National Nursing shortage and Patient Advocacy Act Essay

National Nursing shortage and Patient Advocacy Act - Essay Example o in the hospitals as currently there is a severe shortage in the nursing professionals and some hospitals had nurses which were attending to numerous patients (Buerhaus, 191-198). This paper will assess and document the pros and con that are accompanied with this act. It will mainly focus on the impact in the patients, hospital as well as financial burden that is incurred by the health care institution. Firstly there are obvious financial implications that are accompanied with this act as hospitals are required to hire extra staff members. The financial burden in this instance is incurred by Medicare which is required to adjust its payments to hospitals in order to facilitate for this staff increment. Hospitals however also have some increased financial responsibility as the staff members will be in the hospital facility and incur other expenses besides the wages. In addition, the Secretary only implemented that the hospitals will be compensate only for expenses that are incurred when care is provided to Medicare users. Hence it will remain uncompensated for the other patients and will have to devise new plans to cover these extra costs. This may include a reduction in salaries which will obviously have a negative effect financially on the nursing staff. Another approach which the hospital could take is an increment in the service costs which will affect the patients as healthcare is expensive. The United States Census Bureau documented that approximately 50 million individuals were uninsured which is approximately 15% of the population (Buerhaus, 191-198). There are also advantages that are derived from this act and these include the improvement in the quality of healthcare. Reducing the ratio of patients that are attended by one nurse will result in better services and detection of certain issues that might have been missed due to the nurse’s busy schedule. This also improves the nurse-patient relationship which is essential in the prognosis of the patient