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Nurses make up the largest segment of the health care profession, with 3 million registered nurses in the United States. Nurses work in a wide variety of settings, including hospitals, public health centers, schools, and homes, and provide a continuum of services, including direct patient care, health promotion, patient education, and coordination of care. They serve in leadership roles, are researchers, and work to improve health care policy. As the health care system undergoes transformation due in part to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the nursing profession is making a wide-reaching impact by providing and affecting quality, patient-centered, accessible, and affordable care. In 2010, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released the report The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health , which made a series of recommendations pertaining to roles for nurses in the new health care landscape. This current report assesses progress made by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/AARP Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action and others in implementing the recommendations from the 2010 report and identifies areas that should be emphasized over the next 5 years to make further progress toward these goals.

Policy makers have been trying to replace Medicare's fee-for-service payment system for years with approaches that pay one price for an aggregation of services. The intent is to reward providers for offering needed care in the most appropriate and cost-effective manner. Medicare's first payment change designed to accomplish such a change was the hospital prospective payment system, introduced during 1983-84. But because it focused only on hospital care, its impact on total Medicare spending was limited. In 2011 Medicare began a new initiative to expand the \"bundled payment\" concept to link payments for multiple services that patients receive during an episode of care. The goal of Medicare's current bundled payment initiative is to provide incentives to deliver health care more efficiently while maintaining or improving quality. This article provides a detailed analysis of how Medicare implemented the hospital prospective payment system, how hospitals responded to the new incentives, and lessons learned that are applicable to the bundled payment initiative. The lessons include that any Medicare payment reform needs to continuously respond to the many different components of the health system and that payment reform should be coupled with analogous reforms in private insurance payment, so that providers receive consistent signals to alter their behavior. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

The United States relies on competition to balance costs and quality in the health care system. But concentration is increasing throughout the hospital, physician, and insurer markets. Midsize community hospitals face declining demand and growing competition from both larger hospitals and smaller freestanding diagnostic and surgical centers, leaving the midsize hospitals vulnerable to closure or merger with other facilities. Competition among insurers has been limited by the development of hospital systems that extend the bargaining power of \"must-have\" hospitals (those perceived to provide the best care for complex and less common conditions) across local health care markets. Government antitrust enforcement could play an important role in maintaining competition in both the hospital and insurer markets, but in many markets, the impact of that enforcement has been limited to date. Policy makers should consider supplementing antitrust activities with strategies that combine competition and regulation-for example, by regulating selected prices and structuring competition to cover entire insurance markets.

New strategies to control U.S. health spending growth are urgently needed. Although provider payment cuts are likely, cutting fee-for-service (FFS) payments will hurt quality and access. A more sensible approach would be to restructure the delivery system into organized networks of providers delivering reliable, evidence-based care. But restructuring will not occur without payment policy reform. Four policy options are commonly cited: recalibrating FFS, instituting pay-for-performance, creating episode-based payments, and adopting global payments. We argue that episode payments are the most immediately viable approach, and we recommend that payment reforms precede any payment reductions so that new delivery models can gain traction. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

As its 2012 session drew to a close, the Massachusetts legislature passed a much-anticipated cost control bill. The bill sets annual state spending targets, encourages the formation of accountable care organizations, and establishes an independent commission to oversee health care system performance. It is Massachusetts's third law to address health spending since the state's landmark health insurance coverage reforms in 2006. The 2012 legislation is a notable step beyond other recent cost control efforts. Although it lacks strong mechanisms to enforce the new spending goals, it creates a framework for increased regulation if spending trends fail to moderate. Massachusetts's experience provides several lessons for state and federal policy makers. First, implementing near-universal coverage, as is planned under the Affordable Care Act for 2014, will increase pressure on government to begin controlling overall health care spending. Second, introduction of cost control measures takes time: Massachusetts enacted a series of incremental but increasingly strong laws over the past six years that have gradually increased its ability to influence health spending. Finally, the effectiveness of new cost control laws will depend on changes in providers' and insurers' behavior; in Massachusetts, private market activity has had a complementary impact on the pace of health system change. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Over the past twenty-five years, the average ratio of hospital charges for services (gross revenues) to payments received (net revenues) has grown from 1.1 to 2.6. This reflects a transition from predominantly cost- and charge-based payment systems to regulated and negotiated fixed payments. Hospitals have been able to squeeze additional revenues from remaining charge-based payers and services by sharply increasing charges, negatively affecting the uninsured. Although protection of the uninsured seems warranted, it might be difficult to regulate hospital pricing systems in isolation from other controversial issues, such as the acceptability of cross-subsidies and the role of market forces.

The number of uninsured Americans is approaching 50 million. Stuart Altman and Michael Doonan write that Massachusetts has now sent a new message to the rest of the country: providing health care to the uninsured is possible. Our health care system is a mess. The number of uninsured Americans is approaching 50 million. The costs of health insurance are too high, and they are rising rapidly. Polls repeatedly show that a majority of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents favor universal health care coverage. The trouble is that we can't agree on a solution. The left wants to scrap the current system and substitute a government-financed single-payer program. The right supports consumer-directed health savings accounts and tax credits. More moderate elements on the right, such as Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, also favor requiring all persons to purchase health . . .

The market for hospital services, like global markets in general, is becoming more competitive. Increased price transparency and focused competition can squeeze out inefficiencies, restraining prices and making some consumers better off. But competition can have a dark side. U.S. hospitals can treat Medicare and Medicaid patients at less than cost, care for the uninsured, and provide other money-losing services because they can cross-subsidize. By 2025 the need for general hospitals to cross-subsidize will greatly in-crease, but their ability to do so will be diminished. U.S. hospitals could begin to resemble U.S. airlines: severely cutting costs, eliminating services, and suffering financial instability.