You may have noticed, uncharacteristically for me, that I haven’t posted a blog in week. I thought it would be better to allow the readers to post their own reflections, and you did — with comments ranging for unabashed pride to skepticism to disdain for the law and the American College of Physician’s (ACP’s) role in bringing in about.
I respect the principled arguments made by those who believe that the legislation gives the government too much control or those who fear that it will add to the deficit and public debt, even though the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says otherwise. But there is one claim made by some of the critics that sticks in my craw, which is that the legislation will result in “massive cuts” to Medicare. Here are the facts. Read more »
President Obama likes to shake things up. He has named Dr. Donald Berwick to head the Medicare and Medicaid Agency known as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). This is a huge government agency with a budget of over $800 BILLION a year. That is more than most countries in the world have. Dr. Berwick would be a major force in implementing the new health laws and changing Medicare to be more efficient and cost effective.
The average person probably doesn’t know who Dr. Don Berwick is, but he is a big name in the healthcare industry. A pediatrician by training, he is the president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and is a national leader on quality and patient safety. By telling stories that people can relate to, he is a transformational leader for reducing hospital errors and reducing variability in care. Read more »
An Australian company called Simavita is releasing an incontinence detection device to be used in nursing homes across New South Wales. The SIMsystem uses a strip that detects liquid and a cellular device to send a note to a nursing station or a care provider.
From the product page:
The SIM™box, when fitted into the individual resident’s stretchpants (SIM™pants), transmits sensor readings from the SIM™strip in the SIMpad® over a wireless network to the SIM™server. The SIMsystem™ Manager software running on the SIM™server then detects key information about continence events and determines when to alert care staff about an event requiring attention.
Alerts are sent via text message to the carer’s mobile phone or via the facility’s paging system if preferred. As carers are often unable to immediately respond to events, the software will display a summary log of alerts and manual observations can also be entered. The final bladder chart includes all observations in one easy-to-read report. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
It’s said that everything comes with a price. The average American now lives almost thirty years longer than a hundred years ago. But for millions of people, the price of longevity has been Alzheimer’s disease. The greatest fear my patients express to me is, “I think I’m losing my mind.” Read more »
One of the great blessings of my life is that my 91-year-old father, whom I dearly love, lives in the apartment building next door. After sixty-six years of marriage, he’s been living alone since my mother’s death last March. He is still sharp as a tack, as he might say. Read more »
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An Australian company called Simavita is releasing an incontinence detection device to be used in nursing homes across New South Wales. The SIMsystem uses a strip that detects liquid and a cellular device to send a note to a nursing station or a care provider.
