Term Paper on "Pews Commission Report of the Taskforce"

Term Paper 8 pages (2281 words) Sources: 7 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Pews Commission Report of the Taskforce on Health Care Workforce Regulation. The writer explores the report and its recommendations and then discusses four states and their progress with regard to the recommendations.

It has been a decade since the Pews Commission issued its report on the Taskforce on Health Care Workforce regulation and in that decade the American public has begun to demand that changes be made to the way the health care system in this country is operated. Currently there are millions of workers who are not provided with or offered health care benefits while the price of health care continues to rise.

One of the most controversial issues in the field of healthcare is the financing structures and the market forces. Managed care has become much more common than it has been in the past and with this system comes managed financing and structures.

These transformations also are bringing increased emphases on primary care, prevention and population-based practice, interdisciplinary teamwork, and clinical effectiveness research. These changes have highlighted the roles that America's 10.5 million health care practitioners play in the cost, quality, and accessibility of health care. Consequently, their education, training and distribution have received increased attention. Likewise, the current health care workforce regulatory system is under scrutiny (Taskforce, 1995)."

The report indicated that what has worked in the past was currently out of step and behind the times in the field of health care needs and health care expectations.

The public has been up in arms for many years about the rising cost of health care, the quality of health care delivery and the treatment of those who do not have health care coverage.

The trade commission had previously reported that while occupational licensing demands protect the safety of the public consumer, the costs for those licenses and insurance drive the cost of health care up and that the cost is being passed on to the consumer (Taskforce, 1995).

The report provided 10 recommendations that were designed to help improve the health care dilemma being faced by American consumers.

The recommendations have been followed in part, but not in full as states try to work their way through the health care crisis.

Individual State Reform

One of the things that the report acknowledges is that the health care reform acts have been divided into fifty individual state processes and efforts. This has created a problem with patchwork organization and the lack of uniform regulation and rules with regard to health care cost and delivery.

The report analyzed and examined areas of health care that it felt were most pressing for the nation at the time. As the report was concluded the Taskforce made ten recommendations that it believed would help alleviate the current crisis.

The report included an acronym for what it was trying to accomplish. S.A.F.E. stands for Standardized where appropriate;

Accountable to the public;

Flexible to support optimal access to a safe and competent health care workforce; and Effective and Efficient in protecting and promoting the public's health, safety, and welfare (Taskforce, 1995)."

Recommendations

For one to understand how effectively various states are meeting the recommendations of the report, it is necessary to know what the recommendations consisted of.

The first recommendation called for the states to use a standardized and understandable language for health care functions. This was recommended so that the average consumer could take an active and informed role in his or her health care decisions.

The second recommendation called for a standardized method for practice requirements (Taskforce, 1995).

The third recommendation was for states to base the practice acts that they would adopt on demonstrated competence. This included the willingness for different types of practitioners to overlap their skills and services. This would benefit the consumer by providing a wider array of practices to choose from and facilitate the mobility the health profession (Taskforce, 1995).

States should explore pathways to allow all professionals to provide services to the full extent of their current knowledge, training, experience and skills."

The fourth recommendation was that states should work to redesign their health care professional boards so that it reflects the accountability to the public.

Recommendation number five called for boards to educate their consumers for the purpose of allowing and assisting consumers to obtain and understand the information so that they could make informed decisions about the choice of practitioners.

This recommendation was also aimed at improving the public accountability in this area of health care (Taskforce, 1995).

The sixth recommendation mandates that the boards should cooperate with private as well as public organization when it comes to the question of data collection about regulated health professions. In addition the recommendation believes in the importance of collecting data to support an effective workforce plan.

The seventh recommendation provides that each state will require each board to design, develop, and start implementing the competency requirements that will assure the public that the health care professionals are meeting continued competence requirements (Taskforce, 1995).

The ninth recommendation calls for the maintenance of fair and cost effective disciplinary policies that would work to exclude practitioners found to be incompetent in their field or specialty. This recommendation serves the purpose of protecting the American public from incompetence in their health care.

This is an important regulate as it is aimed at preventing practitioners who are incompetent from delivering health care that is not proper or competent and can cause the consumer's health to decline or fail all together. In addition to the serious risk of poor health or death the poor or incompetent practitioner can also cause a significant reduction on the standard and quality of life of a patient if the practitioner does not have the competency to properly perform his or her duties as a practitioner (Taskforce, 1995).

The ninth recommendation of the report calls for individual states to develop tools used for the purpose of evaluation with regard to assessing objectives, successes and failures of the regulatory systems as well as the bodies so that the public's health interests can be promoted as well as protected (Taskforce, 1995).

The final recommendation deals with understanding the links overlaps and conflicts between health care workforce regulatory systems and other systems that deal with the education regulation and practice of practitioners in the field of health care.

Although many states recognize the implications of using non-standard terms for regulatory functions within and across states, few states have enacted standards for regulatory language. Leading a promising trend, Montana recently adopted a Uniform Licensing Act, which establishes uniform guidelines for the licensing and regulation of professions and occupations under the jurisdiction of professional and occupational licensing boards (Montana Department of Commerce, 1995)."

In laymen's terms the language used for many of the regulatory practices in the field of health care is so complicated that the average consumer cannot begin to understand its meaning. This provides a historic barrier between the health care profession and those it is paid to serve as it sets up a pedestal attitude between the practitioners and the consumers of the public.

The report acknowledges this issue and recommends ten things that it believes, if followed will make it easier for the consumer to be able to get involved in the scope and sequence of the health care field within the state and regulatory options.

It is impossible for consumers to know if something is being done right if they are not able to determine what is or is not supposed to happen with the regulations and mandates that their practitioner is to follow.

The report uses an example:

For 20 years, a Swedish trained physical therapist obtained a license from and practiced with an unblemished record in two states and one Canadian province. When she moved to a third state, where entry-to-practice requirements called for a certain number of academic hours in specific fields, she was missing six "general education" hours (not related to physical therapy) and was denied a license.

No credit was given for 20 years of excellent practice and an apparently equivalent education (Taskforce, 1995)."

This example illustrates the problems caused by a lack of a standardized method by which to clarify professional experience and entry licensing criteria.

State Examples

California recently passed an initiative that dovetails with the taskforce recommendations. The alternative practitioners of that state offered to regulate themselves to make it more safe for the consumer to use their services.

The move came from the decision of the boards that work with alternative health care providers who wanted to provide a method by which consumers can research their provider, and learn of any issues, problems or other areas that might concern then when it comes to using that provider for services (Lunstroth, 2006).

The move was in part to comply on a voluntary basis with the current national health care professional mindset that the consumer has a right to know. It was also based in the belief that by self-regulation and public accessibility the alternative practitioner field… READ MORE

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