Tag: Healthcare

The American Healthcare Problem

Two-thirds of the people in America are happy with “the way the new healthcare program is working for them,” a June Gallup study discovered. That measure has stayed generally consistent since the research firm first began tracking healthcare fulfillment in the middle of March in order to evaluate how the changes brought on by the Affordable Care Act were affecting people in America. “Americans’ advanced level of fulfillment with how the medical care program is treating them indicates that medical care is not in a problem for most people in America,” the report said. “At the same time, that 30% of the adult population, more than 70 million people, [who are] not satisfied with the medical care program emphasizes the need for improvement.”

While it helped that Affordable Care Act enrollments topped the Obama administration’s maximum estimate of 7 million, that figure is not the most important measure of the reform’s achievements. If those exchange policies are considered to be affordable and the protection assessed to be good, then the future achievements of the Affordable Care Act will be more assured. For the Obama-care story to be one of growing achievements, the experiences of those people in America who benefit from the changes to the insurance program, including low and middle-income earners qualifying for financial assistance, and those with preexisting conditions who cannot be turned away by insurance providers, it will have to over-shadow the pressure the change may place on those who find their rates too expensive, want to visit doctors out of their network and consider their insurance deductibles too great.

When analyzing how the Affordable Care Act has changed the American public’s understanding of its healthcare program, health insurance status is the most significant forecaster of fulfillment. The biggest rate of fulfillment, 77%, is found among Americans with military or veteran health coverage. Medical health insurance or State health programs recipients follow, with 76%, while 70% of Americans with partnership or employer-sponsored plans and 66% of self-insured Americans expressed satisfaction. By comparison, those Americans without insurance were more disappointed with the medical care program. Only 36% of those participants said they were content and 60% said they were disappointed.

Healthcare Problems

Charles Krauthammer provided us all advice when he recommended that we should neglect what President Obama says and focus on what he does. The reality is that very little that Obama peddled to America when he was attempting to gain support for the Affordable Healthcare Act was true. What is going to happen to many People in America in the next months and years is what individuals should be focused on. We might want to consider some of the following, because it may affect us all, one way or the other.

As many as one-half of all American doctors may refuse to join the healthcare transactions. Without doctors, it will be a very hard to make the transactions work and guarantees long waits to see a doctor.

The White House and surrogates say a few individuals will lose their healthcare coverage. The estimate of a 5% cancellation rate would signify about 16 million individuals, or about one-half the number of the uninsured that was originally used to rationalize this problem. Each cancellation provides with it a tale and for some, a complete loss of insurance plan and lack of ability to get treatment. And perhaps as many as a third of the population could be affected once the employer mandates kick in.

The government gets to decide on the details of healthcare coverage each resident will be needed to buy. An older woman may be needed to buy pre-natal coverage; a younger man may be needed to buy coverage for geriatric care. The Affordable Care Act does not differentiate between the needs of the younger and the old, or the sex of the policy-holder, or the needs and wishes of the individual. It is an all-encompassing, like it program, because there is no leaving it.

In order for the program to work, younger, healthy individuals must buy the government required insurance policy. Since most adolescents have no medical problems and the penalty enforced is much less expensive than buying the actual policy, many will no doubt opt to pay the penalty. The fact that previous medical conditions cannot remove one from buying insurance plan makes the choice to pay the penalty and wait until the need for healthcare insurance coverage occurs, a no-brainer.

Healthcare Reform in America

Healthcare in the United States before and after Obama has been structured for the advantage of Big Pharma and Walls Street. People in America paid $3.8 billion last year for healthcare but they get less than any developing country. The United States has 31% of the people in this country of the 34 most developing countries. The US has 38% of live births, but 60% of all the babies in the 34 developing world who are created and die in their first 24 hours do so in the USA. We do have skilled physicians and nursing staff who are prepared to save lives but the cost is excessively great and the overall results are small.

