Lessons In Transformation From The Walter Reed Bethesda Merger
“How is the BRAC going?”
Former President George W. Bush turned and asked as he strode towards the hospital’s main entrance on a warm summer morning in July 2006. He had just completed another of his frequent visits with the wounded troops and their families at Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) in Washington, D.C. and turned to question the hospital’s commanding general and senior staff.
The General began to explain the progress made toward the closure of Walter Reed and the merger with National Naval Medical Center (NNMC) in Bethesda directed by the 2005 BRAC commission (Base Realignment And Closure).
Presid...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - July 13, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Charles Callahan Tags: Costs and Spending Featured Health Professionals Hospitals Organization and Delivery Army Bethesda BRAC Charles Callahan Department of Defense George W. Bush National Naval Medical Center Navy Walter Reed Army Medical Center Source Type: blogs
How physician families can spend more time together
As a child and family therapist and as a parent, I often see the efforts that families make to try to maintain a sense of family connection in an era of technology, increased demands and very busy schedules. Most families express a desire for more quality time together and an increased sense of connection amongst family members. The medical families that I encounter describe similar goals but often note the added frustration of trying to achieve this within unpredictable medical schedules and the medical parent’s frequent time away from the family. Fortunately, a high level of family connectedness can be achieved in a me...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - July 12, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Jordyn Paradis Hagar, LCSW-C Tags: Physician Primary care Source Type: blogs
What the Atlanta HIV Data Tells Us About Public Health in America
This article was initially published in Georgia Health News.
(Source: The Health Care Blog)
Source: The Health Care Blog - July 10, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: THCB AIDSVu Atlanta CDC HIV Maithri Vangala Source Type: blogs
How Community-Based Organizations Can Support Value-Driven Health Care
As our health care system transforms more quickly than ever from paying for volume to paying for value, providers have strong incentives to ensure that their patients’ care plans are reinforced and supported outside the clinical setting in people’s homes and communities.
This is particularly important for older adults with multiple chronic conditions, who comprise 66 percent of Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries and account for 93 percent of total Medicare expenditures. In addition, it is well known that individuals with both chronic conditions and functional limitations requiring long-term services and supports ar...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - July 10, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Anand Parekh and Robert Schreiber Tags: Costs and Spending Featured Insurance and Coverage Long-term Services and Supports Medicare Organization and Delivery Population Health Quality Aging Anand Parekh Area Agencies on Aging chronic conditions CMS community-based orga Source Type: blogs
Curtailing Food Insecurity With Clinical-Community Collaboration
The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines food insecurity as the “limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways.” Nearly 16 million children in the U.S., or more than one in five, are food insecure.
At approximately 22 percent, the prevalence of childhood food insecurity is virtually identical to that of childhood obesity, the most common, and commonly-discussed, nutrition-related disease. Much like obesity, food insecurity can have significant, lasting impacts on child health and well-being that may go...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - July 9, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Andrew Beck, Adrienne Henize, Robert Kahn, Kurt Reiber and Melissa Klein Tags: Equity and Disparities Health Policy Lab Health Professionals Organization and Delivery Population Health Public Health CCHMC childhood hunger Children food insecurity Freestore Foodbank KIND pediatrics SNAP WIC Source Type: blogs
Health Affairs Event Reminder: Medicaid’s Evolving Delivery Systems
As Medicaid marks its 50th year in existence, and enrollment surpasses 70 million people, the July 2015 issue of Health Affairs includes a collection of papers focused on how the program is shaped by and has reshaped care delivery.
You are invited to join us on Wednesday, July 8, 2015, at a forum featuring authors from the new issue at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Panels will cover primary care, complex populations, payment, and coverage.
WHEN:
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
9:00 a.m. – Noon
WHERE:
National Press Club
529 14th Street NW
Washington, DC, 13th Floor
Register Now!
Follow live tweets from the brief...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - July 6, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Lucy Larner Tags: Elsewhere@ Health Affairs Medicaid and CHIP Payment Policy Coverage Health Affairs Briefing Health Affairs Event Primary Care Source Type: blogs
Sticking It To The Man
Like two ships passing in the night, we sidled up to each other at the nursing station on the hospital telemetry ward. I had already been home, ate with the kids, and returned, while he hadn't left floors all day. We typed away at our computer stations, and chatted from time to time. After we exchanged common pleasantries, we jumped into local politics. We were hungry for news. Battle worn and weary, we were searching for signs the tide was starting to turn. The gossip was mostly pessimistic, but I saw a glimmer in his eye as he abandoned his screen and turned to face me.I bet you haven't hear...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - July 3, 2015 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
Health Affairs Briefing: Medicaid’s Evolving Delivery Systems
As Medicaid marks its 50th year in existence, and enrollment surpasses 70 million people, the July 2015 issue of Health Affairs includes a collection of papers focused on how the program is shaped by and has reshaped care delivery.
You are invited to join us on Wednesday, July 8, 2015, at a forum featuring authors from the new issue at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Panels will cover primary care, complex populations, payment, and coverage.
WHEN:
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
9:00 a.m. – Noon
WHERE:
National Press Club
529 14th Street NW
Washington, DC, 13th Floor
Register Now!
