Assignment Name: Healthcare Economics Assignment

Purpose: This assignment will help nursing students to analyze how current policies and practices in the U.S. healthcare system relate to the provision of quality, safe, and cost-effective care (Relates to Course Learning Outcome 3).As new nurses make their transition into the workforce, they will have to navigate a healthcare system in which they will see varying levels of quality, safety, and cost-effectiveness in the care that is being provided. By having a greater understanding of health care economics, the impact of being insured or uninsured, and how health care economics influences providers’ decisions and patients’ outcomes, nursing students will be better prepared to transition into the role of novice nurses within a complex health care system.

Skills: The purpose of this assignment is to help you practice the following skills that are essential to your success in this course and as a future nurse:

Explaining how Health Care Economics impacts patient care -this will ultimately help students to understand their patients’ financial situations and how to best plan patient centered care that takes this into consideration (e.g. if a provider prescribes a medication that the patient cannot afford, how can the nurse help?)

Explaining how the patient’s insurance status (insured or uninsured) is likely to impact the patient’s ultimate health outcomes, and how nurses can use this information to help their patients.

Analyzing how economic issues can impact families’ and patients’ decisions at the end of life, and how nurses can work as advocates and educators during this process.

Knowledge: This assignment will also help you to become familiar with the following important content knowledge in this discipline: healthcare economics; an understanding of this concept impacts nurses’ ability to provide patient-centered care.

Task:

Start by reading the chapter titled Health Care Economics in your Giddens book. Then, read: The Uninsured and the ACA: A Primer and

Letting Go by Atul Gawande (even though this piece was published in 2010, I have yet to find a more poignant article that explains how health care economics interacts with real life patient decisions at a very critical time in a patient’s life – the end of life. I think you’ll love this article, even though it can be emotionally difficult to read).

As you’re reading the article, think about how it relates to what you read about Health Care Economics and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in the United States.

For the assignment, please answer the following questions and submit in a Word document. This is not a formal APA paper (you do not need a running head or title page) but you should follow APA formatting rules for your citations and the References list.

1.Analyze the article by Gawande and the primer about the uninsured and describe how those articles relate to what you learned by reading the Giddens chapter on Health Care Economics (this should be one substantial paragraph – please see the example I provided).

2.What are the implications for nurses who encounter patients who have difficulty paying for healthcare at the end of life? (This should also be one paragraph).

3. What do you, personally, consider to be a “good death?”(There’s no right or wrong answer here).How might you use what you learned from reading and contemplating this piece to better help your patients realize their vision of a “good death?” (This should also be one paragraph).

Be sure to cite your Giddens text (the assigned chapter for this module related to Health Care Economics), Gawande’s article, and the primer at least once in the body of your assignment. Use APA formatting correctly with your in-text citations and in the References section.

Criteria for Success:

Here is a link for another student. She wrote well-constructed paragraphs that thoroughly answered the questions, and she used APA formatting and grammar appropriately throughout. I can generally tell by reading the answers to your questions if you just skimmed through the assigned readings or if you read them thoroughly and contemplated and analyzed them, and I will grade your work accordingly.