms into their programs. Healthcare delivery reform entails transforming care provision, payment incentives, or both to trigger and sustain paradigm shifts within the system. The report examines the introduced reforms to change and restructure the US healthcare system. Accordingly, the paper delineates the adopted actions to change and restructure diverse facets of the nursing role in the dynamic medical practice environment.
Current Health Care Law and Impact on Nursing Practice, Role, and Responsibility
Obamacare or the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) ensures Americans greater access to insurance coverage, manages the ever-skyrocketing healthcare costs, and improves patient care outcomes. This led to the creation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) legislation. The ACA constitutes the most valuable legislation made in the US since Medicaid and Medicare establishment in 1965. The ACA led to the implementation of significant comprehensive health care reforms geared towards enhancing accessibility, quality of care, and affordability. The law has led to significant transformation centered on addressing persistent issues facing the us healthcare system. Accordingly, the proportions of Americans without health insurance policy reduced by 43 percent from 16 percent in 2010 to 9.1 percent in 2015, primarily due to the legislation’s changes (Obama, 2016).
The ACA led to unexpected news for nursing practice, including increased new patients’ proportion. Nevertheless, some of these clients have chronic health problems that were traditionally overlooked, prompting the need for improved care. The extra patient care efforts and time to enhance treatment outcomes of individuals with chronic illnesses exert pressure on the healthcare system, including nurses (Salmond & Echevarria, 2017). Since individuals have coverage, healthcare facilities are currently experiencing higher emergency room cases. In that vein, patient load, as well as waiting timescales, have increased for medical providers. The policy also impacted nurses’ responsibilities. For example, as baby boomers continued to age, the demand for geriatric nurses also increased. In addition, nurses enjoy more workplaces options to select from, including community health centers, case management, and home care.
Quality Measures Pay for Performance, Patient Outcomes, and Effect on Nursing Practice
Healthcare complexities linked to outcomes enhancements are particularly taxing, as medical facilities assess and report a plethora of outcomes annually. Quality measures potentiate patient outcomes improvements. For example, research indicates that quality measures result in overall quality improvements and provides an incentive to enhance the overall care quality to more significant thresholds (Tinker, 2018). Evidence also indicates that quality m...