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Please respond to this 4 peers' Discussion Prompts Respond to your classmates' or instructor's posts

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Please respond to this 4 peers' Discussion Prompts

• Respond to your classmates' or instructor's posts. Provide examples of concepts (such as a confidence interval) and practical skills you have learned that could be used to explain the information to healthcare leaders who might not have an MHA or training in healthcare research. 

Peer# 1

Hospital administrators are supposed to be the key to maintaining a balance between the facility’s budget and the accommodations for the patients and the healthcare professionals. From my understanding, most facilities struggle to maintain this balance, as they usually do not have the funds to properly run their programs. Mixing this with dissecting statistical data and the time they are given to make difficult decisions, I do not think they have adequate time to interpret vital information given to them when making these difficult decisions.

When I think of statistical data being given to hospital administrators, I think of a lot of numbers and graphs that are up to the administrator to interpret as they see fit. However, administrators do not always have the extensive background in data analytics that health researchers have. Health researchers have a deep understanding of how to organize data. Rightfully so, as some studies evolve with many variables. If that is the case, then hospital administrators—who, granted, should have experience interpreting data—may not have the same extensive background required to completely understand the information being presented. Again, mixing this with the other factors administrators are responsible for, I can see why they could make decisions that aren’t as educated. Or rather, administrators make decisions based on their minimal understanding of the data.  

I suppose an argument for this question is that it is not always the administrator who needs to have the experience understanding the different statistical data; this information should be delegated to the researchers who are comfortable translating this information. Administrators would be more effective if they were told what the hospital needs instead of being given information that is hard to comprehend.  

Peer# 2

Professor and classmates

The way in which statistics is applied in the field of health, and in particular in nursing, is by providing knowledge and understanding of information about the etiology and prognosis of diseases, in order to advise patients on how to avoid disease or limit its effects (Charekishvili, 2016).

I think so many hospital administrator tend to face substantive challenges or difficulties in the course of understanding the statistical method used in healthcare research because,  to interpret and understanding results of statistical methods, it is necesary for the healthcare administrator to engage in application or integration of the most suitable as well as the powerful statistical tests; something which most of them lack off, usually because they also lack of interest to learn (Groth, 2020).

On the other hand there's  a lack of the suitable and power test have been critical in forcing administrator from conclusion from subscribe subsequent studies, which might enjoy insufficient support from the data (Aggarwal, 2018). For instance, concepts like confidence interval can be explained in layman’s language, like; it is an educated guess about a certain characteristic feature in a population. It’s a range of values around that stat that has a probability of true value of that particular stat. Such concepts can be further supplemented with relatable examples like weight of one candy in a box of candy, to make it more interesting to the people who do not have any formal training.

Peer# 3

During the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak lawmakers had to execute new pieces of legislation in efforts to support the American people and the economy. One of the laws that was passed during the pandemic was The CARES Act. Under The CARES Act various industries were represented – small businesses, education, and most importantly health care. Under the health care segment, the bill provided funding for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of Covid-19. Under the bill limits for liability for volunteer health care professions were also placed as well as the prioritization for the review of certain drugs for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The bill allowed emergency use of certain diagnostic tests that are not approved by the FDA and expanded health-insurance coverage for diagnostic tested and requires coverage for preventative services and vaccines. Under the bill there were also revisions for other comestibles including those regarding the medical supply chain, the national stockpile, the health care workforce, the Healthy Start program, tele-health services, nutrition services, Medicare, and Medicaid (116th Congress, 2019 – 2020). The passage of this legislation experienced some setbacks in regard to cost. It was referred back to the Committee on Finance various times. These delays may have occurred in effort to find reasonable funding within each industry. Industries were impacted tremendously during the Covid-19 outbreak, causing a scarce of resources. Thus, placing pressure on lawmakers to ensure everyone was represented and covered.

Peer# 4

ACA is a comprehensive health care reform law signed by then-president Obama in March 2010. This law has three main goals which were, to make affordable health insurance available for more people, to expand the Medicaid program to cover all adults below the 138% of the Federal poverty levels and to support innovative medical care delivery methods designed to lower the costs of health care generally (healthcare.gov, 2021). The act also established the American Health Benefits Exchange, where citizens can review and compare insurance plans.

While the Affordable Care Act has started to help alleviate healthcare disparities among US citizens, the state and federal insurance exchanges have not made payers very happy. Younger adults and healthier patients have been more likely to take on the individual mandate's tax penalty than to purchase coverage on the health insurance exchanges due to high prices, which has left payers with a pool of older and sicker populations.

Implementation of the ACA has been marked by controversy and unexpected twists and turns, including court challenges and delays in crucial provisions. States first implemented many ACA provisions in their efforts to expand access to care and improve overall health system performance (NCSL, 2011). Then, in 2012, a supreme court ruling further complicated the landscape by allowing states to choose whether or not to expand their Medicaid coverage to insure more low-income individuals. At present, nineteen states have still not expanded their Medicaid programs, causing disparities in healthcare access and leaving millions of patients with few coverage options.

The ACA is the most significant and comprehensive health care reform enacted since Medicare. Although however, we cannot say with certainty that Obamacare has led to lower premiums, we can say that it has provided coverage for millions of previously uninsured Americans.