The Affordable Care Act mandates consumers to take charge of their health care. As per the law, a new “Patient’s Bill of Rights” gives even the most ordinary Americans the flexibility as well as the stability that they need in order not to make misinformed choices about their health. According to the affordable care act of 2010, insurance cover is expected to increase from 30 million to 34 million people. The affordable care act has impacted and will continue to impact American healthcare workers and healthcare service providers in different. For, the way the Act affects the citizens is different from the way it affects the providers, which can either be positively or negatively. Consequently, the Act has already has affected and will continue to affect health care professionals negatively as expressed in this paper.
Firstly, the ACA is bound to reinforce the workload that is to be completed by American medical professionals, in spite of their positions within the medical community. Due to the increasing population in America, healthcare workers such as doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and clinicians alike, amongst others, should expect their workload to increase forthwith, seeing as The Affordable Care Act allows provisions for universal insurance cover ( Stanfield, Cross & Hui, 2012) . In turn, this increase in workload, courtesy of the universal insurance under The Affordable Care Act, is to results in increased medical mistakes due to cases of fatigued medics. Further, this shall compromise professional medical performances, and this may lead to fatalities, both on the part of overworked medics or misdiagnosed patients.
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Further, healthcare professionals from across the board will continue to be affected by the Penalty Problem. The Act mostly emphasizes on penalties and reimbursement as a form of deterrent, and in order to keep all of the needed regulatory standards. The Act threatens Hospitals that will for whatever reason not keep standards as required per its provisions, with punishments and penalties, which in the most extreme cases are to include the suspension of medical operations of the culprit hospitals ( Stanfield, Cross & Hui, 2012) . This is likely to dissuade investment in the medical industry, and in so doing, shall have stripped medical professionals of employment opportunities. Further, the closing down of non-performing hospitals will most certainly render medical practitioners jobless. Moreover, the act requires investment in technology, and thus, affects the remuneration of health worker professionals since it obligates the redirection of funds into medical operations. Also, the new pay performing standards that are in accordance with the requirements of the act affect the hiring and retention of health professionals (Antos & Capretta, 2016).
Thirdly, the ACA is likely to provoke increased dissatisfaction and burnout among healthcare professionals, seeing as it complicates the environment under which medical practitioners operate, both by increasing their works and by affecting their pay rates. Moreover, workload stress causes depression and burnout amongst health workers, most especially amongst nurses, who have always to monitor admitted patients as per their job description. They experience emotional distress from complicated interactions with patients, disproportionate workloads, fatigue, exhaustion, and an unfriendly working condition, all of which are not exhaustively dealt with under the Affordable Care Act.
Also, the ACA exists in total disregard of the Right of Conscience on the part of medical professionals. Even though healthcare professionals usually are faced with profound moral as well as professional ethical issues that always arise within their workplaces, the act does not in way enforce their right of conscience in cases such as these ( Stanfield, Cross & Hui, 2012) . The Affordable Care Act mandates insurance funding of abortion, whether by drug-taking, by contraception or by sterilization. Focusing on reproductive rights alongside rights of the unborn, medical professionals may be pushed to hold moral and conscientious objections to abortion. However, the ACA compels them to facilitate the procurement of abortions in spite of their personal opinions in terms of moral objections.
The ACA in the form in which it presently exists has already had numerous negative effects on the practice of medicine and consequently, also on Healthcare service delivery within the USA. Therefore, the following recommendations should be considered in order to address the skill set and availability of qualified healthcare professionals.
Foremost, medical education institutions should be improved through increased financing, seeing as this will attain a more sound balance between primary care and specialty practices, and besides will increase graduates from across all of the healthcare professions and also as well, will provide financial incentives in all medical faculties. Health care students often seek relief in order to alleviate the financial burdens relative to their medical study training. As such, they should be supported by the government alongside other public development bodies, so as to ensure that they complete their studies and serve people in areas within which serious shortages in terms of medical personnel is encountered.
The Recruitment and retention of a sufficient workforce are essential towards addressing the skillset and availability of qualified healthcare professionals . The Strengthening of the workforce supply should be accompanied by innovative role-playing and allocation of tasks, since this will ensure efficiency and productivity and also, the expansion of any average workers’ capacity to output patient care services that are of the highest possible quality ( Stanfield, Cross & Hui, 2012) . Health care workers should neither be compelled to choose between firmly subscribing to their moral conscience nor from upholding potentially immoral orders due to the Affordable Care Act or to their bosses’ orders. To be allowed to work under Professionals’ Right of Conscience, will encourage them to work freely and thus, they will deliver better services.
Health service workers should be motivated by giving them adequate allowances that are to encourage them to work hard. They should also be given enough time to rest so that they may be relieved from stress and fatigue (Antos & Capretta, 2016). Furthermore, they should be allowed to carry on with their practice of medicine under policy frameworks that aren’t hostile to this very practice of medicine. To this end, the law ought to prescribe punishments that are proportionate as compared to the breach of medical professionalism ( Stanfield, Cross & Hui, 2012). By all means, anyone of such like policy frameworks, ought to only be implemented following exhaustive consultations pitting the government against the medical community.
In conclusion, therefore, the ACA, in the same manner as it already has adversely affected a diverse array of medical practitioners, promises to continue having far-reaching effects on the practice of medicine within the USA (Antos & Capretta, 2016). In order to combat the undesirable impact of the ACA on health workers, seeing as this has already occurred in the form of heavier workloads, the Penalty Problem, and dissatisfaction and burnout among healthcare professionals, there is the need to introduce policy framework changes so as to recruit and retain sufficient workforce, improve health education, and to motivate health workers by amongst other things increasing their wage.
References
Antos, J. and Capretta, J. (2016). The ACA And Its Employment Effects. Retrieved from http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2016/02/03/the-aca-and-its-employment-effects/
Stanfield, P., Cross, N., & Hui, Y. H. (2012). Introduction to the health professions . Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
