This one is important. Maggie writes in to ask:
When I had Premera Blue Cross (Washington state), I could opt-out of receiving paper EOBs. I received a email when an EOB was available and I viewed it online. Now I have MA BC/BS, and I do not have that option, and I can’t get anyone to tell me why? The EOB is available online. I dislike paper EOBs – lots of wasted space, and I have to put them thru the shredder before I can recycle them …
This is the fourth in a never ending series of screeds that attempts to crack open words that are misused, misguided misnomers in the healthcare arena.
“Provider” is a substantial, material word that will require a medical sledgehammer to crack open…and what we find inside this 8-letter facade will turn your stomach and give a new sense of appreciation for it’s history.
First, before the healthcare system adopted and mangled this well-meaning word, it was not a healthcare word. It had real meaning rooted in family life; the head of a household provided for their family. It was rooted in substance and survival. There was an aura of pride and dedication in being that family
Sadly, healthcare has an clumsy tendency to mangle and maim its lexicon….and has rendered provider a hollow noun, a shell of its former self.
As physicians and clinicians we provide a service to people who are sick, worried or dying….as we have since the days of shamans, medical men and healers. So, why and how did the word provider rise so rapidly? If you look at any historical literature or descriptions of healthcare, there are sparse references to medical professionals as providers.
There’s a mantra in healthcare right now to “drive patient engagement.” The idea is that informed and engaged patients play a crucial role in improving the quality of care our health system delivers. With the right information, these healthcare consumers will be more active participants in their care, select providers based on quality and value metrics, demand appropriate, high-quality, high-value services and choose treatment options wisely after a thorough process of shared decision-making.
This drive for patient engagement often fails to recognize one important truth: Our healthcare system inadvertently, yet potently, discourages engagement. It ignores the fact that the patient is already the most engaged person in healthcare. The patient bears the disease, the pain, the scar – and, ultimately, the bill. In our search for greater engagement, we must realize what the comic strip Pogo said years ago – “we have met the enemy, and he is us.”
Middle Age is where your broad mind and your narrow waist begin to change places.” – John Crossman
I never really took a regular medication for a condition before I was in my forties. My mother did not believe in pills. She was one part Christian Scientist and two parts Inuit Darwinist subscribing to the notion that sick children, like old people, should be just set outside the igloo at night and if they were still alive in the morning, they were allowed to rejoin the family. Illness and chronic conditions were things that plagued other people, like old man Norton who lived across the street. At 85, he suffered from heart failure and diabetes and it seemed like every other week they were lopping off one of his appendages as a sort of burnt offering to his disease. It was a preview of a movie I hoped to never see.
As a kid, you averted your eyes from the vagaries of aging, not so much out of denial but out of some misguided sense that old age only happened to other people. Deep down, you knew it would be waiting for you, like that German Shepherd that sometimes chased you on your bike. On sunny afternoons, I occasionally glimpsed Mr. Norton and he would wave to me from his wheel chair – all two arms, one foot and a half leg. It freaked me out and I made a pact that I would never succumb to old age.
The competition to get into medical school is fierce. The Association of American Medical Colleges just announced that this year, nearly 50,000 students applied for just over 20,000 positions at the nation’s 141 MD-granting schools – a record. But medical schools do not have a monopoly on selectivity. The average student applies to approximately 15 schools, and many are accepted by more than one. Students attempting to sort out where to apply and which admission offer to accept face a big challenge, and they often look for guidance to medical school rankings.
Among the organizations that rank medical schools, perhaps the best-known is US News and World Report (USNWR). It ranks the nation’s most prestigious schools using the assessments of deans and chairs (20%), assessments by residency program directors (20%), research activity (grant dollars received, 30%), student selectivity (difficulty of gaining admission, 20%), and faculty resources (10%). Based on these methods, the top three schools are Harvard, Stanford, and Johns Hopkins.
Rankings seem important, but do they tell applicants what they really need to know? I recently sat down with a group of a dozen fourth-year medical students who represent a broad range of undergraduate backgrounds and medical specialty interests. I posed this question: How important are medical school rankings, and are there any other factors you wish you had paid more attention to when you chose which school to attend?
