On
March 23, 2010, an ambitious legislative achievement ensued: the Affordable Care Act was signed by
President Obama. The ACA put forward a vast
reform of the nation’s health system that would relieve a large measure of
human suffering and build a road to the healthier nation. The controversial yet timely reform would
ensure universal health coverage and attempt to control the explosive trend of rising
medical costs. The US health care costs
are by far the most expensive in the world, and ways to control these costs should
reflect the ways the consumers spend one of the six dollars they earn on
illness-related expenses. The ACA
attempts to control such costs in a rational and obvious but long-ignored way
of preventing expenditures before they occur.
Chronic
diseases, such as cancer, high blood pressure, heart problems, diabetes, and
stroke are responsible for seven out of ten deaths yearly and since most of the
health care dollars are spent at the end of at times life-long struggle with
these illnesses. Since high prevalence
of such diseases contributes to the sky-rocketing health care costs, it is
vital to recognize that prevention of these illnesses could cost far less than
their treatment. Thus, the meaningful
cost attainment can be achieved by ensuring that during ACA implementation the
lawmakers and the public health workers continue to focus on disease prevention.
The ACA and Prevention
ACA
ensures that prevention becomes a key in reducing health care costs in several
ways. First, it ensures universal
coverage. Second, it provides
individuals with improved access to clinical preventive services. Third, a National Health Council is created to design a focused
strategy to ensure the health of the nation. Fourth, under
the ACA, a special Public
Health Fund is designed to support the needed infrastructure for early
detection and prevention of diseases, as well as management of medical
conditions before they progress to severe stages (Koh,H., Sebelius, K.,
2010). Historically,
primary care physicians have been the major providers of preventative services,
but for more than a decade, there has been reduced interest in primary care
among new medical graduates (Cassidy, A., 2012). Because of this issue, it is important to
focus on the role of advanced practice
nurses (APNs) as health care providers, and key contributors of cost-effective,
reliable old-standing as well as innovative preventative services.
Proposal
Since the number of
physicians going into primary care has been falling over the years, and since more
than three million American families annually have already received care at
some 1100 new retail clinics staffed primarily by APNs, it is vital to
re-examine the role of APNs as providers of preventative health measures and in
the end as a means of reducing health care costs (Aiken, L., 2011). APNs’ scope of practice allows them to provide
most of the preventative and screening services, such as administering
vaccinations, making referrals for colon cancer and breast cancer screening,
performing PAP smears to screen for cervical cancer, etc.
Moreover,
literature demonstrates that APNs are efficient in providing primary care
services, including provision of screening and counseling (Naylor, M.,
Kurtzman, E., 2010). Research demonstrates that comparison of the
quality of care provided by physicians and nurse practitioners shows similar
clinical outcomes (Cassidy, A., 2012). Nurses are famous for focusing on patients as persons;
nurses take the best from medical, social and behavioral sciences and then blend
it with caring. Nurses, like no other
health care professionals are able to teaching and supporting patients in their
journey to prevent diseases from occurring. Yet, APNs cost the health care about half of
what the physicians do.
It
is important for the policy-makers representing the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts to be aware of these trends, as well as their increasing
significance in the light of the ACA, the emphasis on reducing health care
costs and improving preventative care. Massachusetts
has always been famous for its progressive legislative achievements. Recently, the innovative state health care
legislation became a hot discussion topic for the law-makers on the federal
level. The representative of the
Commonwealth has an excellent opportunity to demonstrate to the federal
government that the state sought to fill the gaps in
the primary care workforce through the extended use of APNs.
There
are other ways that the representative of Massachusetts can continue strengthening
the role of the APNs during the Health Care Reform implementation stage. Since
the goals of ACA is to create a robust primary care, to strengthen preventative
care, and to reduce the costs, the law-makers can aid goal achievement by
encouraging the implementation of practice guidelines to ensure high-quality
non-physician provided care. Another way
of supporting the role of APNs would be to ensure competitive compensation for
the provided services, especially on the basis of their ability to demonstrate
evidence-based practice approaches and improved patient outcomes combined with
fewer office visits and reduced hospital admission rates. Next, it is vital to continue supporting the
autonomy of APNs as well as to institute medical malpractice laws that have
non-physician providers in mind. Since
medical malpractice laws have been a matter of state regulation, it is up to
the state legislators to protect the growing body of APNs.
Last
but not least, the legislature needs to provide incentives for the registered
nurses to advance their education and enter primary care. Current model allows nurses to receive
financial assistance for college expenses.
The problem with such program is that the nurses need to be employed in
strictly defined facilities in rural areas.
Frequently, the geographic location of qualifying health care facilities
makes colleges that provide graduate-level nursing education remote and
inaccessible to the nurses. In the end, the nurses face a choice to either continue
their employment and not use the grants they qualify for, or to quit the
employment in order to pursue their education, which disqualifies them from a
grant.
Conclusion
The
tendencies towards reducing healthcare costs place an emphasis on providing
quality, evidence-based, inexpensive care. The APN workforce presents a potential answer
to this difficult task of providing cost-effective care, including preventative
services. In fact, I believe that the
changes in the health care system because of the APA would allow the APNs to
unleash their professional potential.
References
Naylor, M., Kurtzman,
E. (2010). The role of Nurse Practitioners in reinventing primary care. Health Affairs, 29 (5). 893-899. doi:
10.1377/hlthaff.2010.0440 Retrieved from http://web.pdx.edu/~nwallace/AHP/NPPC.pdf
Koh, H., Sebelius, K.
(2010). Promoting prevention through the Affordable Care Act.
New
England Journal of Medicine,
363 (14). 1296-1299