Category: Academic Papers
A place for papers written during grad school for different classes
The Role of Health Information Technology in the Opioid Epidemic
The opioid crisis has come to the forefront among our nation’s health emergencies, as declared by President Trump in 2017. At that time, the national rate of deaths involving opioids was 14.6 deaths per 100,000 population – versus Florida, which had 3,245 overdose deaths that year, a rate of 16.3 deaths per 100,000 population (NIDA, 2019). While past endeavors to diminish the social and economic effects of the crisis have fallen short of making significant impacts, health information technology (HIT) has made great strides in mitigating the detrimental effects of opioid abuse and overdose. To understand why HIT made such strides, one must first know the history and be aware of the underlying causes which led to the rise of addiction and resultant deaths from opioid abuse.
National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius: The legal battle over the Affordable Care Act
Introduction When the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more commonly referred to as the ACA or Obamacare, was signed in 2010 by President Barack Obama, it promised to upend the healthcare sector of the United States, touching every facet of the industry. Passage also invited immediate legal challenges to the law, which, being so…
Healthcare Reform and Human Resources
Reform of the healthcare sector is a constantly evolving process, even when it’s not at the forefront of the news. Healthcare reform ranges from the creation of Medicaid and Medicare in the 1960s and the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, to the failure of the American Healthcare Act (AHCA) in 2017 to Medicare-for-all proposals. Other reforms occur constantly at the federal, state, and institutional regulatory level. Hospital systems have become very powerful players in the industry and a driver of reform themselves.