The affordable Care Act has made a huge impact on financial management of healthcare institutions. With the passage of the Affordable Care Act came changes in the accessibility of care for the population; it meant changes in the ways payment for health care were handled.
The ACA was projected to expand the health insurance coverage to an estimated thirty million and that it did. This also meant an expansion on the coverage for actual care. It unleashed a tsunami of newly insured patients who would access the health care system without preparing the institution with staff to accommodate this change. There was already a shortage in the healthcare system of workers and with the influx of patients there were greater shortages.
With the passage of the ACA, hospitals financial management teams were forced to reassess the companies' finances. They needed staff and as such they needed monies to pay and train and retain the staff to cover the growing healthcare needs of the growing population.
This caused budgeting, reshuffling of expenditures and overall changes in the spending and profit margins. Saying this it did bring a few complications to the financial status within many healthcare institutions.
According to Alice Rivlin, 2013, it was suggested that the ACA caused the online market places or exchanges being set up in each state to facilitate purchase of health plans. This opened the market up to changes to ensure purchases were affordable. So then this impacted the healthcare institutions, as the growth in the population was inevitable.
Some articles say that if persons pay more out of pocket it will reduce the upward pressure it now has on institutions to be reimbursed for services through healthcare insurance.
With the stipulations of Medicare and Medicaid it remains difficult for some institutions to be paid if they are paid at all. Therefore it would be diligent to say that the new Affordable Care Act has had a dramatic effect on financial management in institutions.