Affordable Care Act Case Study

Introduction
For several decades, government officials and healthcare experts have been discussing the broken and dysfunctional US healthcare system. The US ranks highest for cost and lowest for outcomes. Healthcare accounted for 17.4 percent of the gross domestic product in 2013 (CMS.gov). The Institute for Healthcare Improvement highlighted the quality of healthcare in the US or lack of quality with the 100,000 lives campaign. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement brought national attention and awareness to the epidemic of hospital errors and the loss of life related to those errors. One would expect that amount of money the US spends on healthcare to equate to great patient care and reduction of patient mortality, however, that is not

The Affordable Care Act consists of the ten sections including Quality, Affordable Health Care for all Americans, Role of Public Programs, Improving the Quality and Efficiency of Health Care, Prevention of Chronic Disease and Improving Public Health, Health Care Workforce, Transparency and Program Integrity, Improving Access to Innovative Medical Therapies, CLASS Act, Revenue Provisions, and Strengthening Quality, Affordable Health Care for all Americans (Fontenot, 2013). The Affordable Care Act aims to reduced the number of uninsured Americans by mandating all citizens have health insurance either through private insurance coverage or increasing access to public insurance coverage. The reduction of uninsured in theory should reduce the cost of healthcare. Prior to The Affordable Care Act, the burden of cost associated with the uninsured was shifted to the physicians, hospitals, and consumers. HHCAPS or value-based reimbursement should improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare. Healthcare providers who fail to demonstrate improvement in quality and efficiency will be penalized by two percent for each reporting year that they do not comply with the standard of care and quality standards imposed by CMS. Failure to pay for healthcare acquired conditions will also demonstrate a

1201). The expected physician and nursing shortage will impact access to healthcare. It is unclear how The Affordable Care Act will impact the current and future shortage of physicians and nurses. The aging population is contributing to the shortage of healthcare providers. Limited nursing school faculty is impacting the nursing shortage. Many nursing schools in the US have waiting list to begin their programs secondary to lack of faculty. The average age of a nurse in the US is now around mid 40s to early 50s. Many of these nurses are expected to retire during the peak of the nursing shortage. The Affordable Care Act has some built in incentives to encourage physicians who provide primary care, which has been shown to lower mortality and increase life expectancy (Davis et al., 2011). Medical schools have reported increased enrollment