Healthcare
Healthcare is one of the most vital pillars that define a nation. It is through it that either a country thrives or collapses to its knees. This is because it is primarily involved with the most valuable assets that countries possess; human capital. Therefore, many nations have strived to ensure that their citizens receive quality healthcare, which eventually translates to a healthy nation. In the recent past, healthcare legislation has become a hotbed of frenzied activity globally in an effort to improve the health sectors. America has also witnessed a couple of legislations that are aimed at patient satisfaction.
The Affordable Care Act, the CHRONIC Care Act, and the American Health Care Act are among the most recent legislation. This paper focuses on the CHRONIC Care Act, which was passed and signed on the ninth of the second month of 2018. As Tumlinson, Burke, and Alkema (2018) explain, “this new bill makes significant policy changes to advance the goals of integrated, person-centered care for adults with complex needs who are in Medicare alone, or have both Medicare and Medicaid.” In most cases, this law is somewhat helpful to the old since they are the majority of chronic ailment patients. That is, they are more susceptible to these long term diseases.
Literature Review
To better understand the Chronic illnesses, we take an in-depth look at them from the perspective of three different articles that differ in what they address about these conditions.
Joachim and Arcon’s article, Living with Chronic Illness: The Interface of Stigma and Normalization, addresses chronic patients’ experience from two major points of view. These are stigma and normalization. They clearly explain that many diseases in contemporary society have shifted from being acute to becoming chronic. Thus, having chronic conditions has become the norm in today’s world. They explained chronic disease as either visible such as paraplegia, or the invisible, for example, diabetes. Other chronic conditions, such as AIDS, are a combination of the two. In matters of stigma, the writers give an example of AIDS. Many people who acquire this condition in our communities are associated with wanting behavior. Thus, when one has visible signs of this condition, they are mostly sidelined by others. Contrary to this, normalization occurs when adapts to the changes brought about by these conditions. These said patients will tend to speak about their condition to a trusted group of people. Moreover, they use the covering strategy to cope with the long term conditions, which helps them lead a normal life. Looking at the chronic patients from these two points gives a clear understanding of these experiences’ complexity.
On the other hand, Schulman‐Green and his peers talk about the self-management of chronic illnesses among patients. Basically, self-management refers to how individuals actively manage their chronic condition and with the help of both their families and medical practitioners, especially nurses. This writing piece presents findings from the qualitative meta-synthesis of some chronic conditions to aid in identifying factors that either facilitate or impede self-management in chronic patients. A majority of the participants in the research had diabetes and heart-related conditions. Findings presented that there were five broad factors that affected self-management: Lifestyle, the status of health, resources, the environment, and the systems of healthcare. For efficient and effective self-management, these key areas would need to be considered in order to provide customized attention to patients of chronic conditions.
Ambrosio and his peers dwell more on the family perspective of this issue. They argue that chronic conditions have not only taken a toll on individuals but also on their families. Families have also been forced to adjust to some conditions to accommodate these people and make them feel a part of the community. Apart from the role that caregivers give, mostly the nurses, the family is helpful in the success of the management of these conditions. According to the research in the article, 16 scales related to living with chronic diseases were assessed. These included the quality of life, perception, needs; life satisfaction and well-being; impact, and psychological adjustment. Nonetheless, these scales do not comprehensively measure the family process of living with chronic conditions. Ambrosio and his peers thus state that there is “need to develop and validate a scale that evaluates the multidimensional nature of living with chronic illness from the family perspective.”
Statistical Data on Chronic Illness
The burden of chronic related conditions is plainly taking a toll on individual nations and the world wholesomely. The World Health Organization had projected that three-quarters of the world’s deaths this year will be accredited to these conditions. Rapid changes have so far been witnessed in most developing countries, making them experience twice the burden as other countries. The quick change of rate and rising burden levels make chronic conditions a major threat in the medical sector. Thus stringent measures and instantaneous effective actions should be taken to address this issue.
In the United States of America, approximately 133 million citizens, who account for more than 40% of the total population, suffer from chronic diseases that are ongoing and not curable. By the end of this year, it is anticipated that the numbers will rise to almost 157 million. 81 million patients, who are more than half of this population, are projected to have more than one chronic ailment. Additionally, the economy has also had a fair share of impacts arising from chronic diseases. Heart diseases, mental disorders, cancer, and pulmonary conditions, which are among the major chronic conditions, are top in the most expensive health illnesses. Hence, due to this fact, chronic illnesses account for more than 75% of costs in the health sector. This is enough proof of the urgency of this matter in America and beyond. Thus the CHRONIC Care Act came at the perfect time to help counter these effects.
This act, which seeks to improve the objectives of integrated, person-centered care, will do so in several ways. First, it has updated the Medicare advantages that are concerned with chronic patients. Expanded supplemental benefits will be given to chronically ill patients and enrollees of Medicare to help them meet their needs. Furthermore, the act has approved improvements in delivery systems. These will see that chronic Medicare beneficiaries have increased chances of receiving health assessments while at their homes. This will improve outcomes as it is easy for the caregivers to customize treatment to their patients. The overall impact of this act will be to counter the adverse effects of chronic conditions.
Role of Nurses
Nurses are the key medical practitioners involved in chronic conditions. This is because the long term characteristic these conditions bear calls for effective constant care. And in most cases, it is the nurses who end up as caregivers for the long duration of the chronically ill people. Therefore, nurses play a very significant role in matters pertaining to chronic conditions. In fact, besides the CHRONIC Care Act being attributed to their innovation, they also play a huge role in its implementation.
The innovations were aimed at providing better and improved care to the chronically ill. They majored specifically in the old, who account for the larger percentage of patients due to their susceptibility. The nurses included the social determinants of health, such as age, living conditions, and work in these innovations. It is out of these social determinants and other constituents of the innovations that the CHRONIC Care Act was incepted. Thus American nurses were in full support of the passing of the bill that contained the act. Moreover, they continue working towards the complete and effective implementation of this act.