The reluctance to refer patients to specialists may also mean that nurses must practice more holistic, rather than specialized forms, of nursing. The desire for cost containment has resulted in many nurses assuming physician's duties, such as those duties confined in previous eras to the patient's primary care physician. In states with high HMO (Health Maintenance Organization) enrollment, more nurses were shifted to lower-paying nonhospital settings, such as in home

As a result, millions of Americans remain unable to bear the heavy financial toll of medical expenses. Indeed, the problem of a lack of insurance for many is related to the problem of the cost of healthcare. So confirms the article by Consumer Reports (CR) (2008), which finds that "health-insurance premiums have grown faster than inflation or workers' earnings over the past decade, in parallel with the equally rapid

Health Care IT Health Care Information Technology The days of paper-based records in health care are fading. It is widely believed that the broad adoption of clinical applications such as computerized physician order entry (CPOE) can lead to major health care savings, help eliminate medical errors, and improve healthcare outcomes for patients (Lynn, 2011). Because of such benefits, the Obama administration included automated adoptions in health care as a part of its

Managed Care is an approach or system of health care that manages the use of healthcare services, controls their costs, and evaluates the performance of healthcare providers. It is also considered as an approach to funding and providing healthcare services which focuses on controlling costs and enhancing the quality of care through several methods. Some of these methods that are used in managed care to help accomplish the described objectives

Managed Care Timeline Luke Medical Center, Pasadena, California - established The change in hospital concentration in 68 large metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) between 1981 and 1994 is positively correlated with the level of managed care concentration in 1993/1994. Congress enacted the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) to ensure public access to emergency services regardless of patients' ability to pay. 4,908 hospitals in the United States have Emergency Departments. Crowded emergency departments arise because

Health Care Quality Management as it Applies to Managed Care In the current age of improved answerability for quality of care, every healthcare expert should be conversant in the theory and paraphernalia of quality management) Quality Management-QM is an all-embracing attitude that pervades the management infrastructure, rules and customs of an establishment. It characteristically comprises of five fundamental doctrines -- undivided attention on the customer/supplier relationships; a stress on functional and