The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is the program I would like to discuss. The Veterans Health Administration system is designed to serve a particular patient population: individuals who have served in the military on active service (McFarland et al., 2020). Yearly appropriation acts fund the program, thus unlike a benefit program that would oblige the government to pay for all medical care requested by enrolled veterans, the VHA budget and expenses are set by legislators. The VHA has limited the admission of some higher-income veterans who do not have a service-related disability in order to stay within its budget (McFarland et al., 2020). Another essential characteristic of VHA treatment is that there are no premiums or registration fees, and patients pay little or no out-of-pocket costs.
Because of the program’s extensive coverage and interaction with many organizations, determining its precise financing is challenging, but it can be estimated over $40 billion. The Veterans’ Access, Choice, and Accountability Act was passed in August 2014 in response to concerns regarding veterans’ access to VHA services (Mattocks et al., 2017). The law provided $10 billion over three years and $5 billion immediately, allowing the VHA to recruit more medical professionals.
The program’s target audience is US veterans. A veteran should not have been dishonestly discharged from the service in order to be eligible for VHA registration. In most situations, veterans who began active military duty after 1980 had to complete at least twenty-four months of continuous active military service.
Nurses play a crucial role in veterans’ overall health. They interact with certified medical teams – as well as other community services – in treatment settings to assist in organizing the whole spectrum of patient care. Nurses may assist in establishing and maintaining project priorities in design and construction. They are familiar with hospital revenue difficulties, administrative demands, clinical challenges, and quality pressures. Nurses are also critical in assisting management in defining clinical priorities and determining what staff they can live without and what they must have. For instance, when the issue was raised whether to purchase telescopic ward doors or imaging equipment placement, nurses nearly unanimously picked doors because they would improve program facilities’ overall efficiency.
Nurses may work to promote justice, equity, and equity in health care by advocating for the correct social policies. Nurses can help patients defend veterans by assisting them in conducting the necessary research for a specific circumstance. Distributing drug samples or psychological help sessions, for example, can be a valuable safety net for patients.
Nurses are increasingly critical to implementing VHA, ensuring that healthcare policies are provided via coordinated efforts with politicians, lawmakers, and administrators. Nursing relevance has increased significantly due to expanding nursing education while improving administrative and political abilities in nursing curriculum and organizational practice. As a result, there has been an expansion of nurses in executive roles in health care organizations and insurance firms, as well as on health system boards of governors and community initiatives (Cleveland et al., 2019). They apply what they’ve learned in the field to important policy projects that affect both healthcare programs and communities.
The demand for effective teams is growing because of the rise in disease complications and the complexity of care specialty. As a result, each healthcare team member is critical to the successful execution of any program. Different types of healthcare workers, each with their own set of skills, knowledge, and abilities, must work together to reach a shared objective of patient-centered care.
References
Cleveland, K., Motter, T., & Smith, Y. (2019). Affordable care: Harnessing the power of nurses. Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 24(2).
Mattocks, K. M., Mengeling, M., Sadler, A., Baldor, R., & Bastian, L. (2017). The Veterans Choice Act: A qualitative examination of rapid policy implementation in the Department of Veterans Affairs. Medical Care, 55, S71-S75.
McFarland, M. S., Nelson, J., Ourth, H., Groppi, J., & Morreale, A. (2020). Optimizing the primary care clinical pharmacy specialist: Increasing patient access and quality of care within the Veterans Health Administration. Journal of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy, 3(2), 494-500.