Misallocation of Demand and the Persistent Non-emergent Use of the Emergency Department Post-Healthcare Reform.

The US healthcare systems is struggling to keep pace with increasing demand, as the burden faced by providers and healthcare organizations expands. While care delivery models continue to evolve in the post-reform era, many barriers stemming from capacity constraints, regulation, shortages of manpower and, misallocation of resources persist. In this paper, we provide an analysis of unmet demand in the US system healthcare system. We contribute a deep dive of the literature to elucidate the reasons for which imbalanced and unmet demand, including the heavy use of the emergency department for non-emergent conditions, continues to burden healthcare organizations. We use these findings to motivate recommendations about how to address critical shortcomings in order to better address the needs of patients with both emergent and non-emergent conditions.

Effective Strategies for Affordable Care Act Enrollment in Immigrant-Serving Safety Net Clinics in New Mexico.

In the new Affordable Care Act (ACA) health care environment, safety-net institutions continue to serve as important sources of culturally appropriate care for different groups of immigrant patients. This article reports on a qualitative study examining the early ACA enrollment experiences of a range of health care providers (n = 29) in six immigrant-serving safety-net clinics in New Mexico. The six clinics configured their ACA enrollment strategies differently with regard to operations, staffing, and outreach. Providers reported a generally chaotic rollout overall and expressed frustration with strategies that did not accommodate patients, provided little training for providers, and engaged in minimal outreach. Conversely, providers lauded strategies that flexibly met patient needs, leveraged trust through strategic use of staff, and prioritized outreach. Findings underscore the importance of using and funding concerted strategies for future enrollment of immigrant patients, such as featuring community health workers and leveraging trust for outreach.

Impacting policy change for orthopaedic trauma.

Traumatic injury, which remains the leading cause of death for Americans aged 1 to 44 years, costs the United States over $400 billion because of loss of productivity and medical services each year. Yet, over the last few decades, there has been decreased funding for trauma centers. The 2010 Affordable Care Act is just the start of health care reform, and Congress will continue to create and change policies directly impacting medical care. In this article, we evaluate how orthopaedic trauma surgeons can have a lasting impact on the nation's health care policy through organizations and advocacy on the local, state, and federal levels.