The Health Care Blog – Page 587 – Everything you always wanted to know about the Health Care system. But were afraid to ask.

Above the Fold

The Empowered Patient

Dec 21, 2012• 52

By MAGGIE MAHAR

When you or a loved one enters a hospital, it is easy to feel powerless. The hospital has its own protocols and procedures. It is a “system” and now you find yourself part of that system.

The people around you want to help, but they are busy—extraordinarily busy. Nurses are multi-tasking. Residents are doing their best to learn on the job. Doctors are trying to supervise residents, care for patients, follow up on lab results, enter notes in patients’ medical records and consult with a dozen other doctors.

Whether you are the patient or a patient advocate trying to help a loved one through the process, you are likely to feel intimated—and scared.

Hospitals can be dangerous places, in part because doctors and nurses are fallible human beings, but largely because the “systems” in our hospitals just aren’t very efficient. In the vast majority of this nation’s hospitals, a hectic workplace undermines the productivity of nurses and doctors who dearly want to provide coordinated patient-centered care.

At this point, many hospitals understand that they must streamline and redesign how care is delivered and how information is shared so that doctors and nurses can work together as teams. But this will take time. In the meantime, patients and their advocates can help improve patient safety.

Can Big Data Save My Dad From Cancer?

Dec 21, 2012• 6

By Colin Hill

My father, Foster Hill, has stage III prostate cancer.

At 69 years old, he is a quiet man who was often told in his younger days that he resembled Muhammad Ali. He immigrated in his twenties to Canada from the small Caribbean nation of Antigua to look for opportunities beyond sugar cane and the tourism trade.

My father became a chemical technician for well-known oil refineries, while staying true to his real passion in life – playing organ music. Every Sunday, as he has since I can first remember, he plays the largest church organ in Sarnia, near Lake Huron, where he lives with my mother.

Like many men of his generation, he has always been wary for the medical system. For decades he avoided the test, known as PSA, that screens for prostate cancer. In September of this year, driven by pain he could no longer ignore, he went to his doctor who discovered a rock-hard prostate gland. The diagnosis, stage III prostate cancer, means that the cancer has already begun to spread, but is still potentially treatable.

Now retired, his long hours practicing the organ are punctuated with doctor visits to receive Lupron hormone therapy. The good news? The therapy is working. For now.

We don’t know what lies ahead. The first round of Lupron therapy is often effective, but a significant number of patients later develop a resistance to the drug.

The battle against my father’s cancer has only just begun.

This is where Big Data in healthcare can become a true lifesaver. Typically, in medicine, we know only what works for the majority of patients, not what will work for an individual. However, with enough data from enough people – we are talking hundreds of thousands, and sometimes, even millions of patients – we can apply analytics to build predictive models to discover which interventions will work. For the last twelve years, it has been my job to make that happen.

As CEO and founder of GNS Healthcare, I oversee a team of mathematicians, biologists, and data scientists as they crunch and decode healthcare data to unlock the mysteries of what treatment will work for specific patients.

My father’s cancer has given these efforts a new urgency and has raised a new question: Can I use Big Data to save my father’s life?

The Pain Index

Dec 21, 2012• 2

By PAUL LEVY

A recent report by the New York Times contained an excellent graphic showing the current percentage of uninsured people in each state. The range is from a high of 24.6% in Texas to a low of 4.4% in Massachusetts.I have combined this rate with the most recently reported CDC rate of obesity in each state to create what I call The Pain Index. It is a simple sum of the two numbers.

The theory behind the total is that obesity is a rough guide for the level of unhealthiness in the population. My hypothesis is that, when insurance is made available to people, they will use it, roughly in proportion to the degree they are unhealthy.

Yes, I know this is a crude metric, but I think it will be a relatively good predictor of the rate of increase in health care costs in each state over the coming years. This will show up in the insurance premium rates offered in the health care exchanges and will also affect the need for state appropriations to pay for newly eligible Medicaid subscribers.

States with a Pain Index in the top decile are: Texas, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Others with scores over 45 are Nevada, Florida, New Mexico, Georgia, Alaska, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Kentucky, Alabama, and West Virginia.

My advice to policy-makers: Get ready! My advice to health care CEOs: This would be a really good time to focus on quality, safety, and front-line driven process improvement as the most effective way to reduce your costs and improve efficiency.

A Well-Armed and Regulated Citizenry, Led by Heavily-Armed Teachers in Body Armor …

Dec 20, 2012• 31

By PETER UBEL, MD

Gun rights advocates are correct: a well armed principal might have reduced the death toll from the tragic elementary school shootings in Connecticut last week.

Gun carrying citizens might also have been able to take down the shooters in Aurora and Virginia Tech. To most people, after all, guns are about self-defense, not about committing crimes. As the old saying goes: “There has never been a mass shooting at a gun show.”

