Question

The Affordable Care Act includes an IRS requirement that requires hospitals to conduct a Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) once every three years. These reports must describe the community served, identify existing health care resources, and prioritize community health needs. Hospitals must also develop an implementation strategy to meet the needs identified through the CHNA. What are the economic implications of this particular population health provision to hospitals?

Answer 1

                                    The Affordable Care Act is an act that was implemented to provide quality and affordable healthcare facility to the aged population from 65 years of age providing them with services at home and providing them with suitable insurance packages so that they are not being left behind in getting the necessary healthcare benefits. It is given that in such an act, the hospitals should conduct a Community Health Needs Assessment [CHNA} once every three years where they must give details regarding the community served, identify existing healthcare resources and prioritize the needs in accordance with the needs. The following are the positive and negative economic implications of such a mechanism on the hospitals

· Since the community served is being surveyed, this would help the hospitals to have a register of the served community which would make the delivery more targeted and hence would reduce the cost of offering the service.

· The identification of the existing healthcare resources would help the hospitals to have a better planning so as to identify the resources that are necessary in future.

· The prioritization of the needs and service delivery would make the hospitals offer the services in accordance with the priority concerned and hence would not result in additional costs for the loss of service.

· The identification of all these factors among the given population would be costly ad hence may cost higher for the hospitals adding to their additional cost

· The loss of data in certain cases would make the process difficult and making conclusions in such cases may be difficult and would result in lossmaking for the hospitals

                                         Thus, it can be seen that the implementation of the given provisions have both positive and negative impacts on the hospitals and thus a balance has to be obtained in the operation.