Federal Regulations in Healthcare

This assignment examines the crucial role of federal regulations in healthcare, focusing on their impact on hospitals and clinics. It delves into key regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), highlighting their importance in protecting patient information, ensuring affordable care, and guaranteeing equal access to treatment regardless of economic status. The assignment also addresses the challenges of implementing these regulations effectively, emphasizing the need for transparency, cost-consciousness, and patient awareness.

Running head: FEDERAL REGULATIONS
Federal Regulation
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:

2FEDERAL REGULATIONS
Hospitals and clinics need to have the federal regulations for the proper working of their
organization. One such well-known clinic is the Cleveland Clinic. There are many federal
regulations that are imposed on the Cleveland clinic as well like basis and scope, provision of
emergency services, patient’s rights, Quality assurance, Medical staffs, nursing services and
several other such regulations (Bland, 2015). Health Care Reform Act (ACA) provides medical
aid to the patients (with special emphasis to the women and children) at a much lower affordable
cost. Often patients are afraid to seek medical help because they feel that they will be unable to
bear the heavy medical costs. So, if the ACA reform is used, the hospital authorities will be able
to provide treatments to the patients at a much low cost. Pre existing health conditions,
pregnancy related issues will be treated without charging much. It will also end lifetime and
yearly dollar limits. One of the major advantages is that it helps in protecting the choice of
doctors of the patients.
HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is also required for the
proper protection of the medical information of the patients. There can be several tampering
done with the medical reports of the patients. However, this must never be the scenario in any
hospitals. Data privacy must be enabled so that there is a proper data security granted to the
patients. Regulation is also of utmost importance because this will make the hospital staffs
maintain a proper data containing all the necessary records of the patients that might be needed
for any kind of future references. The federal regulation of medical staffs is needed for rendering
proper care and safety to the patients (Vedder et al., 2014).

3FEDERAL REGULATIONS
Though apparently these strategies are set up mainly for the purpose of making the working of
the hospitals easier, often these strategies or the federal regulations are not properly
implemented. One of the important facts that are often ignored by the hospital staffs is the huge
amount of money that the patients have to bear. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active
Labor Act (EMTALA), mainly try to provide equal opportunities of treatment to all the patients.
This reform protects patients from being refused treatment due to their lower or nil insurance
policy or economic status. Hence, this policy is really helpful for the patients with low income
group. One of the very common features that is often seen in the hospitals that as soon as they
come and seek for some treatments, they are handed over a huge bill by the hospital saying that
they would admit the patient only if the patient’s family can deposit a certain amount of money
needed for conducting several tests (Rahurkar, Vest & Menachemi, 2015). However, some of
these tests are necessary for the patients but often the hospitals carry on several tests that are
unnecessary and use it only as a means of extracting more money from the patients. A good
example can be the case of cancer patients. The cancer patients have to undergo chemotherapies
for getting cured. Now there are different types of chemo that can be used for the patients. It
must be taken into consideration by the hospital that not all the patients are of a sound economic
background. So, they must be given the facility of opting for the comparatively cheap
chemotherapies (Nelson & Staggers, 2016). It must be the duty of the hospital staffs to make the
patients aware of the cheap tests and the cheap methods of treatment that can be carried on.
Often the junior doctors are unaware of the cheap and the exact tests that might be used for the
patients, so they prescribe some unnecessary and expensive tests. The patients are forced to take
those tests. However, the supervision of the junior doctors must be increased so that the
unnecessary number of tests can be checked.

4FEDERAL REGULATIONS
References
Bland, M. (2015). An introduction to medical statistics. Oxford University Press (UK).
Nelson, R., & Staggers, N. (2016). Health Informatics-E-Book: An Interprofessional Approach.
Elsevier Health Sciences.
Rahurkar, S., Vest, J. R., & Menachemi, N. (2015). Despite the spread of health information
exchange, there is little evidence of its impact on cost, use, and quality of care. Health
affairs, 34(3), 477-483.
Vedder, A., Cuijpers, C., Vantsiouri, P., & Ferrari, M. Z. (2014). The law as a ‘catalyst and
facilitator’for trust in e-health: challenges and opportunities. Law, Innovation and
Technology, 6(2), 305-325.