Nursing, HIV/AIDS, Continuity of Care, Treatment Advances, and the ACA: The Essentials

As the Affordable Care Act takes effect, a timely overview in AJN of recent developments in screening, treatment, care, and demographics of the HIV epidemic

CascadeofCare The ‘cascade of care’ (from the AJN article)

The newly released March issue of Health Affairs is devoted to looking at the ways the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will affect Americans with HIV/AIDS and those who have recently been in jail. One crucial feature of the ACA is that it prevents insurance companies from refusing coverage to those with a number of preexisting conditions. If you have a preexisting condition and don’t get insurance through work, you know how important this is.

Unfortunately, a large majority of those with HIV and AIDS do not have private health insurance. One article in the March issue of Health Affairs draws attention to the plight of the 60,000 or so uninsured or low-income people with HIV or AIDS who will not receive health insurance coverage because their states are among those that have chosen to opt out of the ACA provision that expands Medicaid eligibility. This means many patients in these states may lack consistent care and reliable access to life-saving drugs.

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) improves patient quality of life and severely reduces expensive and debilitating or fatal long-term health problems in those with HIV/AIDS. As noted in AJN‘s March CE article, […]

2016-11-21T13:05:17-05:00March 6th, 2014|health care policy, nursing perspective|3 Comments
Read More

A Report from the ANA Safe Staffing Conference

Katheren Koehn, MA, RN, AJN editorial board member and executive director of MNORN (Minnesota Organization of Registered Nurses), reports from last week’s ANA conference on staffing held in Washington, DC.

staffiing Click image for source page at ANA staffing site.

The ANA Safe Staffing Conference ended on Saturday. There were almost 700 registered nurses from all over the country in attendance—nurses in management, direct care, and leadership—all gathered to try to discover new strategies for how to solve the most challenging issue in nursing: safe staffing.

Not a new issue. This has long been the most challenging issue for nursing. Teresa Stone, editor of Poems from the Heart of Nursing: Selected Poems from the American Journal of Nursing, told me that, as she was searching the archives of 113 years of AJN issues for her book, she found that staffing issues were a frequent theme. Today, as the work of nurses has become more complex, the need to create sustainable solutions to ensuring appropriate staffing is our most critical issue—hence the ANA Staffing Conference.

The body of evidence supporting the idea that appropriate nurse staffing makes a difference in saving patients’ lives has grown exponentially in the past 20 years. This evidence—paired with the new federal financial incentives for hospitals to improve patient outcomes and experiences—makes it seem inevitable that increasing nurse staffing would be […]

2016-11-21T13:06:06-05:00November 11th, 2013|career, health care policy, nursing perspective, nursing research, safe staffing|0 Comments
Read More

They’re Not Taking Away Our Puppies (And God Help Them If They Do)

By Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor/blog editor

I am amazed at the amount of time being wasted on the relatively mundane matter of health care exchanges. It seems we are now facing a government shutdown; there are creepy and misleading advertisements funded by conservative billionaires like the Koch brothers in order to scare people from signing up for insurance; some red states have actually enacted laws forbidding the health care navigators from helping people understand the new system and sign up for it, and many of these states have refused to create their own exchanges to help their citizens comply with the new law.

The ACA is a law. You can’t just ignore it if it doesn’t meet your personal preferences or political ideas. Given the heated rhetoric the Republicans are trotting out about it, you’d think the government was trying to take away our puppies, instead of implementing ideas originally floated by Republicans themselves to make life a bit easier for millions of Americans whose life decisions are unduly ruled by crazy health care billing practices, byzantine insurance regulations, discrimination against those who have chronic conditions, insanely varying pricing for simple tests, and the like. […]

2016-11-21T13:06:26-05:00September 30th, 2013|health care policy, Patients|9 Comments
Read More

One Is the Loneliest Number

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

The great Bartholdi statue, liberty enlightening the world: the gift of France to the American people. Speculative depiction published the year before the statue was erected. In this depiction the statue faces south; it actually faces east/Wikimedia Commons The Bartholdi statue, liberty enlightening the world: the gift of France to the American people. Speculative depiction published the year before the statue was erected. In this depiction the statue faces south; it actually faces east/Wikimedia Commons

I’ve been struck recently by how the United States sometimes seems to stand apart from other nations. This is sometimes called “American exceptionalism.”

The most obvious example of this is the recent push—temporarily put on hold due to the emergence of negotiations about the possible handover of Syrian chemical weapons to Russia—to garner support among other nations for a military strike against the Syrian government in response to its use of chemical weapons against its own people.

By now, most of us have seen the graphic videos on media outlets and they are indeed disturbing. There are signs of neurotoxicity in some […]

2016-11-21T13:06:34-05:00September 13th, 2013|health care policy, nursing perspective|2 Comments
Read More

48 Years of Medicare (and Counting)

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief, and Jacob Molyneux, senior editor

Next week marks Medicare’s 48th anniversary. President Lyndon Johnson signed the legislation creating Medicare on July 30, 1965, guaranteeing health coverage for the elderly. With the gradual implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA; 2010), Medicare, along with other government and private forms of health insurance, is undergoing changes, with efforts being made to rein in rising costs, combat fraud, tie quality of care to reimbursement, and so on.

PPresident Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Medicare Bill at the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri. Former President Harry S. Truman is seated at the table with President Johnson. Photo: National Archives and Records Administration. President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Medicare Bill. Former President Harry S. Truman is seated at the table with President Johnson. Photo: National Archives and Records Administration.

With the ACA’s date for mandated purchase of health insurance fast approaching, some states are setting up state-run health insurance exchanges to provide consumers with a standardized menu of […]

2016-11-21T13:06:55-05:00July 26th, 2013|health care policy|0 Comments
Read More

Comment ground rules

1. Please be respectful.
2. We moderate all comments.

Content disclaimer

Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
Go to Top