Health Care Trends in the US

[Ginger's Mom, MSN, RN]

Medicare now known as CMS is level funding programs, this means even though the cost of living is going up the reimbursement is the same. Many hospitals are having budget issues since Medicare is the major payor in many hospitals and other health care providers.

Medcaid the state program ( which is individual and unique to each state) is also have cuts. My state the cuts are severe and many hospitals have hiring freezes.

These agencies have been increase the audits, which hospitals have to verify the charts of patients. Last week our hospital had to pull 600 charts in one week. The purpose of these chart reviews is to recapture money that has already been paid. Nurses who should be working with patients are now sucked into these audits and they are not replacing the nurses on the floor.

Tough times in US Healthcare, my suggestion is to learn about these issues you can listen to news programs such as ABC, CBS and NPR all stream programs, it will also help to boost your English skills. Unless the new president makes radical changes the US is in for hard economic times ahead.

When immigration of nurses was at the highest point the US economy was doing well. I am not an ecomomist but I don't see any big changes in the near future.

Personally, I would love to see a strong dollar and not worry about healthcare, but I don't see any immediate change and this is going to impact the need to import nurses.

[Corey Narry, MSN, RN, NP]

Medicare now known as CMS is level funding programs, this means even though the cost of living is going up the reimbursement is the same. Many hospitals are having budget issues since Medicare is the major payor in many hospitals and other health care providers.

Medcaid the state program ( which is individual and unique to each state) is also have cuts. My state the cuts are severe and many hospitals have hiring freezes.

These agencies have been increase the audits, which hospitals have to verify the charts of patients. Last week our hospital had to pull 600 charts in one week. The purpose of these chart reviews is to recapture money that has already been paid. Nurses who should be working with patients are now sucked into these audits and they are not replacing the nurses on the floor.

Tough times in US Healthcare, my suggestion is to learn about these issues you can listen to news programs such as ABC, CBS and NPR all stream programs, it will also help to boost your English skills. Unless the new president makes radical changes the US is in for hard economic times ahead.

When immigration of nurses was at the highest point the US economy was doing well. I am not an ecomomist but I don't see any big changes in the near future.

Personally, I would love to see a strong dollar and not worry about healthcare, but I don't see any immediate change and this is going to impact the need to import nurses.

Very true. Medicare and Medicaid cuts in funding have also resulted in a string of hospital closing in the Metro Detroit area. In addition, there is still the problem of uncompensated care from the uninsured and certain hospitals here have a high concentration of patients who belong in this category. These hospitals are constantly at risk for closing shop and if they do, it adds the burden of patient care to the other existing hospitals. As more hospitals begin to belly-up, some luckier ones get bought by bigger healthcare corporations and are merged into existing hospitals. Hospital services are being reconfigured and some services are actually being eliminated causing employees to be displaced. Staff cuts in hospitals are not uncommon in the news.