Of course to provide impressive therapies to enhance wellness and to bring down expenses, we will have to know what works and what does not. We will need a reliable regulating body to analyze all medical methods. At what stages should hypertension and cholesterol levels medicines be administered? Go to Australia and to European countries and to Asia. If their physicians get better results by not providing blood pressure medicines at ‘abnormal’ amounts than their United States alternatives, then insurance providers should not cover medication at those stages. I would let the individual take the medication if he is willing to pay for it himself out of his wallet after being cautioned there is no confirmed advantage, but there are serious adverse reactions. Go down the list of over recommended medicines. Removing 50 percent or more of prescribed medications will significantly enhance wellness and reduce costs.

Of course all these activities should be happening at the same time immediately. It hasn’t been said before, but we need what we would call a Council of Smart Guys who would be intelligent men and women able to think outside the box. The Smart Guys need to be motivated to go through the paperwork making changes. Though we should more formally call them Presidential advisers. The United States has more than 30 thousand government, local and state employees who will avoid extreme change especially when some of the things they do like spying on the community and groping our genital area at air-ports will no longer be permitted. We will need to rearrange government employees to provide better services at reduced expenses.

Healthcare Competition and Convenience

“You nailed it,” one physician had written. “Healthcare is changing and convenience is just one of the focused ideas for upcoming customers of medical care.” Competition is always a timely and sometimes frightening topic for physicians and marketing experts. “Change or die.” This is an excellent understanding by a marketing expert regarding the state policies of the changing medical care industry. Patients are not going to wait to see a physician. Healthcare “drive-thrus” are on the way! To succeed, physicians need to change their distribution models in the new wellness age and become more effective.

This is a good insight. However, pharmacy leaders getting into certain micro-health promotions are not actually bad. It just indicates any current physician needs to be wiser, better and more targeted from a business viewpoint. That’s not a bad thing. Having CVS or others breathe down your neck means anyone currently providing the services the drug stores want to take a share of has a nice pressured probability to evaluate what they do best, what they should spend money on, what they no more perhaps should do in a few years removed and what they can do better, quicker, more viably and more product and expertise-focused for later on in a modified atmosphere. Competition is terrifying. But competitors can shine a light and a laser focus often in discussions that otherwise might not take place.

The great news is that the focus on customer/patient of a Walgreen’s or CVS is not actually the target focus of the most effective treatment centers in the US. Not that the common affluent patient never goes to Walgreen’s or CVS, but I think it will be a while before that individual recognizes a pharmacy as a practical replacement to going to their own physician. Primary care doctors and internists who may be threatened by this should concentrate on focusing what skills they provide their sufferers as doctors, over and against the NPs who will likely be offering care in these pharmacy treatment centers.

Attitude Toward Patient Care

“American physicians need to be totally able to do what they have been trained to do, succeed at practicing medicine. American patients need to be totally able to choose the family health insurance coverage and medications that suit their needs, not something forced by a central power. This simply cannot occur under the imprisoning pressure of the Affordable Care Act.” – Richard A. Armstrong, M.D. “Under the Affordable Care Act, physicians who effectively work together with other suppliers to improve patient care results, the value of healthcare services and patient experiences will flourish and be the leaders of the healthcare care program.” – Robert Kocher, M.D.; Ezekiel J. Emanuel, M.D.; Nancy-Ann DeParle

Physicians have been caught in the middle of the transformation of the American healthcare care distribution program brought on by the Affordable Care Act. Doctors who battle the regulation and those who support it are trying to adjust to a fast changing healthcare environment. A Deloitte Center for Health Solutions survey of American physicians found 44 % thought the ACA was “a good start” and 44% reacted that “it is a step in the wrong direction.” Obviously, older physicians were more likely to be in the second group of participants than younger physicians.

The ACA overhauls the healthcare care distribution program in the following ways:

  • It improves accessibility healthcare for more Americans
  • It creates incentives to promote better patient care synchronization and quality
  • It provides feedback to physicians on cost and quality of their patient care
  • It changes the payment program from fee for service to value based
  • It focuses on patient-centered care
  • It depends on increased use of electronic medical records
  • It attempts to increase access to primary care and allied health providers

Start-Ups Changing the Healthcare Industry

Few sectors stand to gain more from recent enhancements in technological innovation (and certain federal legislation) than healthcare. In 2014 and beyond, consumers will finally start to benefit from some of the enhancements that have been changing over the last year, from 3D prosthetics to cutting-edge DNA testing. Here are some stats: Family care providers offer 83 percent of senior care in the U.S. each year and these family care providers spend about $5,000 and devote 1,000 hours to offer proper care to their families. If care provider mistakes were reduced, which could potentially reduce Medicare expenses, then $60 billion dollars in avoidable healthcare expenses could be removed.

