The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) usually referred to Affordable Care Act (ACA) and nicknamed Obamacare is a U.S federal bill that was signed into law in March 2010 by President Barrack Obama, it is the latest healthcare transformation law that seeks to enhance quality and accessibility of healthcare services to all Americans (Ornstein, 2015).
The PPACA empowers consumers to be in control of their own healthcare by giving them the flexibility of making well-versed choices concerning their health; this is provided for in the ACA under the Patient’s Bill of Rights (Levy, 2010).
Stakeholders in evolution of Affordable Care Act
Many stakeholders were involved in the development of the ACA. Key among them is The Federal government and states, Senate, Congress, employers, drug and health device manufacturers, patients, physicians, hospitals and other healthcare providers and health insurance companies (Cunningham, 2013). Other nonprofit foundations such as The Kaiser Family Foundation and ANA played important roles in formulation and implementation of ACA.
The Federal Government was on the forefront in lobbying for the enactment of ACA, it held discussions with relevant Senate and house committees to push for the passing of the bill (Alston &Bird, 2016). States governments are vital stakeholders due to their willingness to adopt and implement ACA particularly on the Medicaid expansion and health insurance exchanges (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2011). The Federal Government, ANA the Kaiser Family Foundation, Hospitals and other providers such as Medicare and Medicaid can be considered as advocacy groups because they promoted and advocated for health reforms through the enactment of the ACA (The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 2016). These organizations devoted most of their time and resources to ensure that the Act was successfully enacted. On the other hand, health insurance companies, drug and device manufacturers, employers and group health providers can be described as business interest groups (Cafasso, 2011). This is because these groups are more concerned not on the benefits of the Act to people but how the Act will affect their businesses and operations.
Relevance of ACA to healthcare facilities
ACA is relevant to health care facilities and hospitals in a number of ways; to begin with, ACA supports the goals of enhancing patient quality health care and reduction of healthcare costs (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid, 2016). These goals are critical to hospitals in that there is payment systems put in place by the ACA that directly links reimbursement to performance. The two payment systems are bundled payments and value-based purchasing (VBP). For value-based purchasing, incentives reimbursements are made to hospitals that meet or exceed some performance standards set by CMS, unlike in the past where hospitals were paid for just reporting performance in some areas. With the new ACA provisions, VBP payment model stipulates that reporting is compulsory and Medicare reimbursement shall only be made based on achievements of certain quality standards. Such standards include patient satisfaction and efficiency of the hospital among other benchmarks to be set by CMS. The bundled payment, on the other hand, provides a reimbursement for an episode of care. This type of incentive aims at reducing rates of hospital readmissions. The two modes of incentives improve the quality of healthcare patients receive in hospitals.
The areas of the hospital that will be affected by the policy are the revenue department and the emergency departments. The revenue department will record an increase in revenue collected since the ACA will increase the number of citizens who are covered. The newly covered patients will seek care in hospitals hence generating more revenue. However, the increase in a number of patients who will be covered by the Act shall result into crowding in especially in emergency departments.
The key organizational stakeholders who will be impacted by the ACA are nurses and physicians. The Act is expected to provide health insurance to more than 34 million people; this implies that those who will seek care from hospitals will increase (HHS, 2016). As a result, more health workforce will be needed to gather for the needs of increased patients. Most hospitals currently struggle with a shortage of nurses; the Act will, therefore, increase pressure, stress and workloads on the few practicing nurses.
Conclusion
The PPACA will transform the healthcare system significantly. Many uninsured Americans will be covered under the act hence shall get essential health benefits. The essential benefits include ambulatory services, emergency care, prescription drugs, hospitalizations, mental health services, preventative care, and rehabilitative services, pediatric care as well as maternity and newborn care at no extra costs. However, full benefits or impacts of the Act on health care reforms shall not be realized fully at the moment as its implementation is expected to take several years. The act also will put pressure and increase workload on care givers. The implementation should be fully supported by all stakeholders because of the many positive outcomes that have been felt in the last five years since its enactment as a law.
References
Alston & Bird LLP. (2016). Impact on Other Key Stakeholders - 2012 Supreme Court Health Care Ruling - Alston & Bird LLP. Retrieved from http://www.alston.com/health-care-ruling-supreme-court/key-stakeholder-impact/
Cafasso, E. (2011). How health-reform stakeholders will be affected by recent changes: PRSA. Retrieved from http://www.prsa.org/Intelligence/TheStrategist/Articles/view/9071/1028/How_health_reform_stakeholders_will_be_affected_by#.Vx2rLtR97hl
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid. (2016). Affordable Care Act | Medicaid.gov. Retrieved from https://www.medicaid.gov/affordablecareact/affordable-care-act.html
Cunningham, P. W. (2013). Stakeholders spend big on ACA ads - POLITICO. Retrieved from http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/stakeholders-ads-obamacare-aca-2014-097588
The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. (2016). Summary of the Affordable Care Act | The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Retrieved from http://kff.org/health-reform/fact-sheet/summary-of-the-affordable-care-act/
HHS. (2016). About the Law | HHS.gov. Retrieved from http://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/about-the-law/index.html
Levy, M. (2010). Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) | United States [2010] | Britannica.com. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/topic/Patient-Protection-and-Affordable-Care-Act
National Conference of State Legislatures. (2011). 2010 state actions to implement federal health. Retrieved from www.ncsl.org/research/health/2010-state-implementation-of-federal-health-reform.aspx
Ornstein, N. (2015). The Birth of Obamacare - The Atlantic. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/the-real-story-of-obamacares-birth/397742/
