Many current legal issues surrounding health care exist in the United States today. The most significant topic is the legalities of the Health care reform Act. The Health Care Reform is said to be one of the most important pieces of legislation today. The Health Reform website says that health care reform will be the answer to uninsured Americans (www. Healthreform.gov).
There are three issues in health care reform accessibility, affordability, and sustainability (Shortell, 2009).
The first challenge of health care reform is accessibility. Accessibility; basically meant that insurers would have to expand insurance coverage to all Americans. This means eliminating preexisting conditions that barred people from gaining insurance coverage in the past, insuring portability across states, instructing the purchase of insurance coverage, standardizing claims to reduce paperwork and providing benefit and cost information to the American people. This will allow individuals an opportunity to choose a plan that best fits their needs (Shortell, 2009).
The Essay on Health Care Reform Recommendations
... Recommendations, action steps and strategies to advance health care reform. Retrieved 26 January 2009, from http://www. mayoclinic. ... attention. References America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP)(2007). Guaranteeing Access to Coverage for all Americans. Retrieved 26 January ... choice, accessibility, control, and peace of mind. B. This reform would require adults to purchase private health insurance ...
The second issue is affordability. Affordability has left uninsured and low-income families abandoned due to high premiums. The public option is an idea that hopes to establish competition that will drive down insurance premium costs between private insurers (Shortell, 2009).
Those who are uninsured or low in income would have their premiums subsidized up to 400% (Shortell, 2009).
The third issue is sustainability. Extending coverage to all Americans is projected at a cost of one trillion dollars over the next 10 years so it is imperative that the government lessen the rate of spending in healthcare (Shortell, 2009).
Sustainability depends on essential factors in health care spending specifically patient, hospital, and physician conduct as they use available technologies and treatments (Shortell, 2009).
The greatest costs in health care today involves nutrition, exercise, and tobacco us. These contributing factors are and sometimes related to chronic illnesses like diabetes, heart disease and cancer. The behaviors of both hospital and physicians must change as well to reduce spending and increase sustainability in health care reform.
Many health care organizations need to reanalyze policies to make proper decisions. More issues include: patient autonomy, termination of patient treatment, advance directives, confidentiality, and informed consent. In the past hospitals received charitable donations from consumers and other sources of the community. Hospitals are prospering in developing new technology and new science. The price of the new technology for the findings have sky rocketed and can create future financial concern. The development of new technology can broaden the areas for treatment. With the new technology and training tools to perform treatment, then hospitals will get to experience the cost of it as well.
A down fall to having the new technology in most organizations, patients will receive less one on one time with the doctors to ask questions. Communication is vital in the health care workforce for the survival of health care reform. There can be no more hierarchy among health care staff members. Groups will need to be made to improve quality and contain costs as proposed by health care reform within health care organizations. This means that physicians, managers, supervisors, nurses and other employees need to be held accountable for reducing medical errors, improving productivity, implementing, and using new technologies, and generating and implementing ideas that improve cost and reduce costs (Labor Policy, 2008).
The Essay on Health Care 11
There are companies and organizations that are required to follow HIPAA Privacy rule and then there are some that are not required to follow these laws. Health plans, most health care providers and health care clearinghouses have to follow HIPAA Privacy rule; but life insurers, employers, many schools and school districts are a few examples of organizations that do not have to follow the HIPAA ...
One example of laws and regulations facing health care is HIPPA. The transformation from paper charts to electronic records raises a great concern in the breach of security. “In addition, interoperability of systems is expected to create yet more breaches, as information is traded between networks. Laptop theft is the most common type of data breach, accounting for 24% of reported breaches, according to HHS. Desktop computers were involved in 16% of breaches and portable devices such as smart phones were involved in 14%” (beckershosiptalreview.com).
Health and Human Service (HHS) requires individuals to notify patients when their information is breached. The regulations developed by Office of Civil Rights (OCR), requires health care providers and other HIPAA covered entities to promptly notify affected persons of a breach, as well as the HHS Secretary and the media in cases where a breach affects more than 500 individuals. Breaches affecting fewer than 500 individuals will be reported to the HHS Secretary on an annual basis. The regulation also requires business associates of covered entities to notify the covered entity of breaches at or by the business associate (hhs.gov).
There are new laws in place to enforce the proper way of protecting patient confidential information.
References
Healthcare Regulation (2014) Retrieved from web http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/topics/healthcare_regulation.asp U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (2014) Retrieved from web http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/coveredentities/breachnotificationifr.html U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2012).
Health Information Privacy. http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2012).
Health Information Privacy. Retrieved from (http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/45cfr46.html. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2012).
Health Information Privacy. Retrieved from California. (2012) Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2009/may/15/local/me-privacy15
The Essay on Health Care Information Terms
After you have defined each term in your own words, describe in 40 to 60 words the health care setting in which each term would be applied. Utilize a minimum of two research sources to support your claims—one from the University Library and the other from the textbook. Be sure to cite your sources in the References section consistent with APA guidelines. Term Definition How Used in Healthcare ...