A portion of the Affordable Care Act makes it a requirement that healthcare providers switch to electronic medical records, so there have been several start-ups offering services in that world, including Practice Fusion and CareCloud. The appearance of 3D-printed prosthetics symbolizes a major landmark in not just the performance and appearance of artificial limbs, but also the availability of them. Over the last season, a number of powerful applications of big information approaches to healthcare problems have appeared as appealing solutions. Start-ups are using quantified self information to fix infertility (Glow), running big information analysis on differential diagnoses for cancer treatments (HC Pathways) and applying ad tech techniques to find connections in disease treatment (Flatiron Health).

The Supreme Court decided against the patent-ability of naturally sourced human genes this previous June. This previously meant that companies were able to patent a particular gene series that associated to a particular hazard to wellness or drug sensitivity. Not amazingly, the patent certification was expensive for research and avoided bringing DNA testing to the public. The use of technological innovation to build better relationships, improve communication and identify early depending on EMR-integrated provider-patient programs captivates healthcare traders. Although the quantified self gets lots of attention, large sections of our population are not as tech-savvy and technological innovation needs to have concrete and immediate benefits for high adoption. The second trend is compliance-based technological innovation that allows patients to stay in therapy, receive consistent reviews and rely on a support network.

Importance of Psychology in Nursing

Psychology has its origins distributed in every single industry. It has become crucial to study the human mind for the better result of operations carried out on a regular basis. It has affected many thoughts and is known to have a great impact on healthcare as well. Psychology and healthcare are leagues apart but at a certain level, they are connected. Nursing concentrates entirely on assisting individuals recover from serious and chronic diseases, while psychology concentrates on dealing with the emotional issues of individuals. Nursing staff have to understand the psychology of their sufferers and help them psychologically for a rapid restoration.

Nurses have to manage sufferers during severe healthcare concerns and deal with their emotions and actions. Patients begin to depend on nurses who try to reduce their emotional stress. It has been seen in many cases that physical sickness results in emotional interference. At this stage, nurses have to be sympathetic and understanding. Nursing staff are trained in a manner that they help sufferers psychologically by dealing with the emotional changes. Psychology in the healthcare industry is trained intentionally. The modern medical literary works on counseling psychology and clinical psychology helps nurses perform their everyday tasks. They communicate with sufferers on a regular basis and it is easy for them to recognize the signs of emotional disruptions compared to other healthcare employees. It guarantees proper care to sufferers and professional services are given to them.

Along the process of treatment, they create a strong relationship with the sufferers as away from home, they expect individuals to be helpful and sympathetic to them. And nurses are trained to do so. Nursing staff have to have some outstanding characteristics such as, tolerance, helpful characteristics, sympathy, love for others and the ability to feel the pain of others. In many ways, psychology has been assisting the healthcare professionals to serve a huge number of individuals.

What Makes Healthcare Expensive?

Since 1900, the average American life span has improved by 30 years, or by 62%. That nugget comes near the beginning of a new review taking stock of the U.S. healthcare program, released in the Journal of the American Medical Association this week and it’s also pretty much the last piece of great news in it. The study authors a mixture of experts from Alerion Advisors, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Rochester and the Boston Consulting Group take a point-by-point look at why medical care costs so much, why our results are relatively poor and what accounts for the increase in medical expenses. In the process, they revealed a number of amazing facts that debunk popular misunderstandings about health investing.

Actually, serious illnesses such as cardiovascular illness and diabetic issues, among patients younger than 65 pushes two-thirds of medical spending. About 85% of medical expenses are spent on individuals younger than 65, though individuals do spend more on healthcare as they age. “Between 2000 and 2011, increase in price (particularly of drugs, medical devices and medical center care), not concentration of service or market change, produced most of the increase in health’s share of GDP,” the writers write.

