The Health Care Blog – Page 249 – Everything you always wanted to know about the Health Care system. But were afraid to ask.

Above the Fold

The Nursing Workforce of 2020: Well Trained, Well Paid, and — Actually, Who the Hell Knows

Nov 1, 2018

By David Glenn

This morning’s wretched jobs report tells a now-familiar tale: Employment has risen nicely in health care (a net gain of more than 340,000 jobs between May 2011 and May 2012). But almost every other sector has been flat or worse.

You might think that would mean that new-graduate nurses are having an easy time finding work. That’s still true in rural areas — but elsewhere, no.

In many U.S. cities, especially on the west coast, there’s real evidence of a nursing glut. The most recent survey conducted by the National Student Nurses’ Association found that more than 30 percent of recent graduates had failed to find jobs.

How is that possible?

While demand for nurses has been rising, it actually hasn’t risen as fast as most scholars had projected. Meanwhile, the supply of nurses has spiked unexpectedly, at both ends of the age scale: Older nurses have delayed retirement, often because the recession has thrown their spouses out of work. And people in their early twenties are earning nursing degrees at a rate not seen in decades. We’re now in the sixth year in which health-care employment has far outshone every other sector, and college students have read those tea leaves.

So what will happen next? Here are crude sketches of two possible futures:

I. THE NURSING SHORTAGE OF 2020

(This scenario draws from a talk that Vanderbilt University’s Peter Buerhaus gave two weeks ago at the U. of Maryland School of Nursing. Buerhaus still sees a shortage coming, though a less severe one than the shortage that he and two colleagues had predicted in a widely-cited 2000 paper.)

In June 2012, the Supreme Court upholds the Affordable Care Act, and Republicans never manage to do much to weaken the law. Tens of millions of Americans gain access to insurance, and the demand for nurses rises in tandem.
Some time around 2014, the general labor market finally recovers. There’s less desperation in the air. Sixty-year-old nurses are more likely to retire, and twenty-year-old college students who aren’t actually that interested in nursing go back to majoring in anthropology or accounting or whatever, because they’re reasonably sure they’ll find jobs.
The millions of soon-to-retire Baby Boomers utilize Medicare at rates similar to previous cohorts of 70-year-olds.
Changes in health care delivery mean that nurses and nurse practitioners are heavily deployed to provide primary care and to coordinate patients’ services.

II. THE NURSING GLUT OF 2020

In June, the Supreme Court strikes down the ACA’s insurance mandate. Mitt Romney wins the 2012 election and pushes his health proposals through Congress. In this scenario, at least 45 million fewer people have health insurance than would have been the case with an intact ACA.
The EU zone goes to hell, and the ensuing financial crisis means that the U.S. labor market stays miserable for years. College students continue to pour into health care fields, because that’s the one sector with better-than-zero growth.
The millions of soon-to-retire Baby Boomers utilize Medicare at significantly lower rates than previous cohorts of 70-year-olds. (Unlike the other items on this list, this one is good news.)
Changes in health care delivery don’t lead to a relative increase in the deployment of nurses and nurse practitioners. Accountable Care Organizations use social workers and other non-nurses to coordinate patients’ care across providers.

What will actually happen? Probably something in between, of course. (Or maybe the Yellowstone volcano will erupt and this will all be moot.)

We had better hope that it is something close to halfway in between. Both shortages and gluts are bad for patients and bad for the nursing profession. Nursing shortages, because patients are even more likely than usual to face understaffed units and overstretched nurses. Nursing gluts, because nurses are so afraid of unemployment that they don’t speak up about problems on their units.

David Glenn is a student at the University of Maryland School of Nursing and author of the blog, Notes on Nursing, where this post originally appeared.

Who Owns Patient Data?

Nov 1, 2018

By Fred Trotter

Who owns a patient’s health information?

The patient to whom it refers?
The health provider that created it?
The IT specialist who has the greatest control over it?

The notion of ownership is inadequate for health information. For instance, no one has an absolute right to destroy health information. But we all understand what it means to own an automobile: You can drive the car you own into a tree or into the ocean if you want to. No one has the legal right to do things like that to a “master copy” of health information.

All of the groups above have a complex series of rights and responsibilities relating to health information that should never be trivialized into ownership.

