The Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Use of Technology in Promoting Quality Healthcare

Promoting Healthcare
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Promoting Healthcare
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is tasked with providing affordable healthcare insurance and altering the healthcare delivery system to provide Americans with quality care. Though it ranks highest as a country with the highest healthcare expenditure, the United States (U.S) needs to improve healthcare costs and quality for its citizens. Some of the challenges facing healthcare in the U.S include lack of insurance coverage, a burden on providers, and a fragmented and inefficient primary care system that is fragmented and inefficient. Following the U.S.'s fragmented healthcare system, limited priority is given to primary care and increased maternal and infant mortality rates. This essay discusses how to resolve the U.S healthcare system's challenges by increasing the spending on primary care, reducing the mortality and infant mortality rate, improving access to preventative healthcare, and using technology to increase access to quality care and reduce the costs of healthcare.
The problems facing primary care in the U.S. have a significant implication on the outcome of healthcare. The low reimbursement and inefficiency of practice cause a more significant failure to the healthcare system, especially when primary care is at stake. Doctors' lower salaries are an indication that their services are undervalued, which, as a result, makes it difficult for healthcare providers to deliver quality healthcare. Miyamoto et al. (2016) posit that lack of technology, such as artificial intelligence (A.I.) and electronic health records (EHR), would lead to increased healthcare costs and lack of access to better care. Failure to have healthcare technology advancements, physicians would not diagnose patients better (Miyamoto et al., 2016). Medical technology would solve a great multitude of problems facing healthcare.
For instance, technology gives patients remote access to healthcare, meaning patients can make appointments and be monitored without seeing the doctor physically. According to Levine, Lipsitz, and Linder (2016), lack of access to their care providers would limit patients' chances of building relationships that would contribute to better health outcomes. Mobile apps and video conferencing ensure flexibility and better performance abilities helping healthcare professionals care for distant patients (Levine, Lipsitz & Linder., 2016). Consequently, electronic health records allow the health industry to have simplified health record-keeping and better facilitation of the electronic forms, making it easy for doctors to coordinate care for better health care outcomes.
According to Texas A & M University (2016), the U.S. is reported to be one of the countries with rising infant mortality than other developed countries. Over 23,000 infants died in 2014. The high infant mortality rate might be due to maternal factors such as stress, diabetes, or infections beyond the mother's control. Unlike the infants of wealthier and well-educated parents who have better survival rates, those without these advantages are more likely to die (Texas A & M University, 2016). The reason to explain this would be that a specific...