New Care Delivery Models in Health System Reform - Assignment Example

Various changes have occurred in the environment of the health care system, opportunities for nurses have increased as the settings for practice have increased. One of the various changes experienced by the health care system is the change of continuum of care. Continuum of care refers to the involvement of integration of various systems of care that assists patients from time to time through various means of services of health (Columbia University Medical Center, 2012). For example: in the past care was restricted to health care organizations and settings, but now health care providers are needed to provide services at different settings such as home and community centers. Now nurses are required to be culturally competent so they can deal with different patients coming from different cultural backgrounds and understand issues in the context of the patient’s culture. The focus of health care systems used to be on helping patients get better, now the focus has shifted to disease prevention and individual well-being. The accountability of the health care service providers has even changed. In the past, care providers were paid for their services on the basis of fees for each service. This promoted health care professionals to increase the number of services and they started focusing on quantity of service rather than the quality of service. One method used to fix this issue is the creation of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs); such organizations have been promoted and accepted by insurance companies who cover health care and by the government. ACOs are created in such a way that a certain amount of service providers obtain the responsibility of caring for a batch of patients and the focus is on treating and providing health service to the entire batch (Dickerson, 2011). Compensation is paid to these service providers by Medicare and insurance companies in return for saving the expenditure and cutting down the cost of treatment while providing very high-quality treatment to the patient. Another new system that is gaining popularity in the health care system is patient-centered medical homes, this system has not only changed the previous methods of providing care, and it has even increased the required amount of nurses and their competencies (Haney, 2012, p.5). Medical homes comprise of providing health care services in teams, the leader of this team is a physician and his task is to provide health care services to patients on an ongoing and continuous basis with the main aim of achieving higher quality health care for patients. This approach specializes in providing health care services to the youth, kids, and adults. An important component of this system is care coordination and for the purpose of care ordination, highly trained staff is required who know how to use technological advancements and they should have the ability to work in teams. Surveys have shown that people have started giving importance to the prevention of diseases and well being of individuals over healing diseases, this issue has even been addressed in legislative and funding for prevention has been increased by the government (HelathCare, 2012). The shift from treatment to prevention and wellbeing of patients and individuals has been given great importance by Nurse Managed Health Care Centers. These facilities charge less than what physician-led health care centers charge and there is an increase in demand for such centers because of the continuous increase in the cost of health care services. The focus is on care systems that are community-based has been increased and more people have been covered through health care insurance policies. The coming years will experience a healthy increase in people trying to obtain community-based treatment, thus more resources need to be diverted towards it (Columbia University Medical Center, 2012). Technology has even impacted the nursing profession, professional nurses are expected to have the technical abilities required to use technological advancements and they are expected to gain expertise in the entire technology they are using. Nurses are even expected to provide services through the use of telecommunication (Haney, 2012). Telecommunication is even used for counseling services that focus on nurses. The counseling service providers ensure that nurses have someone to talk to so they can release the everyday stress they experience in their work environment. Health care settings are removing off nurses and health care professionals who have limited expertise and are replacing them with individuals who have a higher level of expertise. The patterns of funding have a tremendous impact on the health care system; both the government as well as private funding patterns for health care settings have been changed and have impacted the nursing profession.