Raising the question of ownership at all is a hash argument. What is a hash argument? Here’s how Julian Sanchez describes it:

“Come to think of it, there’s a certain class of rhetoric I’m going to call the ‘one-way hash‘ argument. Most modern cryptographic systems in wide use are based on a certain mathematical asymmetry: You can multiply a couple of large prime numbers much (much, much, much, much) more quickly than you can factor the product back into primes. A one-way hash is a kind of ‘fingerprint’ for messages based on the same mathematical idea: It’s really easy to run the algorithm in one direction, but much harder and more time consuming to undo. Certain bad arguments work the same way — skim online debates between biologists and earnest ID (Intelligent Design) aficionados armed with talking points if you want a few examples: The talking point on one side is just complex enough that it’s both intelligible — even somewhat intuitive — to the layman and sounds as though it might qualify as some kind of insight … The rebuttal, by contrast, may require explaining a whole series of preliminary concepts before it’s really possible to explain why the talking point is wrong.”

The Problem Is Relative

Nov 1, 2018

By H. Gilbert Welch

Numerous studies have shown that the general public has exaggerated perceptions of the health risks they face — as well as exaggerated expectations of the benefit of medical care.

Is it because they’re stupid? No. Instead, the problem relates to how various sources of health information — researchers, doctors, reporters, web designers, advertisers, etc. — frequently frame their messages: using relative change.

“Forty percent higher” and “50 percent lower” are statements of relative change. While they are easy to understand, they are also incomplete. Relative change can dramatically exaggerate the underlying effect. It’s a great way to scare people.

For example, research earlier this year found that women with migraines had a 40 percent higher chance of developing multiple sclerosis. That sounds scary.

But the researchers were careful to add some important context: Multiple sclerosis is a rare disease. In fact, for women with migraines, the chance of developing multiple sclerosis over 15 years was considerably less than 1 in 100 — only 0.47 percent. To be sure, that is about 40% higher than the analogous risk for women without migraines — 0.32 percent — but it’s a lot less scary. More importantly, it’s a much more complete piece of information.

What makes it more complete is the context of two additional numbers: the risk of developing multiple sclerosis in women with and without migraines. Epidemiologists call these “absolute risks.” You and I might call them the real numbers.

Relative change also exaggerate effects in the other direction. It’s a great way to make people believe there has been a real medical breakthrough.

A few years ago a study of a cholesterol-lowering statin drug was hailed for big reductions in heart attacks in people with so-called healthy cholesterol levels. The drug led to about a 50 percent reduction in the risk of heart attack. That sounds like a breakthrough.

But the absolute risks — the real numbers — are sure to look a little different. Why? Because in people with healthy cholesterol levels, heart attacks are rare. To get that context, get the two additional numbers: the risk of heart attack in people taking and not taking the drug.

For people taking the drug, the chance of having a heart attack over five years was less than 1 percent. To be sure, that is about 50 percent lower than the analogous risk for those not taking the drug — less than 2 percent — but it sounds a lot less like a breakthrough.

These absolute risks suggest that 100 apparently healthy people have to take the medication for five years for one to avoid a heart attack. And it’s not even clear from the research — or the federal registry of clinical trials — what kind of heart attack: the kind that patients experience (the bad kind) or the kind that is diagnosed by detecting less than a billionth of gram of a protein in the blood (the not-so-important kind). Add in all the hassle factors of being on another drug (filling scripts, blood tests, insurance forms) and the legitimate concerns about side effects, the use of relative change might now strike you as more than a little misleading.

Whatever the finding — harm or benefit — relative change exaggerates it.

Upon learning this, one of my students likened relative change to funhouse mirrors. If you are thin, there is a mirror that can make you look too thin; if you are heavy, there is mirror that can make you look too heavy.

In the case of relative change, it all happens in the same mirror. It provides a potent combo to promote medical care: exaggerated perceptions of risk and exaggerated perceptions of benefit. Can you imagine a more powerful marketing strategy?

Relative change is not the only culprit in misleading health information, but it is an important one. The good news is that more and more researchers, reporters and editors are on to this game. The bad news is that there is an awful lot of information to police and sometimes it can be hard to even find the real numbers.

