Are you interested in learning what healthcare managers need to know about Obamacare before you are bombarded with endless questions by staff members and patients? The Affordable Care Act, which is also more commonly referred to as Obamacare, affects many different aspects of hospital management along with the way that care is given. While the health care system is a complex one with or without Obamacare, healthcare administrators who have been employed in hospitals and other medical facilities for quite some time need to adjust to the changes. Here are key pieces of information about the Affordable Care Act that you must know if you are planning to become a healthcare manager or you are already working within the field.
Hospitals Will Need to Shift Focus to the Quality of Care
Part of the healthcare reform law is designed to help improve the healthcare system by ensuring that hospitals and physicians are accountable for the quality of care that they give. In a pre-Obamacare world, members of society in the nation were not required to purchase health insurance. Hospitals were paid for the volume of patients cared for rather than the quality of care that was being given. This encouraged healthcare managers to find ways to take on the highest volume of patients as possible so that facility earns as much as possible.
Now, the rewards system is shifting and this has become a major concern for healthcare administrators who have been living in a world where volume has always outweighed quality. The healthcare reform is breathing life back into the healthcare system, and changing the rewards system in a way that will provide hospitals delivering quality care with more rewards than those that are delivering low quality care to a high volume of patients. This means that hospital administrators will now need to learn how to operate by earning a fixed price per procedure while having to put more focus on treating patients in a holistic way. Successful outcomes will certainly be measures that health managers are going to be focusing on in detail if they want to receive as much government subsidies as possible.
New Shifts in Hiring Due to Higher Demand
Estimates have come in showing that about 32 million more Americans will have healthcare insurance when the deadline approaches, and this number will definitely increase the demands of nurses, physicians and other medical staff. To adjust to the new regulations and keep up with demand, administrators will need to hire the right types of staff members. The new focus will certainly be on preventative and outpatient care because of undeniable increased patient loads. If administrators are ready to hire practitioners and specialists, costs can ultimately be kept down in the long run.
If you plan on working in healthcare management, you must be up-to-date with all of the changes that came as a result of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. You need to be familiar with the regulations, but you also need to know how these regulations are going to affect the healthcare system as a whole. The demand for ill patients with insurance will be high. While quality will improve, these improvements come at a cost, and the best administrators know what healthcare managers need to know about Obamacare to keep up.
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