Assignment Content
The shortage of nurses in the U.S. is likely to get worse in the coming years due in part to the declining nurse workforce and the aging population. Making this shortage even more critical is that as the population of adults past retirement grows, so does the demand for nursing services. Advancing telecommunication technologies make newer healthcare technology solutions, such as telehealth, a promising way to fill this gap. In this assignment, you will examine the barriers impeding widespread telehealth implementation and explore how these barriers can be overcome.
Examine how telehealth implementation can be impeded by the following:
· Practice restrictions imposed by licensing bodies
· Reimbursement policies
· Missing or diminished holistic social interaction and emotional support that were originally provided by nurses in person
Explore possibilities for overcoming the barriers listed above.
Format your assignment as one of the following:
525- to 700-word paper
In this assignment:
· Summarize the current impact of the barriers above.
· Synthesize available information to show what efforts are being made to overcome these barriers in the near future.
Provide two references and format them according to APA guidelines.
order plagiarism-free nursing essay
The nursing shortage is a critical health care issue in the United States that is likely to persist for a longer period of time if proper actions are not taken to create a balance between the number of nurses and demand for health care. As the workforce continues to decline and the aging population gets to retirement, the demand for nursing services continues to rise, putting an additional strain on the already compromised nursing workforce (Vassilev et al., 2015). Technological advancements such as telehealth tend to become promising ways to address the problem of the nursing shortage. However, a number of factors act as barriers to widespread telehealth implementation (Fathi, Modin, & Scott, 2017). The purpose of this paper is to analyze the barriers that hinder the widespread implementation of telehealth and the strategies that are applied to overcome them. The United States government should consider implementing strategies that will ensure the successful adoption of telehealth to help increase access to nursing services.
Practice restrictions that are imposed by licensing bodies prevent the successful implementation of telehealth because they constrain service delivery to patients using the new technology. Many states of the United States have imposed licensing and credentialing regulations that prohibit nurses from delivering various nursing services without physician supervision. For instance, in states where there are practice restrictions, nurses are not allowed to prescribe drugs and make referrals yet these are the primary issues that telehealth was meant to address (Fathi, Modin, & Scott, 2017). Such restrictions do not recognize nurses as educationally and professionally trained persons who, as physicians, can use telehealth to increase healthcare access for populations.
Reimbursement policies have been identified as major barriers to the successful implementation of telehealth services. The Benefits Improvement and Protection Act, in 2000, expanded coverage for telehealth services under the Medicare Program. However, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) does not make full reimbursement as directed by law (Fathi, Modin, & Scott, 2017). The Affordable Care Act still poses limitations on a number of services including; types of communication to be conducted using telehealth (asynchronous versus synchronous), the patient’s area of residence, the patient’s physical location, and physician licensure xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx