It seems almost anti-climactic that after all of the lead-up to and hype about the election election it is now over and there hasn't been a cataclysmic shift in life as we know it. In fact, what the election results said most loudly was "ok, enough waiting around, get on with it!" At least that's what it said to those of us that teach healthcare management.
While we have taken incremental steps in the last 2 years to build content into the curriculum around the ACA and Health Reform, we, like most practitioners, have been playing a game of "wait and see" since the law passed in 2010.
First we said, "Let's wait and see what the actual regs say since the law is so vague and full of 'the secretary shall' references that we don't really know what our students will need to know." OK, that's a reasonable approach. We need to know the specifics before we start changing our curriculum.
But then as the regs were starting to become known, we said, "let's wait and see what the Supreme Court has to say." So the Supreme Court did its thing and said that the law was (mostly) constitutional, opening the door for programs to embrace the ACA as the law of the land and start teaching about this new reality, right?
Wrong. Candidate Romney came along and said that the first thing he would do on November 7th after he won the election would be to start dismantling the law. So we put our pens down and our feet up and waited some more.
Now the election is behind us, the President won another term, and the ACA will remain the law of the land and be fully enacted in the next couple of years. And tomorrow is the deadline for states to decide on whether or not to establish a Health Insurance Exchange. So we can't kick this can down the road any longer.
We as educators can't be blamed for our passive approach to changing our curriculum to respond to the ACA when most hospitals and health systems have taken the same approach. In a speech at George Washington University last week, Dick Umbdenstock, CEO of the American Hospital Association made this same point, that his members had been playing a game of "wait and see," postponing action on adapting to the new realities as long as possible.
And of course we have faculty and programs that have tackled this issue and are making strides in teaching students about reform and the new realities of the system. Never was this more evident than at the Winston Health Policy Symposium recently where 10 students had the opportunity to meet with high level policy wonks in DC and they did their programs proud by demonstrating a deep and thorough knowledge of the law and reform.
But as a field we haven't done enough. The time is upon us to embrace the new reality and start to work together to identify how we can improve our curriculum to accurately reflect where the system is today and where it will be in the near future. Payment reforms, performance expectations, ACOs...these are harbingers of the world our students will be living and working in just a few months from now. Will they be prepared?
AUPHA stands ready to help faculty address these challenges by providing a forum for discussion and development of new ideas and approaches. I challenge our Faculty Forums to take on this issue and revisit their own topic areas to develop new and innovative curricular tools that will help students better understand the system in an era of reform.
This is an historical era in our field and one in which we must now take action to ensure that we are preparing our students for the health system of tomorrow. I look forward to working with you all to ensure their success as well as our own!