Introduction
Quality is a key factor in evaluating healthcare systems worldwide, as well as issues like patient outcomes, security, and quality of patient experience. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted by the United States government in 2010 recognizes a need for healthcare quality improvement and puts it in motion through different provisions and reforms. However, this evaluation will go beyond just analyzing whether the ACA improved healthcare quality and pointing out the advantages and negative effects of those clauses. By referencing information from reliable sources, along with articles from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and The Commonwealth Fund, this essay seeks to furnish a complete picture of how the ACA affected the American healthcare system.
Body
Preventive Care and Access to Services
In providing preventive services, the ACA prioritized achieving more quality health care. The helpfulness of ACA in giving people more chances to have preventive services at the primary level is put forward, which is a reputable opportunity according to the current situation (Kominskiet al, 2017). One significant direction the ACA gave was the free provision of preventive services without cost-sharing arrangements, making different screening tests and vaccinations available to people with lower income levels. This is because the prevention of diseases is the mainstream approach of global healthcare, focusing on the awareness of the primary and preventive measures that promote quality care, early interventions, and the prevention of disease. The provision of preventive services in the ACA has added significant value and health improvement among the people, especially toward the aim of the ACA, which is shifting focus to the health population. Screenings and vaccinations treat health problems, which decreases the number of people with the disease and could have been avoided (Kominskiet al, 2017). Consequently, this will reduce the pressure on the healthcare system due to the lower requirement for treating diseases, which could have been prevented in the first place.
While immensely successful in realizing preventive care as an agenda, these initiatives face inevitable constraints. Healthcare is not equally accessible in some communities, and the educational system can vary greatly. These differences may prevent the Affordable Care Act from fully implementing the expected preventative care outcomes. This assessment dives into the diverse issues of providing preventive care, which include identifying and identifying the barriers and offering a solution: access and awareness. Provisions on the impact of preventive healthcare improvement are also made (Kominskiet al, 2017). By overcoming the challenges related to the health system, the healthcare system can work on the issue of blurring gaps and continuing to be defective regarding the health of humans worldwide, which aligns with the global strategy of prevention healthcare.
Patient-Centered Medical Homes and Coordinated Care
The concept of patient-centered medical homes (PCMH) came from the ACA and is considered an enormous effort to bring forth coordinated, patient-centered approaches. Rosenbaum (2011) provides the benefits that the care corresponding model has on people, ensuring that the patients get professional help more often than hospitalized and that their satisfaction with medical aid is also high. This is in accord with the world’s tendency toward a patient approach, which is a good opportunity to build acing health quality. Although PCMH models can boast several successes in enhancing care coordination, they have several pitfalls and bottlenecks in implementation issues that bring real value to patients’ care processes. This evaluation will reflect on the obstacles encountered by the career providers in the process of incorporating PCMH. Acknowledging and resolving those hindrances is critical before making this kind of organizational transition (Rosenbaum, 2011). The first challenge is transforming conventional healthcare delivery models into an organization that works closely together (PCMH), which will affect both the organizational structure and the allocation of resources. PCMH framework implementation may encounter hindrances from systems inertia and the scope of financial resources, which may hinder its thorough execution.
The evaluation will analyze the key issues by addressing the importance of healthcare personnel in implementing new care coordination strategies. The problems, which include further training, change of communication protocols, and incorporation of technology in healthcare operations, will be probed. Grasping such challenges becomes an imperative part of a deeper assessment of the level to which the ACA has impacted the quality of healthcare in general (Rosenbaum (2011). Governance action directed at identifying and overcoming these hurdles can allow healthcare leaders and stakeholders to promote and implement PCMH as an effective and preferred care delivery approach nationally, increasing the healthcare system’s general effectiveness
Payment and Delivery System Reforms
The ACA mandated far-flung reimbursement and service delivery system reforms in the USA and supplied more private insurance coverage than before to the citizens who could not afford private insurance. Such reforms were planned to avoid the fee-for-service models altogether and stimulate the position of reimbursement systems, which heavily stressed generating high-quality healthcare outcomes (Abrams et al., 2015). Such a change is consistent with the global attempt to establish a value-based healthcare system, which involves efforts of a majority of the stakeholders to improve healthcare overall quality while at the same time making relevant financial reimbursement systems align with and support the best patient outcomes. Even though those noble reforms are initially meant for public benefit, critical analysis must be done to replace the drawbacks and unintended consequences that can arise from them. However, other healthcare services, such as emergency care, are regulated by several conditions and regulations that make them very safe for patients (Abrams et al., 2015). In the period when health systems are switching to choosing high quality and efficiency as a payment system’s criteria, doubts might arise concerning the applied measurements and quality indices. Encouraging that the mentioned measures are effective enough to rely on in the reform process should be done because, otherwise, reforms may have the opposite effect.
Moreover, providers are given different payments depending on the type of care they offer and the system employed by each entity vis-à-vis resource states, thus posing yet another challenge to these reforms. There may be barriers to small local healthcare providers in conforming to the new models, burdening the gaps in resource allocation and access to quality healthcare (Abrams et al., 2015). The evaluation will focus on the potential effects of small and large-sized healthcare providers, emphasizing the crucial aspect of fair implementation to avoid inappropriate changes without side effects.
Technology Integration and Health Information Exchange
The presence of technology and the Health Information Exchange (HIE) as a result of IAC is a vital step towards increasing the quality of healthcare services. The implication that the HIE reduced unnecessary testing and enhanced communication between service providers in the article “Impact of HIE on Care Coordination, and Reduction of Redundant Testing: An Evaluation Study” is evidence of the progress of healthcare systems towards a patient-centered and integrated approach. The integration of EHRs can be aligned with global initiatives to utilize technology aimed at curbing ineffective and slow healthcare delivery and implementing an integrated approach to patient information. However, impediments arising from the need for interoperability of EHRs and privacy issues contribute to the development of interoperability mechanisms becoming more complicated. Assessment will include these challenges, revealing the possible barriers they could create that prevent the taking advantage of technology integration in healthcare quality improvement (Abrams et al., 2015). Besides issues of interoperability and data privacy, other important factors should be considered to ensure that e-health technologies purposefully deliver flawless health information exchange and, thus, properly satisfy healthcare reform goals set within the framework of the ACA.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the ACA has accomplished a lot in changing the quality of healthcare that is accessible in the U.S. through provisions seeking to address preventive care, patient-centered approaches, the payment and delivery systems inefficiencies, as well as integration of technology. However, while both norms provide the framework, intrinsic hindrances and problems are associated with their implementation, which must be identified and dealt with. This assessment goes through in detail how ACA has been a huge milestone in improving healthcare services using findings from established sources. Through knowledge and realization of the pros and cons of ACA solitudes, policymakers, health professionals, and people can play their roles to bring about the positive transformation of the given haven of well-being in America.
References
Kominski, G. F., Nonzee, N. J., & Sorensen, A. (2017). The Affordable Care Act’s Impacts on Access to Insurance and Health Care for Low-Income Populations. Annual review of public health, 38, 489–505. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-031816-044555
Rosenbaum S. (2011). The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: implications for public health policy and practice. Public health reports (Washington, D.C.: 1974), 126(1), 130–135. https://doi.org/10.1177/003335491112600118
Abrams, M., Nuzum, R., Zezza, M., Ryan, J., Kiszla, J., & Guterman, S. (2015). The Affordable Care Act’s payment and delivery system reforms: a progress report at five years. Issue brief (Commonwealth Fund), 12, 1-16. https://europepmc.org/article/med/26040019
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