That’s where a skeptical, numerate public comes in — one that knows to ask for the real numbers. And, if they can’t be found, one that knows to move on.

H. Gilbert Welch is a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. He is the coauthor of Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health. This post originally appeared on The Huffington Post.

Separating Professional and Hospital Records

Nov 1, 2018

By John Halamka, MD

As Patient Centered Medical Homes and Accountable Care Organizations form, the lines between professional and hospital practice become increasingly murky.

CMS has long required that hospital and professional records be separable, so that in the case of audits or subpoenas, it is clear who recorded what.

Today, the BIDMC ACO continues to expand into the community, adding owned hospitals, affiliated hospitals, owned practices, and affiliated practices.

Our strategy to date has been to use our home-built inpatient and ambulatory systems at the academic medical center, Meditech in the community hospitals, and eClinicalWorks in private ambulatory practices which are part of our ACO.

We share data among these applications via private and public HIE transactions – viewing, pushing, and pulling.

The challenge with emerging ACOs is that professionals are likely to work in a variety of locations, each of which may have different IT systems and each of which serves as a separate steward of the medical record from a CMS point of view.

Our clinicians are asking the interesting question – can I use a single EHR for all patients I see regardless of the location I see them?

Our legal experts are studying this question.

Clint Eastwood’s Empty Chair Health Care Speech

Nov 1, 2018

By DR. WES

Eastwood: “So, would each of you like to introduce yourself to the American Public?”

* silence *

Eastwood: “How many of you are licensed physicians?”

A few raise their hands.

Eastwood: “Really, that’s all? (Mumbles under his breath, “Wow.” He continues: “How many of you are men and how many are women?”

* silence *

Eastwood: “Given there are 50 states in the United States, could you tell us in which state each one of you live?”

* silence * As if no one wants to admit where they live…

Eastwood: ” If one of you gets sick, are there only 14 people who vote or does someone else gets picked?”

* silence *

Eastwood: “How many of you have parents still living over 75?”

A few hands are raised.

Eastwood: “How many of you are less than 35 years of age?”

* silence *

Eastwood: “How many of you have ever told someone they have cancer and then cared for them?”

* silence *

Eastwood: “How many of you received grants of any kind from the US government? Any of you stand to receive benefits from the US government of any kind? Might one of those benefits include health care for you or your family?”

* silence *

Eastwood: “Do any of you carry the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene for breast cancer or does anyone in your family?”

* silence * Some appear confused by the question.

Eastwood: “Would each of you share your religious affiliation with America? Any atheists amongst you?”

* silence *

Eastwood: “Well, it seems we’re not getting too far. I guess we’ll conclude there and ask the American people what they’d like to ask you…”

* Opens microphone to responsible voices… *

An Open Letter To Governor Mary Fallin

Nov 1, 2018

By John Schumann, MD

On November 19, the Governor of Oklahoma announced her intention NOT to participate in either a state electronic health insurance exchange or to accept Federal Medicaid dollars to provide coverage to 150,000 Oklahomans out of the 600,000 that currently have no health insurance.

You can read about the decision in brief, with cogent analysis, here.

Below is the text of a letter I faxed to her office:

Dear Governor Fallin:

I am extremely disappointed with the decision declining Oklahoma’s participation in the expansion of Medicaid under ObamaCare.

As a practicing physician and medical educator, I see the impact of ‘uninsurance’ on low income, chronically ill Oklahomans every day. Options for these folks are few. Since they aren’t moneyed, and struggle to get by in every sense, they aren’t well-represented at the ballot box.

The decision not to participate in a broadening of the safety net is morally, financially, and medically wrong.

How to Practice Medicine in a World We Can Never Truly Understand

Nov 1, 2018

By Kent Bottles, MD

Central to the problem of how best to live in a world that we cannot understand is how to regard:

“The Extended Disorder Family (or Cluster): (i) uncertainty, (ii) variability, (iii) imperfect, incomplete knowledge, (iv) chance, (v) chaos, (vi) volatility, (vii) disorder, (viii) entropy, (ix) time, (x) the unknown, (xi) randomness, (xii) turmoil, (xiii) stressor, (xiv) error, (xv) dispersion of outcomes, (xvi) unknowledge.” (Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile, London: Allen Lane, 2012)

To this impressive list, I would add seventeenth and eighteenth items: failure and death. All of these characteristics scare and frighten most of us, and so we do our best to avoid them.