Follow live tweets from the brief...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - June 26, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Tracy Gnadinger Tags: Elsewhere@ Health Affairs Insurance and Coverage Medicaid and CHIP California HealthCare Foundation Health Affairs Briefing Source Type: blogs
It Is Time To Make Oral Health An Integral Part Of Primary Care
While health care experts and health philanthropy are becoming increasingly aware that oral health is essential for healthy development and healthy aging, nationwide, there remains an unacceptably high burden of oral disease. Dental caries is the most common chronic disease of childhood. In other words, more kids suffer from a completely preventable disease of the mouth than any other chronic condition.
Adults aren’t faring much better: One quarter of adults has untreated dental caries, and a fifth of adults have destructive periodontal disease, which can result in pain, tooth loss, and systemic infection. (See Healthy P...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - June 25, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Brenda Sharpe, Michael Monopoli and Laura Smith Tags: Costs and Spending GrantWatch Health Professionals Organization and Delivery Access Children Chronic Care Health Care Delivery Health Philanthropy Health Promotion and Disease PreventionGW Oral Health Physicians Primary Care Work Source Type: blogs
Nature And Nurture: What’s Behind the Variation In Recent Medical Home Evaluations?
Recent evaluations of two regional medical home pilots (i.e., efforts to improve the capabilities and performance of primary care practices) within the Pennsylvania Chronic Care Initiative (PACCI) have produced differing results.
In the southeast region of the state, the intervention was associated with improvements in diabetes care, but no changes in other measures of quality, utilization, or costs relative to comparison practices. By contrast, the northeast region’s intervention was associated with favorable changes, relative to comparison practices, in a wider array of quality measures as well as reductions in rates o...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - June 19, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Mark Friedberg, Connie Sixta and Michael Bailit Tags: Featured Health Professionals Hospitals Long-term Services and Supports Organization and Delivery Population Health Quality AHRQ Chronic Care Commonwealth Fund EHRs medical homes NCQA Patient-Centered Medical Home Pennsylvania Source Type: blogs
Nature and Nurture: What's Behind the Variation in Recent Medical Home Evaluations?
As demonstrated in Pennsylvania, conveners of medical home pilots are drawing from their early experiences to refine their intervention designs and improve their effectiveness. Such a learning process is likely to be a critical part of successfully implementing any new model of payment and care delivery. (Source: The RAND Blog)
Source: The RAND Blog - June 19, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: RAND Corporation Source Type: blogs
IOM’s Vital Signs Report Lays Out Steep But Doable Climb For Safety-Net Organizations
The new Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, Vital Signs, identifies an ambitious set of 15 core measures of health system performance and population health outcomes designed to decrease measurement burden and increase transparency and comparability.
The measures include those focused on life expectancy, well-being, overweight and obesity, addictive behavior, unintended pregnancy, healthy communities, preventive services, care access, patient safety, evidence-based care, care match with patient goals, personal spending burden, population spending burden, individual engagement, and community engagement.
The report makes the ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - June 18, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Grace Wang, Amy Boutwell, Weslie Kary and Lori Downing Tags: GrantWatch Organization and Delivery Population Health Public Health Quality Institute of Medicine IOM Safety Net triple aim Vital Signs Source Type: blogs
Fifty Years In, Medicare Has Transformed Health Care. What’s In Store For The Next Fifty?
This article is part of a series of blog posts by leaders in health and health care participating from June 25-28th in Spotlight Health, the opening segment of the Aspen Ideas Festival. This year’s theme is Smart Solutions to the World’s Toughest Challenges. Stayed tuned for more.
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the enactment of Medicare. Before President Johnson signed the program into law on July 30, 1965, fewer than half of Americans over the age of 65 had health insurance. In part, that was because so many had pre-existing conditions that precluded them from purchasing it. But even if they could, senior...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - June 17, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Thomas Daschle Tags: Featured Insurance and Coverage Long-term Services and Supports Medicare Organization and Delivery Payment Policy Population Health Quality CMS electronic health records Health Policy healthcare Projections Technology Value Source Type: blogs
The Payment Reform Landscape: Public-Private Alignment Is Critical
In the past few years, a growing number of state health agencies have formed partnerships with large, private employers and/or commercial health plans to realign efforts and resources and change how we pay for health care. The ultimate goal of these partnerships is to shift from volume-based health care payment models to value-based models to improve the quality and cost of care.
Public-private alignment is important for a number of reasons. Alignment allows both state and commercial payers to send clear messages to providers about the expectations they have in moving to a more value-based health care payment and delivery ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - June 12, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Suzanne Delbanco Tags: Featured Payment Policy Arkansas employers public-private partnership South Carolina State Innovation Model Tennessee Walmart Source Type: blogs
Strengthening Primary Care Amid the Hype
JAMA Internal Medicine has published a three-year study of a patient-centered medical home intervention in northeast Pennsylvania, concluding that it improved quality and reduced the use of some expensive medical services such as hospitalizations and emergency department and specialist visits. As the patient-centered medical home is refined and reevaluated, successes are beginning to emerge.
(Source: The Commonwealth Fund: Blog)
Source: The Commonwealth Fund: Blog - June 1, 2015 Category: Global & Universal Source Type: blogs
