NUR 740 Assignment 6.1: Contemporary Health Policy Project: Policy Selection Essay

NUR 740 Assignment 6.1: Contemporary Health Policy Project: Policy Selection Essay

NUR 740 Assignment 6.1: Contemporary Health Policy Project: Policy Selection Essay

Health Care Policy & Nurse Practice Sample paper

Health care policies form the backbone of healthcare provision for millions of Americans. Through Congressional oversight, agencies at the federal level develop laws designed to protect healthcare and the public wellbeing. Healthcare provision remains a core part of the legislative, judicial and executive policy formulation with the Health and Human Services Department tasked with the duty of overall coordination of the different healthcare policies (Norris, 2022). Advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) have an immense role in implementing the provisions of these policies because they affect their roles; especially ethical practice and care provision. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the Affordable Care Act 2010 and its impact on the APRN role and ethical practices.

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Explaining the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) of 2010

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (Affordable Care Act) or Obamacare was developed and enacted with the three critical goals of improving access to primary care, improving quality of care and lowering healthcare costs. A core aspect of this policy is the expansion of state Medicaid program and Medicare for elderly individuals. The policy increases the eligibility of adults whose incomes are up to 133% of the federal poverty levels. The law allows individuals with preexisting conditions to access care and establishes yearly limits on out-of-pocket costs (Brown et al., 2021). The law also allows young adults to be covered by their parent’s insurance plans till the age of 26 years. The law also reduces costs by restructuring payments to Medicare Advantage to offer improved access to elderly individuals, especially those with chronic or preexisting conditions.

Studies show that the enactment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) led to over 20 million Americans, especially from low-income households, enrolling for the program to enhance their health outcomes (Zhao et al., 2020). The law is saving older and disabled Americans thousands of dollars a year and strengthens the solvency of Medicare. These include closing the Medicare drug coverage gap, provision of preventive services for those under Medicare and Medicare Advantage payment. Again, the policy has improved access to care and consumer protections (Norris, 2022). These include ending harmful and discriminatory practice that left millions, particularly those who require care the most, uninsured and with limited access to healthcare services. The ACA includes policies which create a Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) which ensures that consumers’ premiums is spent on care and not administrative costs or profits for healthcare organizations and providers. The ACA mandate all health plans to offer consumers concise, easy to understand summaries of coverage and glossaries of their terms. Through this approach, consumers become more confident in navigation of confusing process of comparing and selecting plans. The implication is that the ACA is a healthcare policy aimed at improving better access to quality care and affordable cost, not just for the healthcare system but also for individual patients.

ACA Impact on the APRN Role

Healthcare policies play a critical role for nurses in their practice and interactions with patients. As patient advocates and frontline care providers, nurses play a critical role in enhancing access to quality and affordable care for their patients, especially those with special needs and chronic conditions.  The American Nurses Association (ANA) (2022) asserts that advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) have requisite knowledge and skills to promote health, assist shape the health delivery system and advance values like social justice. APRNs also advise the public on health issues and remain ahead in technological, methodological and other aspects of the healthcare provision, including participation on policymaking and implementation.

The ACA as a landmark policy affects the role of APRNs in different ways. These include expanding their duties and responsibilities as care providers. The APRNs treat and diagnose illnesses and manage chronic conditions. These means that the ACA bestows more responsibilities on these providers because of their roles. The APRNs have specialty roles and can work as nurse practitioners in acute, primary and specialty care across the lifespan. They specialize in geriatrics, and pediatrics, and treatment of chronic conditions like cancer as oncologists and certified nurse-midwives and gynecologists among other roles. These roles are essential because of the expanded access as more populations seek specialized care because of their conditions (Xu et al., 2020). Therefore, APRNs partner with physicians and organizations to provide care to meet the goals of ACA in different specialty areas. The implication is that APRNs are primary care providers who work in remote locations, based on licensure laws, to offer care and bridge the gap created by a shortage of physicians in those areas. The increased care demand due to the enactment of the ACA means that nurses must collaborate with physicians to offer expanded care.

APRN Ethical Practices

Ethical practices are a fundamental part of the expected quality provision for APRNs in different care settings. APRNs have prescriptive authority based on their scope of practice authority in their jurisdictions. The ACA policy mandates ethical practices to reduce fraud and pilferage of medical resources (Zhao et al., 2020). The ACA protects patients from harmful practices in prescribing by setting requirements for providers to prescribe under the expanded Medicare Advantage. Therefore, the policy mandates APRNs to practice ethically and ensure that they adhere to ethical practices when prescribing and offering any interventions in their settings.

Conclusion

The enactment of the ACA remains one of the most critical and practical steps to have better healthcare for the majority of Americans. The policy expanded the need for healthcare and role of APRNs in different care settings based on their specialty. Imperatively, APRNs can offer primary care and work in remote areas to help address the shortage of physicians while offering better care to diverse populations.

References

American Nurses Association (ANA) (2022). Advanced Practice Registered Nurse (APRN).

https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/workforce/what-is-nursing/aprn/

Brown, E. A., White, B. M., Jones, W. J., Gebregziabher, M., & Simpson, K. N. (2021).

Measuring the impact of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion on access to primary care using an interrupted time series approach. Health Research Policy and Systems, 19(1), 1-10. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-021-00730-0

Norris, L. (2022). Medicare and the Affordable Care Act.

Medicare and the Affordable Care Act

Xu, M. R., Kelly, A. M., Kushi, L. H., Reed, M. E., Koh, H. K., & Spiegelman, D. (2020).

Impact of the affordable care act on colorectal cancer outcomes: a systematic review. American journal of preventive medicine, 58(4), 596-603. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2019.11.018.

Zhao, J., Mao, Z., Fedewa, S. A., Nogueira, L., Yabroff, K. R., Jemal, A., & Han, X. (2020). The

Affordable Care Act and access to care across the cancer control continuum: a review at 10 years. CA: a cancer journal for clinicians, 70(3), 165-181. DOI: 10.3322/caac.21604.

BUY A CUSTOM-PAPER HERE ON;NUR 740 Assignment 6.1: Contemporary Health Policy Project: Policy Selection Essay

Introduction
As advanced practice nurses, you will be called on to participate as leaders in decision-making about health policy. That participation can include the development and implementation of health policies at the local, state, and national levels.

Completion of this project will give you the experience to participate in health policy development and/or reform in your future advanced nursing practice.

Assignment Guidelines
Your section instructor must approve your policy selection. You should have received approval for your policy selection by the end of Week 3.

For this assignment, you will compose an essay of 500 to 1000 words explaining the health policy you selected and how it impacts the APRN role and APRN ethical practices.

Support your explanation with at least three credible references (not older than three years) cited in APA 7th edition format:

No more than one reference from websites (appropriate websites are only those that end in .org, .gov, or .edu.)
At least one research article
At least one professional nursing journal article
When preparing your references, double-check that the DOI (if used) is correct. Also check that the URLs for journals are correct.

Submission
Submit your assignment and review full grading criteria on the Assignment 6.1: Contemporary Health Policy Project: Policy Selection page.