Have You Ever Attended a Digital Health Event Specially Designed to Meet YOUR Needs? Now You Can
On December 12, attend an intimate New York City event designed to focus on your unique strategic, business, relationship and knowledge needs in digital health.
The event is organized around a unique system that health executives and medical professionals from around the world are using to boost their knowledge, skills and confidence in digital health.
Health primarily happens outside the doctor’s office—playing out in the arenas where we live, learn, work and play. In fact, a minority of our overall health is the result of the health care we receive. If we’re to have an accurate picture of health, we need more than what is currently captured in the electronic health record.
That’s why the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) asked the distinguished JASON group to bring its considerable analytical power to bear on this problem: how to create a health information system that focuses on the health of individuals, not just the care they receive. JASON is an independent group of scientists and academics that has been advising the Federal government on matters of science and technology for over 50 years.
Why is it important to pursue this ambitious goal? There has been an explosion of data that could help with all kinds of decisions about health. Right now, though, we do not have the capability to capture and share that data with those who make decisions that impact health—including individuals, health care providers and communities.
The new report, called Data for Individual Health, builds upon the 2013 JASON report, A Robust Health Data Infrastructure. It lays out recommendations for an infrastructure that could not only achieve interoperability among electronic health records (EHRs), but could also integrate data from all walks of life—including data from personal health devices, patient collaborative networks, social media, environmental and demographic data and genomic and other “omics” data.
CMS Gives Hospitals One Month Attestation Reprieve
CMS extends the deadline for eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals to attest for MU from November 30 to December 31, giving hospitals more time to submit MU data for the 2014 program year in order to receive payments under EHR incentive programs. CMS also pushed back the deadline for hospitals to electronically submit clinical quality measures to December 31.
VA Issues RFP for New Scheduling System
The VA issues an RFP to replace its 30 year-old appointment scheduling system with a commercially available solution to integrate with its existing VistA platform. The proposal deadline is January 9 and potential bidders will not be required to have prior experience working with the agency.
CareTech Solutions Negotiating Sale to HTC Global Services
HIT service provider CareTech Solutions files an “intent to sell” to HTC Global Services, a provider of IT services for multiple industries.Continue reading…
Aardvark in North Carolina writes:
On the Healthcare.gov web site I was filling the application – an arduous process that – even when pre-filled from last year, takes 30 – 45 minutes. At the review and sign, I found ONE date that was wrong: the day and month were inadvertently transposed. from 09/08 to 08/09. Since the information will be checked against tax records I thought it best to correct this prior to signing.I clicked on the “edit” button which brought a box “Do you really want to edit your application”, Yes! That’s why I clicked the button – BOOM! back to “GO”,
So it took almost 45 minutes to go through again, (I do work by the way, so this time consuming process is not OK), but I did it. THEN at review I found I had been so frustrated OR the process accepted the key stroke wrong so I now had 09/03 instead of 09/08.
NOT wanting to go back to the very beginning AGAIN, I called the help desk, thinking this would save time. The agent was supportive and pleasant, but basically REFILLED the ENTIRE form again!!!!!!!
You got me. I still won’t cop to eating at a Cheesecake Factory, but I am all about the Apple Store. In fact, I’m a teensy bit over the top about it. Seriously, I beg of you—could we, please, have just a little genius bar with our health care?
I’m no doubt somewhat of a freak (I got up at 2:55 a.m. ET on September 19th to, you know, pre-order the iPhone 6). A month or so later, I was more than ready to upgrade my aging iPad2, so obviously at the first opportunity I ordered a new iPad Air 2 online from the Apple website. I requested pick-up at my local Apple Store—because it’s convenient—and, well, I just love going there. A few minutes after I made my online purchase, I received an email informing me that the store staff was ready for me. My new baby was waiting! Serious goose bumps.
I made my way to the mall. It was pretty crowded, as usual. I walked right past The Cheesecake Factory, into the mall, turned left and into the gleaming Apple Store—smiling, not quite skipping, all along. Several staff members greeted me almost the minute I arrived. I explained why I was there. When she understood my reason for coming to the store, the first staff person handed me off to another. I showed him the email on my iPhone. We traded some numbers. He entered those on his iPhone and went back to get my waiting . . . Air 2!!
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