FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
'ANA's Health Care Agenda - 2005' reaffirms support for universal access to essential, quality health care services; inadequate supply of nurses cited as a critical flaw in the current health care system
Silver Spring, MD - Despite years of incremental, market-based approaches to reform, the health care system continues to be fragmented and costly, according to a report on health care reform by the American Nurses Association (ANA).
The report, ANA's Health Care Agenda - 2005, further reaffirms the association's 15 years of support for a restructured health care system that ensures universal access to a standard package of essential health care services through a single-payer mechanism, and lays out a comprehensive strategy for government, industry, consumers and health care providers to follow in achieving these goals. ANA President Barbara Blakeney, MS, RN, hailed the report, which updates the 1991 report, Nursing's Agenda for Health Care Reform, as a "badly needed blueprint for change" for a health care system that remains in a state of crisis. "ANA believes that access to health care is a basic human right that should be guaranteed to everyone in our nation," Blakeney said. "But our current health care system is ailing, and ANA's Health Care Agenda - 2005 offers a remedy." The report advises reshaping and redirecting the nation's health care system away from the overuse of expensive, technology-driven, acute, hospital-based services to a new model in which a balance is struck between high-tech treatment and community-based services that focus primarily on prevention. "The solution is to invert the health care pyramid and focus more on primary care instead of more costly secondary and tertiary care," Blakeney said. The ANA report further focuses on the six aims put forth by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in its 2001 Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century report - that health care be safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient and equitable - and offers ways of making those aims a reality. In addition to targeting the health care concerns of consumers, ANA's Health Care Agenda - 2005 addresses the cyclical shortages of registered nurses (RNs) and other health care professionals and how those shortages undermine safe, quality care. The report also advises that there must be a shift of thinking from viewing RNs and nursing services as a cost to the system to recognizing that investing in nursing care can produce savings - through a primary focus on wellness and prevention. For health care delivery to be effective, fair and affordable, there must be an adequate supply of well-educated, well-distributed and well-utilized RNs, the report states. Supply solutions must focus both on recruiting more nurses into the profession and retaining nurses who are already in the RN workforce. Education solutions must focus on expanding the shrinking supply of nurse educators while also forging creative partnerships with interested stakeholders and maintaining permanent, well-resourced funding for nursing education. Distribution solutions should address "pockets" of acute shortages of nurses, including rural areas and inner cities, by providing financial incentives for nurses to work in these underserved, less desirable regions. And utilization solutions must involve expanding the scope of practice rendered by all types of health providers - particularly where federal Medicaid coverage is concerned - so that overall access to health services can be improved. "Because no current comprehensive proposals at either the state or national levels address health care reform, and because the limited focus and segmented reform efforts from the 1970s through today have failed to come up with a sufficient remedy, the nursing profession stands poised to embark on a comprehensive remodeling of the way health care is delivered and paid for in our nation," Blakeney said. In addition to promoting ANA's Health Care Agenda - 2005, the association will act on a resolution on the topic at its upcoming House of Delegates (HOD) meeting. The resolution proposes that ANA use its leadership role in the nursing profession to drive changes in the health care industry by 2007, and set minimum goals for reform that (a) ensure that all United States citizens and legal residents have health insurance coverage by 2010; and (b) reduce excessive health care expenditure inflation beginning in 2008. ANA's HOD will be held June 17-19 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC. # # # # # #
June 13, 2005
CONTACT:
Cindy Price, 301-628-5038
Carol Cooke, 301-628-5027
ANA Unveils Renewed Push for Systemic,
Affordable Health Care Reform
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