paper

Research Paper (Links to Course Objectives 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8):

The purposes of this assignment are to help you a.) effectively use research resources through library data bases and search engines to complete course requirements, b.) improve your critical thinking skills, and c.) develop your effectiveness in writing about topics relevant to course objectives and health care administration.

The paper is to explore, in greater detail than the required readings and class discussion, any health economics or finance topic identified in this course syllabus. Each student will choose a topic, which has relevance to health care financial management for a health service organization (HSO). Examples include but are not limited to the following: the financial impact of Medicare rates on a health service organization; the use of cost benefit analysis by a HSO; the use of market analysis and strategic product lines; or the change in the utilization of funds by an HSO.  The student will demonstrate his/her mastery of the selected topic in no more than 15 pages of text.  Student’s are required to submit to the instructor for approval a minimum one-half page write-up and brief outline on their proposed topic by the end of Week 4.

Below is a message to my Prof asking for her opinion

Projected effects of Affordable Care Act on Health Insurance policies and healthcare demands

The Affordable care act was passed into law in 2010 is said to be the most sweeping legislation in recent history. The law which takes full effect in early 2014 is expected to expand coverage to over 30 million American.

I have done extensive research for a few days and I have not found anything concrete on the Impact of Obamacare. In fact, I have gone from being an advert believer to a skeptic. I was initially all for it because I believe that having a National Health Insurance program means that we can avoid advance selection and together contribute to sharing in the increasing cost of healthcare. This means that the most likely to be sick and the elder are not the only consumers of health insurance. And that healthy people share in the cost knowing that they will definitely get old and are likely to someday be in the same position of need or maybe suffer from an unexpected illness. However, with the Obamacare, about 20 million is still projected to be without insurance.

I was thinking to this discuss the potential problems with Obamacare;

· “Crowd-Out” – is a potential problem that may be experienced with ACA .

· Decreased access to care

· Adverse Selection: because people will only buy health insurance when they need care. This is because they penalty for not contributing to the pool is cheaper than contributing.

· They would be great financial strain on both Federal and the State government.

I realize that the topic I have chosen does not particularly align with for us to discuss financial Management in a Health Service Organization. I thought of also working on another topic that I find interesting: “ Cost benefit analysis of the implementation of Electronic Medical records: however. I was not sure if this would be appropriate.

Her reply

I like either topic you mentioned. It is up to you which one you select and if you are able to do so, tie it into health care finance, that would be great. Again, I like both topics, so go with the one you are most comfortable with writing about for your research paper. Both are very much a part of our future in health care!
I do suggest you write out an outline to help you along as you write and pull relevant articles on your topic.
I suggest the outline follow an article type format. Have background/introduction, review of research, methods used, results and finally, conclusions/discussion. The conclusion/discussion should answer the “so-what” part of the research. Why does this topic matter and why is it important to health care? Let me know if you have trouble finding references. Let me know if you have questions. I look forward to reading the finished product. I can’t stress enough the importance of the conclusions and discussion portion of your paper! Really spend a lot of time here and demonstrate your critical thinking skills. Also, you may wish to do headers to guide the reader and those should be in bold. Finally, but this is really first, do an abstract, much like you would see in a journal article at the start of the paper. This lets me know what to expect. Again, let me know if you have any questions!

I started the paper. Below are my thoughts.

According to an institute of medicine report, IT has a great potential to improve the quality of health care with in the area of  safety, effectiveness,timeliness,efficiency and patient centerdness.

The cost associated with implementation of Electronic medical records can be categorized into two groups (Wang and co). This includes the system costs and induced costs. Like in area of IT, money and time is needed for research and development of systems. The more advance and complex the system, the more time and money is needed. EM systems are design to hold sensitive information about the health of an individual. Hence, has to be designed in such a way that it can securely hold sensitive information, allow for interobity and be ease to use as most healthcare practitioners have background in IT. System cost hence encompasses all cost associated with research and development of software and hardware, training, implementation,and ongoing maintenance as well as support.

Induced costs on the other hand are temporary cost that are incurred as a result of the transition process from paper to electronic system. The transitioning period usually required a decrease if provider productivity. For example, the medical facility may temporarily stop providing services or reduce the number of ours it is operational so as to allow for the installation. In addition, time and money would be need to train all staff that would be using the new system. Because these cost are not a direct result of the development and installation of the EMR system, that are known as induced cost.

The benefits associated with this is s