July 13, 2010
3:57 pm
An organization of health industry chief executives today applauded federal regulators for being responsive to the concerns of hospitals and physicians in constructing the final “meaningful use” regulations that will determine the allocation of health information technology (HIT) incentive funds. But, said the president of the Healthcare Leadership Council (HLC), the newly-released rules leave some critical issues still unaddressed.
HLC president Mary R. Grealy said that, even though her organization was still analyzing the regulations, “it’s clear that federal regulators paid close attention to the more than 2,000 comments they received on the proposed rule, and that they have been responsive to concerns that the initial regulations placed the “meaningful use” bar so unrealistically high that the health technology revolution would have been slowed instead of accelerated.”
The “meaningful use” regulations establish standards that health providers must meet in order to qualify for a share of the more than $27 billion authorized by Congress in last year’s economic stimulus legislation.
The Healthcare Leadership Council is a coalition of chief executives from all sectors of American healthcare.
Ms. Grealy said, “An example of this responsiveness is seen in the fact that the rules no longer require that, in the initial stage of implementation, all of a health provider’s administrative transactions must be included in an electronic health record. That simply wasn’t realistic. Those requirements are now in Phase 2 of implementation, which is achievable.”
She said, though, that legitimate concerns remain. For example, the regulations should consider each campus of a multi-campus hospital system as a separate entity in qualifying for HIT incentive payments. And, she said, health providers who have built and succeeded with their own information technology systems should be grandfathered into the universe of successful “meaningful use” qualifiers, but that doesn’t appear to be the case based on an initial review of the rules released today.
Nonetheless, Ms. Grealy said, “we’re seeing important progress with these regulations. Clearly, the administration saw there was a gap between the theoretical standards they initially wanted to apply and the real-world challenges that physicians and hospitals face in achieving HIT advancement. We all want the benefits that come from information technology – enhanced patient safety, more cost-efficient operations, greater use of evidence-based medicine – but to make strides forward, regulators and providers need to be moving at a coordinated pace.”
July 08, 2010
10:48 am
According to statistics released yesterday by the American Cancer Society, cancer death rates have continued what is now an almost two decade decline.
The Society tells us that, since 1991, cancer mortality rates among men have dropped 21 percent, while women’s rates have declined 12 percent since 1992.
This success can be attributed to a number of factors. Healthier lifestyles and a reduction in the number of people who smoke have certainly contributed. But so has the ability to detect the signs of disease earlier before it has had a chance to progress. And improvements in treatment have meant that a cancer diagnosis is, more often than in the past, not a death sentence.
The promise of health reform is that more people will have health coverage and, thus, have access to early diagnosis and treatment. The reality is that we need to make sure that coverage does indeed equal increased health access, and that we strengthen support for healthcare innovation so that the future will see more development of treatments and technologies that will eventually defeat this disease for good.
June 25, 2010
10:39 am
There is an interview well worth reading on Kaiser Health News today. Kate Lorig is the director of the Patient Education Research Center at Stanford University and is the creator of an initiative called the Chronic Disease Self-Management Program.
With eight out of every 10 over-65 adults having at least one chronic disease, and with chronic illnesses accounting for over 70 percent of our nation’s $2 trillion annual healthcare bill, Dr. Lorig’s program is a valuable one. The workshops and classes she initiated help chronic disease sufferers better communicate about their conditions engage in healthier lifestyles and do a more effective job handling their medication regimens.
The Kaiser interview caught my attention because Dr. Lorig makes an important point about the flaws in our healthcare system when it comes to treating many patients with chronic diseases. She said:
“Right now, it addresses diseases or even parts of diseases or small sub-parts of the body. It does not address the whole, complex person with multiple chronic diseases. So, right now, what happens, if you’re lucky, you go to a primary care doc who kind of does the day-to-day stuff and then you see four or five specialists each of which do their little specialty part — none of whom really talk to each other except maybe to look at your laboratory tests on an electronic medical record if you’re really lucky. It is totally uncoordinated. It’s chaotic. It serves pieces of people, not whole people.”
To be fair, there are a number of forward-thinking healthcare systems in the United States that have adopted coordinated care models and do an outstanding job bringing primary care physicians and specialists together to treat patients with a holistic approach. But, I can also attest personally, from overseeing my own father’s medical care, that there are too many cases where physicians aren’t communicating and don’t see the whole picture of a patient’s care when they recommend a new treatment or medication.
With over 50 percent of our senior population having multiple chronic diseases, it is clearly essential that coordinated care be the rule rather than the exception. And, as we move forward with the implementation of health reform, this has to be one of the most important priorities.
February 05, 2010
9:19 am
Ron Williams, the chief executive officer of Aetna and a member of the Healthcare Leadership Council executive committee, is a co-chair of the prestigious Davos Economic Summit. While in Davos, Mr. Williams took the time to sit down with Fox Business News and discuss the current state of health reform and what’s missing from the current legislation that is stalled on Capitol Hill.
He makes important points about the need to emphasize care coordination between physicians and hospitals, the noticeable absence of medical liability reform which leads to rising defensive medicine costs, and the pressing need to make the financially challenged Medicare program more cost effective.
To watch the full interview go here.
January 12, 2010
5:20 pm
We hear it all the time. It’s a nonstop drumbeat. Healthcare in the United States is too expensive and too low in quality compared to other countries. Critics are constantly citing the World Health Organization which, in its most recent rankings, said the U.S. ranks 37th in overall healthcare performance.
In reality, though, what kind of healthcare do Americans receive? And would we really trade what we have for what is offered to citizens in other nations.
Dr. Mark Constantian, a reconstructive surgeon in New Hampshire, investigated that question and shared his conclusions in the Wall Street Journal last week. Dr. Constantian found that, when it comes to the factors that patients and healthcare consumers care about the most, healthcare in this country stacks up pretty well. Read more
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