The Impact of The Affordable Care Act in The Accessibility of Healthcare Coverage

Affordable Care Act (ACA)

Affordable Care Act (ACA) constituted a landmark reform legislation that was passed into law in 2010 and signed by President Barack Obama, thus OBAMACARE (ObamaCare Facts, n.d.). ACA has two portions; the Patient Protection and Affordable Act and the other one is Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act. The key objective was to improve health care services for everyone across the country (Kvedar, Coye & Everett, 2014). Therefore, it delves into five major areas that are expanding coverage, lower health cost, guarantee numerous choices, holding insurance firms to accountability, and enhancing health care quality to everyone. An extension of study would cover associated demerits to attain required balance. If any, the solution to identified demerits associated with both ACA and EHR would be analyzed. Based on ACA provisions, the research seeks to find out how healthcare informatics has been utilized in the USA to achieve objectives outlined in Affordable Care Act.

I chose a topic to find out the relationship between ACA and healthcare informatics that are in place. There have been significant improvements in health care accessibility, insurance coverage, all under affordable care act (Sommers et al, 2015). With the adoption of OBAMACARE, the summary of provisions are undoubtedly worthy and would improve the healthcare outcome. Having analyzed the informatics in health care such as adoption of electronic healthcare records (EHR), it is noteworthy to denote how the combination of the two would affect the health care of people. Specifically, it would be crucial to find out how informatics is utilized to achieve the aforementioned five key objectives.

Literature Review: Brief

OBAMACARE seeks to increase health care coverage across the USA without discrimination whatsoever. As an objective stated thereof, healthcare informatics would ensure to facilitate health care provisions to people regardless of location or financial capability (Medicaid.gov, n.d.). For example, a patient unable to access a doctor on regular basis should be in a position to maintain communication with his or her doctor. Informatics provide availability of health care choices to people. For example, a patient would be in a position to access health care since EHR would make one’s records available at any time of need and any place. Also, EHR help in reducing time wastage, which was initially associated with manual accessibility of patient data. In fact, the growth of health care informatics is projected to increase as more people tend to venture in it (UIC, n.d.). By giving patients a read access only interface while providing read-write access to doctors, patients’ data are always available at any time.

Communication between insurance providers and health care facilities would be facilitated with the use of informatics. As a result, it would positively make work easier to offer services to patients (Andrews, 2013). Lastly, patients’ access to healthcare information, thanks to electronic health records would provide a real-time monitoring of health, which would then increase the rate of awareness among patients about their health status (Martin et al, 2016). No doubt, having health status information through EHR access increases cognition among patients. In fact, sense of responsibility is enhanced.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Affordable Health Care Act has improved the accessibility to health outcome among the patients. OBAMACARE has five key provisions upon which the research will capture in relation to healthcare informatics. They include coverage expansion, health care costs, choices, insurance companies, and quality enhancement. Based on the etymology “how ” each ACA objective will be linked to healthcare informatics. Preferably, electronic health records will be discussed in detail to find out how it impacts healthcare outcome among patients. While researching about positive impacts, demerits would be analyzed as well.