Health Rules, Regulations and Licensure
Introduction
Regulatory rules, laws and regulations greatly affect the healthcare organizations as well as healthcare delivery within the framework of its operations. The affected areas may include healthcare costs, healthcare quality, healthcare insurance prices, and availability of healthcare practitioners as well as healthcare facilities. Health organizations are now required to maintain a high level of patient information confidentiality according to HIPPA privacy rules (Privacy Rights, 2010). This has caused health organizations extra spending as they try to initiate secure systems to safeguard patients’ information privacy.
Regulations on physician education by the American Medical Association (AMA) limits the number of doctors, thus reducing availability of doctors for health organizations, and therefore; increasing costs paid by patients to the few doctors due to interplaying factors of demand and supply. Regulations lobbied by AMA banned midwifery and other practices performed by medical practitioners other than doctors. Banning cheaper sources of these services made the costs of procedures such as delivery within health organizations very expensive. Other regulations have proved to be beneficial-such as the EMTALA act that guarantees medical treatment to even those that cannot afford. Similarly, regulations on provision of insurance cover Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as well as the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 have allowed people previously unable to get healthcare insurance to obtain cover relatively cheaply (Steadman & Appleby, 2010).
National licensure in medical care is intended to establish standardized medical care with minimum levels of quality adherence as well as level the playing field for all national healthcare providing organizations. On the other hand, state-by-state licensure is meant to guard against external competition and protection of states’ rights (Linkous, 2010). National licensure is important because it ensures quality across the board whereas ensuring accessibility. However, it may not guarantee the best quality of healthcare as compared to state-by-state licensure (Linkous, 2010). On the other hand, state-by-state licensure protects state practitioners against competition whilst protecting state rights. State-by-state licensure also hinders availability of healthcare services. Patients may be rendered unable to acquire healthcare services that are unavailable in their state from practitioners within other states (Linkous, 2010). This greatly impedes the efforts of making medical care easily accessible to every American citizen.
References
Linkous, J. (2010). Telemedicine and State Licensure. Retrieved on 26th August, 2010 from http://americantelemed.blogspot.com/2010/04/telemedicine-and-state-licensure.html.
Privacy Rights, (2010). Medical Privacy in the Electronic Age. Retrieved on 26th August, 2010 from http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs8a-hipaa.htm.
Steadman, K and Appleby, J. (2010). Immediate Effects of Health Reform Bill. Retrieved on 26th August, 2010 from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35984435.
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