HA545 Health Policy Flashcards
What is health equality?
This means each individual or group of people is GIVEN THE SAME OPPORTUNITIES to accomplish a goal.
What is health equity?
This recognizes that EVERYONE HAS DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES and allocates the resources and opportunities needed to accomplish a goal.
What are the two main components of Health Policy?
Creation of the policy and execution of the policy.
What elements are used in the creation of the health policy?
Elements of equality.
A question you might as yourself is does the policy provide the same resources to all?
What elements are used in the execution of the health policy?
Elements of equity.
Ask if there are any barriers preventing people from accessing or fulfilling the policy?
What is policy?
It is a living breathing document that must be reviewed every 1 to 2 years and making sure that it is doing what it was intending to do. Any barriers that need to broken down would be identified in the review process.
What is subheadings is typically involved in policy?
An example from Seminar #1
Scope, Purpose, Eligibility Requirements, Bonus Points (the specific idea)
What is the framework of the plan typically based on?
The need. In the example of the reading, it is driven by the immense need for equity-centered solutions to confront harms produced by systemic racism and other forms of oppression.
What is groundwork for a plan mean?
Progress towards meeting the goal.
For our example, it is improving health equity and dismantling racism.
The does a plan typically encompass when it comes to how it is dealt with?
In our example of health equity and dismantling racism, five strategic approaches are outlined to tackle the challenge.
What is typically used to monitor impact and success of implementing a new plan and policy?
Internal performance indicators and evaluation metrics and tools can be used to measure success and impact while maintaining transparency and accountability.
Bonus Questions
What are some policies created by the AMA to help pursue the dismantling different forms of racism and increasing health equity?
Policy that:
- identified racism as a public health threat through acknowledgment in research and health care; identifying tactics to counter racism; promote greater understandings in curricula; supporting external policy development and funding research in the effects; and working to prevent influences of racism and bias in health technology innovation.
- adopting two policies that recognize race, a division of people based on physical characteristics, as a social construct rather than an inherent biological trait. These policies seek to end the practice of using race as a proxy for biology in education, research, and practice. Recommending researchers and clinicians focus on genetics and biology, the experience of racism, and social determinates of health when describing risk factors for disease.
As the policies note, this practice of accepting race as a biological construct—known as racial essentialism—exacerbates health disparities and results in detrimental health outcomes for marginalized and minoritized communities.
- recognizing police brutality as a manifestation of structural racism disproportionately impacting black, indigenous, and other people of color. The steps include working with parties on public health efforts to support the elimination of excessive use of force by law enforcement; advocating against discriminatory profiling by law enforcement through anti-bias training, individual monitoring, and other measures; pushing for legislation that promote trauma-informed, community-based safety practices.
- creation of a post-doctoral fellowship program aimed at training 10 physicians desiring greater knowledge and skills in confronting the root causes of inequity in communities.
- removing the AMA founder name from awards and displays due to his contribution to explicit racist exclusion practices
- urging Trump administrations to collect and release COVID-19 race/ethnicity data
- changing investing financially in Chicago’s west side neighborhoods
Bonus Questions
What are some policies that the American Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) that have implemented to pursue their goal of providing affordable and accessible coverage for everyone?
Policy that:
- Coverage@Work campaign to educate policymakers and the public about the value of employer-provided coverage.
- Project Link to address barriers to access to care.
- Fast PATH to better understand the impact of electronic prior authorization on the prior authorization process.
Fast PATH Lessons Learned
Based on the findings that providers who are high users of the electronic prior authorization technology experience the greatest benefit, it is clear that to maximize the efficiencies of electronic prior authorization, strong provider adoption of the technology solution is critical.
To further realize the benefits of prior authorization, stakeholders should explore available pathways to increase provider adoption of ePA technology. These pathways could include a combination of: (1) increasing the availability of the technology to providers; and (2) increasing the use of the technology where it is already available by identifying and addressing challenges, such as provider readiness and training, workflow integration, and incentives for providers to use the technology.
Benefits include faster time to patient care, faster time to decision, improved information to providers.
Bonus Questions
What are some policies that the American Hospital Association has implemented to combat significant shortages, soaring costs, government underpayment for care, and overwhelming regulatory burden, etc.?
- Ensure that essential health care services are available in all communities by improving vital federal funding for Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Health Insurance Marketplaces as government programs reimburse providers significantly less than the cost of care.
- Ensure patient access to primary care and other outpatient services by rejecting additional payment cuts that do not recognize legitimate differences among provider settings (so-called site-neutral payment policies) and policies that restrict patient access to certain sites of care (site-of-service policies).
- Hold commercial health insurers accountable for ensuring appropriate patient access to care, including by reducing the excessive use of prior authorization, ensuring adequate provider networks, reducing account receivables and limiting inappropriate denials for services.
- Strengthen workplace safety by enacting federal protections for health care workers against violence and intimidation.
- Protect the 340B Drug Pricing Program to ensure that hospitals can maintain vital patient services and expand access to care.
- Address physician shortages in part by increasing the number of residency slots eligible for Medicare funding, and address nursing shortages in part by reauthorizing nursing workforce development programs.
- Make permanent coverage of certain telehealth services.
- Create a permanent Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) hospital-at-home program.
- Protect not-for-profit hospitals’ tax-exempt status.
- Eliminate the proposed minimum staffing requirements for skilled nursing facilities and long-term care facilities.
- Ensure regulation of artificial intelligence enables continued innovation while providing reasonable guardrails to ensure patient safety and improved outcomes for all patients.
- Advance policies that assist in protecting health care services, data and patients from cyberattacks.
- Extend critical rural programs, including the Medicare-dependent Hospital designation, Low-volume Adjustment, ambulance add-on payment and Conrad State 30 Program.
- Pursue a new designation of “metropolitan anchor hospital.”
- Preserve the existing ban on the growth and expansion of physician-owned hospitals.
