“Demands for patient safety, reimbursement changes with healthcare reform, technological advances, and the changing roles of healthcare providers require that budgets be constructed as accurately as possible and for nurse managers to understand financial applications,” (Dunham-Taylor & Pinczuk, 2015).
Directions:

Research one factor contributing to rising health care costs.

Why is this particular factor driving up the cost of health care?
How will you, as a nursing leader, have the ability to impact the cost of health care delivery?

Post your initial response no later than 11:55 pm of the date posted on the course calendar.

Be concise (limit your post to 300 words) and specific in your response and ensure that your answers show analysis and synthesis of information as well as critical thinking that relates to this week’s discussion topic. Support your response in APA format with evidence from recent, scholarly, peer-reviewed journals (preferably nursing journals). (“Recent” is less than five years old. Your textbook is not a journal.) APA format

SOLUTION

The cost of healthcare has been on the rise in the last few decades. One of the major factors driving costs of healthcare is ageing. A study conducted by Dieleman et al. (2017) showed that the cost of healthcare has increased from $1.2 trillion to 2.1 trillion between 1996 and 2013. Ageing of the population as the second highest contributor with 11.6%. Garza (2016) argues that older people are prone to [cmppp_restricted] chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, hypertension and dementia among others. In the U.S., it is projected that 60% of the baby boomers will be managing at least one chronic condition. The management and treatment of these chronic conditions is expensive taking into account the increased physician visits and hospital admissions. Again, putting into consideration the level of disability associated with age and the onset of such chronic conditions, the cost of healthcare is deemed to increase further.

As a nursing leader, I have the ability to impact on the cost of healthcare delivery by observing procedures, policies, principles and ensuring nurses offer patient centred care. Hospitals lose Medicare reimbursement when many patients are readmitted within 30 days. Again, events such as hospital-acquired infections falls and pressure ulcers are considered events that should never happen in a hospital stay. Ensuring these form of events do not occur requires observing policies and procedures to offer care that is high quality and customized as per the patient needs. As found by Schmier et al. (2016), avoiding healthcare-associated infections by using healthcare antiseptics can save $4.25 billion. It is thus clear that by focusing on providing quality healthcare, the cost of healthcare can be reduced drastically. Accurate budgeting of available resources areas where more resources are required receives much attention.

References

Dieleman, J. L., Squires, E., Bui, A. L., Campbell, M., Chapin, A., Hamavid, H., … & Sadat, N. (2017). Factors associated with increases in US health care spending, 1996-2013. Jama, 318(17), 1668-1678.

Garza, A. (2016). The aging population: The increasing effects on health care. Pharmacy Times, 82(1).

Schmier, J. K., Hulme-Lowe, C. K., Semenova, S., Klenk, J. A., DeLeo, P. C., Sedlak, R., & Carlson, P. A. (2016). Estimated hospital costs associated with preventable health care-associated infections if health care antiseptic products were unavailable. ClinicoEconomics and outcomes research: CEOR, 8, 197. [/cmppp_restricted]