The adoption and implementation of the ACA have significantly impacted the nursing practice and nurses’ roles. A good example is the increment t of affordable healthcare access through expanding Medicaid eligibility. This has also been achieved by establishing various health insurance exchanges (Cleveland & Smith, 2019). The significant result of this has been increased demand for nursing services. Therefore, most nurses are expected to continuously provide proper comprehensive care to many patients who need it (Cleveland & Smith, 2019).
Moreover, ACA has also introduced various measures to ensure quality care and reward by paying for incentives due to good performance. This has had a ripple effect in the form of increasing care attention to the patients and ensuring that the outcomes of service provision of the patients are exemplary (Cleveland & Smith, 2019). Finally, nurses are also required by ACA to take up new responsibilities and roles that would make them continuously provide the best services to the patients. These roles and responsibilities include preventing diseases, educating patients, and promoting healthcare.
ACA has introduced quality measures and payment for performance incentives to help in improving patient quality care. Quality measures have been known as the metrics used to evaluate the quality of care patients provide (James, 2018). These include readmission rates, satisfaction scores of the patients, and mortality rates. Pay for performance incentives, on the other hand, are the financial rewards that healthcare providers receive as a result of attaining or meeting the measures of quality (James, 2018). Patient outcomes have significantly been impacted by the quality measures and pay for performance since these measures lead to a proliferation of focus on evidence-based and the best patient–centered care.
As a result of ACA, various nursing roles have also emerged, such as management and leadership roles. For a proper response to the ever-dynamic healthcare environment, nurses must be aggressive in taking continuous learning of management and leadership courses to ensure patients are provided with the best quality care (Joseph & Huber, 2017). Some of these roles include managing financial resources and leading interdisciplinary teams (Joseph & Huber, 2017). Moreover, some of these roles also require nurses to understand healthcare laws and structured regulations that fully advocate for the patient’s interests and rights.
ACA has also ensured that nurse managers and leaders take different career roles. This, however, depends on the qualifications and specialties of the nurses (Joseph & Huber, 2017). Nurse leaders must consistently perform the functions of a leader in the entire medical organization, including faculty transformation, developing better innovative methods, and acting as the leaders of various departments (Joseph & Huber, 2017). On the other hand, nurse leaders are required to act as the directors of patient care. They should also be the pioneers of objectives accomplishment in the organization.
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