Need some assitance on this question I know HIPAA protects p

Need some assitance on this question. I know HIPAA protects patients not sure about 2 more. thanks!

Discuss 3 ways that laws protect patients and staff in a health care setting. Also comment on why we need laws in this setting, considering our goal is to restore patients to a certain quality of life. Do these laws really protect our patients and staff? Why or why not?

Solution

Three ways patients are protected by law in healthcare settings -

The Affordable Care Act itself protects patients from many aspects. For example, the new Patient Bill of Rights developed by Affordable Care Act is aimed at bringing stability and flexibility in terms of the healthcare service and insurance chosen by a citizen. The system lets a person make more informed choices regarding his/ her health. Provision of Patient Bill of Rights includes the provision of coverage to citizens having pre-existing conditions, protection of the individual’s choice regarding the provider selection, cease of the lifetime limits on insurance coverage, banning arbitrary withdrawal of insurance coverage, mandating insurance companies to publicly communicate the reason for a premium rate change and so on.

Next is the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act (PSQIA) which provides safe and quality settings for the patients by ensuring that the healthcare workers can report unsafe and inadequate conditions. Legislators created the law in order to encourage the reporting of medical errors while keeping the patients’ confidentially rights intact. To ensure patient privacy, the HHS can levy fines for confidentiality breaches.

Finally, there is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) which provides protection in terms of carrying health insurance policies from job to job. It bars the insurers from discriminating against policy applicants for health problems.

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As for all the other industries, laws and regulations are needed in healthcare settings are needed to protect the rights of the consumers (i.e. the patients) so that the consumers do not face abuse (in terms of cost such as by creating oligopolistic or monopolistic situation or in terms of quality) made by the providers and quality healthcare, at a reasonable price, can be delivered to the citizens. In 2016, the mission of the HHS necessitated improving patient outcomes and plummeting medical costs. The laws and regulations are designed in order to work towards this goal.

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The laws and regulations provide a foundation level protection to the patients. The protection, however, depends largely on the awareness level of the patients and the enforcement of the laws. Also, the variability of some laws in different states and different levels of enforcement makes the patients vulnerable ot abuse by the providers.