Policy Factors in Care Coordination in Nursing Homes

When it comes to the provision of quality healthcare to patients with special attention demands, nurses may find some difficulties when doing their job. Care coordination may be challenged depending on the level of solution needed to treat the patient (Bruvik et al., 2017). For instance, the US government’s Medicaid caters for cost in medical expenses for patients under the program only when the facility has a quality certificate. These policies have been offered in accordance to HIPPA standards and requirements. The need here is to have the best health care services accessible to every individual in the country.

Medicaid Program in Nursing Homes

The government of the US imposed Medicaid programs that were meant to take care of people with lower incomes. A nursing home is regulated by a Certificate of Need (CON), which is a cost-containment program to control expenditures on the supply of nursing home equipment. Similarly, nursing homes must provide high-quality services, which may be costly. Medicaid reimbursement for caring for Medicaid patients is done by consideration of price and quality. Thus, if a nursing home has challenges with the cost of getting supplies and ends up charging higher prices, the program may not cover all expenses. Therefore, it becomes an issue to leverage the cost of medicine and clinical procedures for the middle class

Medicare Policy for the Older People

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The US government policy on Medicare Restructuring on Nutritional Care for the Elderly has had an impact on the coordination of care in nursing homes. The 1998 changes led to the elimination of standards that comprised staffing requirements for a qualified dietitian. The move was to make sure that any care facility is accountable for the nutritional health of older patients. However, since the elimination of the nutritionist, there has been low follow-up on the appropriate approach to the issue (Frankova, 2018). Therefore, it becomes a challenge for nursing homes to keep up with the shift of chronic care for older persons who at times may have malnutrition. The policy affected the coordination of care since there is a lack of expertise in a nursing home that can prevent nutrition inadequacies.

Financial Policies

For a nursing home to operate simultaneously, money is required to buy medical equipment, buy drugs, and pay workers, among other expenditures. Only 60% of the funds are catered to by the governments in most cases (Frankova, 2018, p.172). Nursing homes care is a demanding area, and therefore, any aspect that requires money must be considered seriously (Kosari, 2018). For example, when taking care of older people, there is a need to have equipment such as respirators and ventilators to assist the group when they develop challenges in breathing and heart function. Therefore, there is a need to have functional equipment for this. It requires other interventions such as private developers or charity organizations to assist in running nursing home facilities.

9-5 Policy

Nurses are required by the government policy on labor to work from 9 am to 5 pm. Nursing homes have significantly engaging activities that may lead to extended shifts for the nurses. With the challenge of high staff turnover being witnessed in many working homes, it can be difficult to cover a wide area in a workstation. For example, a nurse can be in charge of up to ten patients who require special attention (Frankova, 2018). The workload is hefty in scenarios where patients develop other clinical conditions which were not anticipated. Any nurse must withstand the challenge and commit to working in such busy environments.

Adherence to Technology

In the healthcare context, technology is fairly important in delivering healthcare duties. Through modern systems backed by cloud software, reimbursement, appointments, laboratory work, and diagnosing activities have been boosted (Kosari, 2018). However, when a nursing home faces challenges of poor network connection, some tasks may be hard to undertake. Additionally, having in place experts who are competent with microservices architecture in medical services is also a challenge. Most students are learning cloud computing about retail industries, whereby healthcare is neglected (Frankova, 2018). Therefore, it can be a problem to have a stable computerized institution without technology experts. Other technology barriers include breaches of patient data and system failure in nursing home departments.

Future of Care Coordination