On the other hand, gun control advocates are correct to point out that mentally disturbed people like Adam Lanza would not be able to commit massacres if they were prevented from getting their hands on high-powered, semiautomatic weapons. They are also correct to point out that Americans have staggeringly easy access to weapons that far exceed what any sportsmanlike hunter would use during deer season.

In other words, figuring out what to do in the wake of the Connecticut massacre means recognizing the truth in both of these views. It means considering the possibility that the answer to reducing gun violence is a matter of both having more guns and less.

To understand what I mean by “both more and less,” I offer two analogies: a straightforward one about airport security, and a more unexpected one about breast cancer screening.

The Battle for the Souls of American Doctors

Dec 20, 2012• 19

By Kent Bottles, MD

We physicians like to think that we are really different from other workers.

We physicians, perhaps thinking back to that medical school application essay we all wrote, really believe that we went into this career to simply help others. We physicians truly believe that we always put our patients first.Because we sincerely believe all of the above, we are shocked when someone like Uwe Reinhardt points out that collectively we act just like any other worker in the economy.

The classic 1986 letters between the Princeton professor Reinhardt and former New England Journal of Medicine editor Arnold Relman highlight the tension between how we think of ourselves and how we act.

Relman thinks physicians are special and he asks Reinhardt the following question:

“Do you really see no difference between physicians and hospitals on the one hand, and ‘purveyors of other goods and services,’ on the other?”

Reinhardt is ready with a long answer that should be read in its entirety. The short answer is that doctors act like any other human beings. A portion of his answer includes the following:

“Surely you will agree that it has been one of American medicine’s more hallowed tenets that piece-rate compensation is the sine qua non of high quality medical care. Think about this tenet, We have here a profession that openly professes that its members are unlikely to do their best unless they are rewarded in cold cash for every little ministration rendered their patients. If an economist made that assertion, one might write it off as one more of that profession’s kooky beliefs. But physicians are saying it.”

Questions and Answers

Dec 20, 2012• 6

By Rob Lamberts, MD

Things have been crazy. It’s much, much more difficult to build a new practice than I expected. I opened up sign-up for my patients, getting less of a response than expected. This, along with some questions from prospective patients has made it clear that there is still confusion on the part of potential patients. So here is a Q and A I sent as a newsletter (and will use when marketing the practice).

About My New Practice

Q. Why did I do this?

A. I get to be a doctor again (perhaps for the first time). I got tired of giving patients care that wasn’t as good as it could be. I got tired of working for a system that pays more for bad care than for good. I got tired of forcing patients to come in for care I could’ve given over the phone. I got tired of giving time that should be for my patients to following arduous regulations. I got tired of medical records not meant for actual patient care, but instead for compliance with ridiculous government rules. Making this change gives me the one thing our system doesn’t want to pay for: time devoted for the good of my patients.

Q. How can I afford to do this?

A. I have greatly decreased my overhead by not accepting insurance and keeping my charges simple. My goal is to have 1000 patients paying the monthly fee, which will limit the number of staff I need to hire.

Q. When will it open?

A. My office will open in January, 2013, but the exact date is still not set. I had initially hoped to be already seeing patients, but things always are harder than they seem.

Q. What makes this better for patients?

A. The main advantage is that I am finally able to give them the care they deserve: care that is not hurried, not distracted by the ridiculous complexity of the health care system, and not driven by the need to see people in person to give care. This means:

I don’t ever have to “force” people to come to the office to answer questions. This means that I will let people stay at home (or work) for most of the care for which I would have required an office visit in the past.
I will be able to give time people deserve to really handle their problems
I won’t have to stay busy to pay the bills, so I can take care of problems when they happen (or when they are still small), rather than having to make people wait to get answers
Patients won’t get the run-around. They will get answers.
I won’t wait for patients to contact me to give them care. I will regularly review their records to make sure care is up to date.
I will help my patients get good care from the rest of the system. Avoiding hospitalizations, emergency room visits, unnecessary tests, and unnecessary drugs takes time; I will have the time to do this for my patients. This should more than make up for my monthly fee.

Building Smarter Hospitals: The Widely Misunderstood Relationship Between Discharging Patients Too Early and the Likelihood of a 30 Day Readmission

Dec 19, 2012• 4

By Jaan Sidorov, MD

When persons are admitted to a hospital, insurers’ payment rates are based on the diagnosis, not the number of days in the hospital (known as a “length of stay”). As a result, once the admission is triggered, the hospital has important economic incentive to discharge the patient as quickly as possible. My physician colleagues used to refer to this as “treat, then street.”

