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56
MAR / APR 2014
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Healthcare Journal of BATON ROUGE
organizations. They were charged with de-
veloping a report on the future of nursing,
with solutions to improve the quality of pa-
tient care while controlling costs.
The landmark study report, The Future
of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing
Health, challenges nurses, individually and
as a profession, to embrace changes needed
to enhance the quality and value of the U.S.
healthcare system. Further, it acknowledges
that many of the necessary changes in the
profession cannot be achieved by nursing
alone and requires multisector support and
interprofessional collaboration (IOM). Ac-
tion Coalitions include nurses, other health-
care professionals, providers, consumers,
educators, healthcare payers, and busi-
nesses coming together in partnership to
effect change.
Why such attention on nursing? With
over 3 million nurses (2.8 million Registered
Nurses (RNs) and 690,000 LPNs), nursing
represents the largest population segment
of healthcare professionals (HRSA). Nurses
care for individuals everywhere healthcare is
delivered; acute care, ambulatory care, pri-
mary care, long-term care, schools, homes,
military, and community. Any shift in health-
care services requires a shift in or expansion
of the nursing workforce. Further, many of
the point of care strategies to either reduce
healthcare spending or quality measures to
determine value reward, are services that
are now delivered by or could be delivered
by nurses. There is a need for greater under-
standing by the healthcare system as a whole
as to how the quality of nursing services
ittle attention, however, has been
given to the need for the health-
care professionals that comprise
the system to both contribute to
Much has been written regarding the need for
healthcare reform and the debate surrounding
the wisdom of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
While the ACA will expand the number of
individuals accessing the system, its effects on
healthcare cost and healthcare spending are
difficult to predict. While one may not agree with
Obama Care, it is hard not to agree that the U.S.
healthcare system is in serious need of reform.
L
the solutions and to adapt to the changing
environment that must occur.
While we can be encouraged by the recent
slowdown of the rate of growth of health-
care spending, policy analysts contribute
this to a large extent to broader changes in
the economy. Changes in the delivery sys-
tem and efforts to control healthcare costs
have had only temporary or modest effect
(Kaiser). Transforming the healthcare sys-
tem into an accessible, cost-effective, high
quality system able to meet the needs of the
United States’ diverse population, will take
aggressive, collective action by all health-
care professional groups in partnership
with providers, payers, and policy makers
to address the complexity of issues sur-
rounding reform.
Amovement is now spreading across the
nation to address the need for the transfor-
mation of the nursing profession to better
equip it to meet the needs of a reformed
healthcare system. Sparked by a major
study of the nursing profession conducted
in partnership with the Robert Wood John-
son Foundation (RWJF) and the Institute
of Medicine (IOM) from 2008-2010, Action
Coalitions are spreading from state to state
to develop strategies to better prepare the
profession for the future (AARP/RWJ). The
IOM’s 18-member committee, led by former
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Ser-
vices Donna Shalala, included an extraor-
dinary group of professionals, including
health experts from the spectrum of busi-
ness, academia, nonprofits, and healthcare