The biggest-spending disease with the quickest amount of development was hyperlipidemia, high cholesterol and triglycerides for which investing improved by 14.4% yearly between 2000 and 2010. This is a regular factor that Obama-Care competitors make when suggesting for the status quo, but in fact, much of the southeastern U.S. has a life span that is lower than average for the OECD, a set of developing nations that is commonly used for evaluation. And while People in America amount their encounters with the U.S. healthcare program as generally positive, other nations within the OECD are just as pleased, even though their medical care is much less expensive than ours.

Healthcare Innovation

Jonathan Bush, found and CEO of athenahealth talked about the limitations to medical care advancement in a vibrant discussion with MIT Technology Review Editor in Chief Jerr Pontin at the EmTech event in Arlington, Boston. Bush described athenahealth, supplier of cloud-based EHR and practice management software, as the “water boy” for the healthcare market that will do work that physicians do not want to do. Their company structure, he describes, is as the physicians do better work, the organization will see a gain on profit. Still, Bush said the organization is designed to do a lot more.

“What we privately think we’re doing, we think we’re developing the healthcare online,” Bush said. “What we think we’re doing is developing the circumstances where there can be enhancements in medical care. Healthcare does encounter advancement with caring and love and support and locations like MIT that spend money on it, but the circumstances are not there. The circumstances are to develop a better online, the circumstances for advancement are not there.” He considers his organization can help offer a better setting in which to innovate and yet, the street to achievements could still be bumpy because of protection issues such as HIPAA conformity.

“The key to medical care online is that it’s got a fiduciary, you know the factor that destroys us is you have to first do no damage,” Bush said. “Well in every other company location organizations burst and sprinkle over the walls all the time and that is where you say ‘oh, look at that guy, those courage actually would be really delightful, we can add that to my organization.’ You cannot really do that when individuals’ lives and protection are at stake, so the healthcare internet is going to go more slowly and be lamer than ‘the dating internet’ or ‘the purchasing for items internet’ but can we make a playground that is secure enough to allow at least some of that purchasing to go on, some of that that rising and falling.”

Global Healthcare Conference

Healthcare management from the private market and government departments will discuss improvement of global efforts to implement GS1 Standards that improve individual safety, provide chain security and efficiency during the International GS1 Healthcare Conference going on in San Francisco, Oct 1-3, 2013, at the Hilton San Francisco Financial District. Speakers from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), California Board of Pharmacy, McKesson, Johnson & Johnson, Mercy, Pfizer and Premier will discuss best methods for applying GS1 Standards in healthcare.

More than 250 members from medical centers, producers, providers, market companies, government and regulating companies from 25 countries are expected to attend the conference. The three-day conference, designed “GS1 Standards in Action,” is organized by GS1 Healthcare US, an industry standards team targeted on driving the execution of GS1 Standards in the United States. “With individual safety at stake, market and government authorities globally are in lock-step to create techniques that will enable healthcare members to take better charge of the product information that flows throughout the supply chain, both locally and worldwide,” said Eileen Pheney, vice chairman of healthcare, GS1 US. “The conference offers global healthcare supply chain professionals understanding about standards execution techniques and improvement as well as market and regulating improvements in automatic recognition, traceability and information synchronization.”

Speakers represent multiple facets of the international healthcare supply chain, hailing from government departments, regulating bodies, medical industry companies, U.S. team purchasing companies, medical centers, producers, providers and retailers. Features include:

  • An opening plenary period targeted on unique device identification (UDI) with speakers from the U.S. FDA, the Japanese people Ministry for Health Welfare  and Labor and others.
  • A period targeted on medical center execution of GS1 Standards, with demonstrations by providers such as Whim (U.S.) and Hospital Aleman (Argentina).
  • Presentations by international companies and regulating companies, such as the World Customs Organization and California Board of Pharmacy.
  • Perspectives from providers, such as Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and McKesson.
  • Closing keynote about bedside scanning by Mark Neuenschwander, an expert in drug providing automated and bar code point-of-care systems.