Unfortunately, discharging patients too soon can result in readmissions. That’s why I have agreed with others that diagnosis-based payment systems and a policy of “no pay” for readmissions were working at cross purposes. Unified bundled payment approaches like this seem to be a good start.

But that’s all theoretical. What’s the science have to say?

Peter Kaboli and colleagues looked at the push-pull relationship between diagnosis-based payment incentives and the likelihood of readmissions in a scientific paper just published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The authors used the U.S. Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital’s “Patient Treatment Files” to examine length of stay versus readmissions in 129 VA hospitals. The sample consisted of over 4 million admissions and readmissions (defined as within 30 days and not involving another institution) from 1997 to 2010. The mean age started out at 63.8 years and increased to 65.5 years, while the proportion of persons aged 85 years or older increased from 2.5% to 8.8%. Over the years, admissions also grew more complicated with a higher rate of co-morbid conditions, such as diseases of the kidney (from 5% to 16%).

As length of stay went down, readmissions should have gone up, right?

Can We Stop Dementia Before It Starts?

Dec 19, 2012• 5

By E. Loren Buhle

Few diseases invoke more fear in patients and families than dementia (e.g., Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), progressive multiple sclerosis, Pick’s Disease). Surveys have shown the fear of dementia—especially AD—far outweighs concerns of a diagnosis of cancer, stroke, or cardiovascular disease.

Perhaps this fear arises from two concerns: (1) dementia robs us of what makes us human—memory, reasoning, emotions, language—and (2) in most cases there are no effective treatments to cure or palliate the disease. While diagnostics for certain forms of dementia are progressing—allowing us to sort out the reversible causes of dementia, such as hydrocephalus, electrolyte or blood sugar imbalances, brain tumors, and brain injuries—once the diagnosis of AD or Pick’s disease is made, there is little we can do aside from manage the comfort and safety of the patient and family.

What if we could prevent or delay dementia?

In the mid-1960s, the incidence of heart attacks and stroke were increasing at an alarming rate. Great strides were made in treating existing cardiovascular disease, followed by programs at preventing the disease in the first place. These prevention methods included exercise, diet, and the tracking of key incidence indicators such as blood pressure, body mass index, and cholesterol levels to maintain a quantifiable physical health.

Could we use similar prevention methods for preventing or delaying dementia?

Brainstorming About the Future of Clinical Documentation

Dec 18, 2012• 11

By John Halamka, MD

In 2013, I’m focused on five major work streams:

· Meaningful Use Stage 2, including Electronic Medication Administration Records
· ICD10, including clinical documentation improvement and computer assisted coding
· Replacement of all Laboratory Information Systems
· Compliance/Regulatory priorities, including security program maturity
·Supporting the IT needs of our evolving Accountable Care Organization including analytics for care management

I’ve written about some of these themes in previous posts and each has their uncharted territory.

One component that crosses several of my goals is how electronic documentation should support structured data capture for ICD10 and ACO quality metrics.

How are most inpatient progress notes documented in hospitals today? The intern writes a note that is often copied by the resident which is often copied by the attending which informs the consultants who may not agree with content. The chart is a largely unreadable and sometimes questionably useful document created via individual contributions and not by the consensus of the care team. The content is sometimes typed, sometimes dictated, sometimes templated, and sometimes cut/pasted. There must be a better way.

Now Is Not the Time to Talk About Gun Control

Dec 17, 2012• 66

By David Katz, MD

Yesterday was.

There are two reasons not to talk about gun control in the immediate aftermath of the Newtown atrocity, and opposition by the NRA and its adherents is neither of them.

The first is that addressing gun control right after innocents are shot might in some way seem exploitative. The second is that no imaginable degree of stringent gun control could fully exclude the possibility of an unhinged adult shooting a kindergartener.

But both of these objections are as porous as the sands of our shores battered by Hurricane Sandy. And a consideration of those shores readily reveals why.

With regard to exploitation, there was no thought of it as post-Sandy ruminations turned to how we might best prevent or at least mitigate the next such catastrophe. It was not exploitative to look around the world at strategies used to interrupt storm surges, divert floodwaters, or defend infrastructure. Those reflections continue.

Similarly, it’s not exploitative when my clinical colleagues and I speak to our patients in the aftermath of a heart attack or stroke about what it will take to prevent another one. In fact, these exchanges have a well-established designation in preventive medicine: the teachable moment.

It is opportunistic, but in a positive way: There is an opportunity to do what needs to be done. Admittedly, it’s better to talk about preventing heart disease, or the drowning of Staten Island, or of New Orleans, or the shooting of children, before ever these things happen. But the trouble tends to be: Nobody is listening then.

We are constitutionally better at crisis response than crisis prevention.

We’ll get back to the Constitution shortly.