Despite the popularity of self-help books emphasizing the pursuit of happiness, a vocal minority has advocated embracing all of the above negative items in order to live fully and successfully.

Eric G. Wilson perhaps provides the best overview of this minority report when he observes that

“To desire only happiness in a world undoubtedly tragic is to become inauthentic, to settle for unrealistic abstractions that ignore concrete situations.”

And

“Our passion for felicity hints at an ominous hatred for all that grows and thrives and then dies.” (Eric G. Wilson, Against Happiness, New York: Sarah Crichton Books, 2008)

To be alive and to realize that you are going to die means being insecure and vulnerable. According to Martha Nussbaum one should embrace this uncertainty.

Life-Saving Data That Is Nowhere To Be Found: Hospitals’ C-section Rates

Oct 31, 2018• 10

By DANI BRADLEY MS, MPH

The United States is the only developed nation in the world with a steadily increasing maternal mortality rate — and C-sections are to blame. Nearly 32% of babies are born via C-section in the United States, a rate of double or almost triple what the World Health Organization recommends. While C-sections are an incredibly important life-saving intervention when vaginal delivery is too dangerous, they are not devoid of risks for mom or for baby. Hospitals and doctors alike are aware, as it’s been widely reported that unnecessary C-sections are dangerous — and hospitals and doctors agree that the number one way to reduce this risk is to choose a delivery hospital with low a C-section rate. However, information on hospitals’ C-section rates is incredibly hard to find, which leaves women in the dark as they try to make this important choice.

In an effort to help women make informed decisions about where to deliver their babies, we set out to collect a comprehensive, nationwide database of hospitals’ C-section rates. Knowing that the federal government mandates surveillance and reporting of vital statistics through the National Vital Statistics System, we contacted all 50 states’ (+Washington D.C.) Departments of Public Health (DPH) asking for access to de-identified birth data from all of their hospitals. What we learned might not surprise you — the lack of transparency in the United States healthcare system extends to quality information, and specifically C-section data.
Continue reading…

You Can’t “Elon Musk” Healthcare

Oct 30, 2018

By SOFIA NOORI

On January 26th, Philadelphia discovered that the 22-year-old organizer of its largest COVID-19 vaccination site, Andrei Doroshin, had turned away elderly members of the Philadelphia community from their vaccine appointments. Instead, he pocketed extra vaccine vials to administer to 4 friends and girlfriend. An RN witnessed the event and reported it to authorities.

Local news reporters quickly discovered that this incident was just the tip of the iceberg for Doroshin. A Drexel University graduate student with no experience in healthcare, Doroshin had enlisted his college friends to organize a group that would go on to win one of the biggest vaccination contracts from the city of Philadelphia. He told his friends that “this is a wholly Elon Musk, shoot-for-the-heaven type of thing,” and that “we’re going to be millionaires.” His organization had also amended its privacy policy allowing for patient data to be sold, administered large numbers of vaccines to people ineligible to receive the vaccine yet, and threw Philadelphia’s COVID vaccination program into chaos.

For the people in the back: One can’t simply “Elon Musk” healthcare. We have seen this too many times – a privileged young upstart with little experience believes that s/he can transform healthcare and make millions – or billions – doing so. Examples abound: we only have to look a couple years into the past to remember Elizabeth Holmes, the Stanford dropout who founded Theranos and misrepresented its technology, or to Outcome Health, whose former CEO Rishi Shah defrauded investors by overinflating business metrics. If “move fast and break things” works in other sectors, many reason, why won’t it work in the 4 trillion dollar industry of healthcare?

Healthcare is simply not the kind of business where one can shoot a rocket into the sky and accept the risk that it might explode. Simply put, this is people’s lives we’re dealing with. But a deeper layer involves trust in the medical establishment. U.S. healthcare is already marred by multiple grave issues: a complex bureaucracy, serious health inequities, and astronomical costs that can bankrupt a person in just one hospitalization. The trust that people have in U.S. healthcare has steadily dropped over the years. Further, the politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic and the U.S. government’s bungled response to it has only sowed further distrust, especially among marginalized and minoritized communities.