Healthcare Systems
Respond to classmate post.
Classmate post: The most significant drivers of high performance in healthcare systems include cost and quality. Unfortunately, cost and quality antagonize each other. People often imagine that high-quality care costs a lot. My current work situation is characterized by a shortage of nurses in the intensive care unit (ICU). Registered nurses (RN) from other departments cannot undertake the responsibilities in the ICU setting since it requires specialty practitioners. For the facility to provide a high quality of care in the ICU setting, it will have to spend more money on nurse staffing to have an appropriate nurse-to-patient ratio.
Understaffing the ICU as a result of cost containment may limit the quality of healthcare services in the ICU. Nursing staffing in healthcare facilities bears a critical effect on cost and quality of care since nurses are the frontline care providers. Therefore, understaffing and careless home health care costs can lower health benefits regarding missed opportunities to enhance the patient’s health and well-being (Haddad et al., 2022). Individuals rate cheap items as of low quality. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was created to ensure universal healthcare coverage in the United States (Courtemanche et al., 2018). The majority of the American population acquired healthcare insurance at affordable costs due to the ACA.
On the contrary, there are concerns as to whether there are enough primary care physicians to meet the healthcare needs of all the insured individuals. The fact that the majority of the American population is insured raises the question as to how the quality of healthcare in the United States will be affected. The ACA aims to improve the quality of care while reducing the costs for individuals and healthcare organizations through incentives and providing advanced education opportunities for nurses (Courtemanche et al., 2018). In conclusion, cost and quality are the most significant drivers of high performance in the healthcare system.
