Blog

Ethical Care Factors in Care Collaboration Paper Example

Welcome to today’s presentation today. My name is……. and I shall be taking you through our topic today. We shall be focusing on Ethical and Policy factors in care collaboration in nursing homes, as is illustrated in the PowerPoint Presentation. Welcome!

Ethics applied in healthcare implies that healthcare practices adhere to morally and ethically acceptable norms within the health sector, and by extension, the society. They bring the best benefits to the patients and minimal to no harm, considering outcomes and consequences of healthcare practices. It also implies an unbiased manner of healthcare providers’ practice (Fink-Samnick, 2019).

The health policies are governments’ or responsible bodies’ regulations set to dictate care practice, safeguard staff and patients, and ensure quality care delivery. Health care policies play a role in determining healthcare standards, and most importantly, improving the health outcomes of patients. Health policy making process involves local, federal and state governments and other responsible organizations (Moore, 2018).

In the care collaboration process, ethical and policy factors are very essential. Ethical and policy aspects work hand in hand and promotes other crucial elements in adequate healthcare provision, such as collaboration and communication (Morley and Cashel, 2017). Relevant ethical and policy factors significantly impact the care planning process, a key element in care collaboration. For this reason, Moore (2018) contends that health practitioners and other stakeholders must integrate the pertinent ethical and policy factors in the delivery of healthcare.

Patient centered initiatives have been identified as significant contributors to care coordination success. The initiatives are an evolution from the previous hospital-centered care, which had the hospital as the focus of the care process (Fix et al., 2018). Successful effort in care coordination focuses on the patient and are directed towards benefiting and safeguarding the patient throughout healthcare delivery. The presentation’s primary focus is the nursing homes, which are healthcare institutions in need of care coordination to enhance healthcare delivery and the care continuum.

Nursing Homes and Care Collaboration

Nursing homes are special healthcare facilities in that they offer extended care beyond what an ideal hospital setting would. They provide holistic patient care that include areas outside healthcare. They provide services to a vast continuum of patients, among them, the elderly, the physically and mentally challenged, palliative care patients and other patients requiring special healthcare attention (Morley and Cashell, 2017). Care coordination and care continuum are very essential in the provision of quality healthcare to the patients.

Care coordination involves bringing together all factors and resources that are necessary to meet patients’ needs. Care continuum, on the other hand, involves all activities carried out to the patient, directed towards patient recovery or improved quality of life. Care continuum is offered in nursing homes, and thus, a care collaboration plan is essential. The plan, according to Morley and Cashel (2017), must adhere to ethical and policy guidelines to effectively deliver quality healthcare.

Government Policies and Care Coordination Continuum

The government has significant input in the regulation of care coordination, as discussed in this presentation. One of the policies impacting care collaboration is the Affordable Care Act, even though the Act has been facing a degree of rejection. The act advocates for the public’s application of health insurance, which has had tremendous effects on the accessibility of health services to the public and, consequently, increased number of patients seeking care under the insurance cover. This has demanded increased care collaboration in nursing homes (Gaffney & McCormick, 2017).

Another policy is the Medicare which has enabled citizens to acquire insurance coverage specific to healthcare needs. The policy has been at work since the 1940s. In 1965, The U.S. President at that time, John F. Kennedy, ensured that senior U.S. citizens had insurance coverage (Garfield, Damico & Orgera, 2020), on that was relevant to our study focusing on nursing homes. The Medicaid policy, created in 1965, aimed at enhancing low-income individuals’ access to healthcare needs and providing them with insurance coverage.

Currently, about 80 million US citizens are beneficiaries of Medicaid (Garfield, Damico & Orgera, 2020). The frontline beneficiaries include uninsured mothers, the physically and mentally challenged and the temporarily unemployed. The policy has had vital success in insurance coverage and is critical to care coordination in healthcare delivery (Neuman & Jacobson, 2018).

The other important policy is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The policy protects the citizens and allows them to retain their health insurance coverage during job shifts. The policy provides room for insurances changes in instances such as births, marriages, and deaths. The policy also ensures insurance coverage applicants are not discriminated against. The roles played by the policy have enhanced healthcare provision and, consequently, care collaboration (Edemekong et al., 2021).

Acts that protect the patient and health care providers from external threats is the Patient Safety Quality and Improvement Act. It also advocates for the confidentiality of patient information. It encompasses and promotes medical errors reporting, which has had a bearing on the conduct of healthcare providers, leading to improved quality of healthcare and care coordination (Canabal, 2018).

Lastly, we have the Certificate of Need Cost Containment Program. The policy enhances the quality of healthcare significantly in nursing homes. They do so by ensuring they are adequately regulated, and care coordination is effectively done (Canabal, 2018).

Policy Provisions that raise ethical dilemma in the coordination of care

Ethical issues are present in policy provisions. Some healthcare policies have contributed significantly to ethical issues and ethical dilemmas in their creation and implementation (Fink-Samnick, 2019). Their effects have had a detrimental impact both on the economy and the population, as discussed below. These issues have impeded their implementation and, most importantly, their acceptability.

The Affordable Care Act of 2010, for instance, is one of the health policies with major ethical dilemmas impeding its implementation and acceptability. It has been debated over from its creation in 2010. The act aimed to ensure accessibility of healthcare services to all the US citizens. However, it has impacted negatively on income tax rate regardless of whether one purchased health insurance coverage. This has raised a vast ethical disparity in the act’s effectiveness (Gaffney & McCormick, 2017).

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is not without ethical issues. Arguably, ethical issues impede the implementation of the act in nursing homes. For example, some mentally ill patients require a third party to handle their information.

The HIPAA act focuses on two significant aspects of healthcare, namely patient safety and confidentiality. However, since the act enshrines the essence of third-party involvement as far as sharing of patient data is concerned, it limits patient privacy (Edemekong et al., 2021). Thus, the HIPAA act cannot be fully implemented in nursing homes as it shall impede healthcare provision.

Effect of Nurses’ Code of Ethics on Care Coordination

The International Council of Nurses globally controls nursing practice. Locally, the American Nurses Association (ANA) creates policies and codes of ethics that inform healthcare provision and ensure that nursing care conforms to the international code of ethics (Miller, 2017). Some of the provisions of ANA have direct impacts on care collaboration as discussed below.

Provision 2 of the ANA advocates for respect for humans and maintaining dignity (Gunny et al., 2017). Maintaining human dignity entails providing care that relays the highest degree of respect to the patients. These acts include informed consent before procedures, allowing for autonomy and atraumatic care. Patients’ dignity should be upheld at all times during healthcare provision. Nurses should tailor the care coordination plan to ensure patients are respected at all stages during the implementation process (Morley & Cashel, 2017).

Provision 5 expounds on duty to self and others. The provisions entail providing care from the patients’ perspective. It calls for healthcare providers to offer care based how they would like to be cared for when in a similar position. It calls for personal efforts for self-growth and also improvement of healthcare quality. Nurses must provide the best quality care as a duty to themselves and to their patients. For this reason, Gunny et al. (2017) argues that a care coordination plan should be tailored to enhance the achievement of healthcare quality goals and duty to self-growth.

Provision 8 advocates for patient safety and protects patients from denial of quality healthcare, discrimination and manipulation during healthcare. It states that everyone irrespective of age, race or status should have access to quality healthcare. The provision also advocates for the provision of unbiased care to all patients. There should be no discrimination or favoritism. A care coordination plan should encompass all individuals and not a segment of the population (Gunny et al., 2017).

Social Determinants

The Healthy People 2020 is a policy whose main aim was that by the year 2020, healthcare practitioners were to be able to carry our standard healthcare practices in the right environment. However, as Finney-Rutten et al. (2019) observes, achievement of the Healthy People 2020 initiative is significantly determined by the social determinants.

These social determinants include and are not limited to the availability of social support, healthcare resources, healthcare accessibility, employment, social exclusion, stress factors, and social-economic status. Nursing homes are not limited to conventional care, and as such, social determinants are crucial in the achievement of necessary holistic care. Social determinants are vital aspects of care coordination and care continuum.

Conclusion

Ethical considerations and healthcare policies are indispensable in the process of quality and effective healthcare delivery. They are vital in nursing homes, especially in the planning and implementation of care coordination plan and care continuum. The policies put in place mediate for optimum health outcomes and quality healthcare delivery. The Nursing Code of Ethics is an essential tool in informing nurses’ practice. Social determinants of health provided by the Healthy People Initiative should also form an integral part in the provision of quality healthcare, in addition to enhancing care coordination.

References

• Cabanal, J., (2018). Patient-centered policies must be centered on healthcare workers too. OECD Observer. doi:10.1787/bec37ac0-en
• Edemekong, P., Annamaraju, P., & Haydel, M. (2021). Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. StatPearls. https://www.statpearls.com/articlelibrary/viewarticle/22897/
• Finney-Rutten, L. J., Blake, K. D., Greenberg-Worisek, A. J., Allen, S. V., Moser, R. P., & Hesse, B. W. (2019). Online health information seeking among US adults: measuring progress toward a healthy people 2020 objective. Public Health Reports, 134(6), 617-625. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033354919874074
• Fink-Samnick, E. (2019). The essential guide to interprofessional ethics in healthcare case management. HCPro. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329402950
• Fix, G. M., VanDeusen Lukas, C., Bolton, R. E., Hill, J. N., Mueller, N., LaVela, S. L., & Bokhour, B. G. (2018). Patient‐centred care is a way of doing things: How healthcare employees conceptualize patient‐centred care. Health Expectations, 21(1), 300-307. https://doi.org/10.1111/hex.12615
• Gaffney, A., & McCormick, D. (2017). The Affordable Care Act: implications for healthcare equity. The Lancet, 389(10077), 1442-1452. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)30786-9
• Garfield, R., Damico, A., & Orgera, K. (2020). The coverage gap: uninsured poor adults in states that do not expand Medicaid. Kaiser Family Foundation Issue Brief. https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/master/borndig/101717244/Issue-Brief-The-Coverage-Gap-Uninsured-Poor-Adults-in-States-that-Do-Not-Expand-Medicaid.pdf
• Gurney, D., Gillespie, G. L., McMahon, M. P., & Kolbuk, M. E. (2017). Nursing code of ethics: provisions and interpretative statements for emergency nurses. Journal of Emergency Nursing, 43(6), 497-503. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jen.2017.09.011
• Miller, B. (2017). Nurses in the know: The history and future of advance directives. OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 22(3). DOI: 10.3912/OJIN.Vol22No03PPT57
• Morley, L., & Cashell, A. (2017). Collaboration in health care. Journal of medical imaging and radiation sciences, 48(2), 207-216. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmir.2017.02.071
• Moore, G. M. (2018). When, why and how do policy makers use commissioned rapid reviews of research in health policies and programs? Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2123/18796
• Neuman, P., & Jacobson, G. A. (2018). Medicare advantage checkup. The New England Journal for Medicine, 379(22), 2163-2172. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMhpr1804089