October 7th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Medblogger Shout Outs
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Thanks to my friend and fellow blogger Bob Coffield for hosting me (during my homeless period) at the Healthcare Law Blog. Here is an excerpt of my post:
Today I viewed a TV ad sponsored by the AARP. It was promoting a remote alarm device that elderly people could use to notify EMS if they fall and need help. The ad featured a surprising statistic:
“One in three people over the age of 65 will fall down this year.”
That’s a pretty common occurrence, wouldn’t you say? It certainly argues for the need for those wearable alarm buttons.
But at the same time that these ads are running on television, Medicare is moving forward with their “never event” quality program. The initiative means that Medicare will not pay for the care of patients who experience a “never event” in a hospital – funding for that patient’s care will need to come out of the hospital’s budget. Medicare argues that they shouldn’t have to pay for medical errors such as “wrong side surgery.”
While I’m sympathetic to their perspective on wrong side surgery, the list of never events reaches far beyond the limits of medical errors to include things like mental status changes, infections and…
drum roll please . . .
Falls….
October 7th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Medblogger Shout Outs
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I posted this at Medpolitics.com during my recent period of blog homelessness. Here’s an excerpt:
Sec. Tommy Thompson:
“SCHIP runs out in March, 2009. The new President will have to come up with a Medicare ‘fix it’ bill within 90 days of coming into office. I think that 2009 will be the biggest year in the transformation of healthcare that any of us have ever seen.”
For the rest of the post, click here.
October 7th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Medblogger Shout Outs
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Thanks to the ladies at the Disruptive Women In Healthcare blog for hosting me during my period of homelessness. Here’s an excerpt from my post:
Of course, modifying behavior is the holy grail of medicine. We physicians wish that our patients would optimize their diet and exercise choices and become fully compliant partners in managing their chronic diseases. Unfortunately, fifty percent of patients forget to take their meds and over 30 percent don’t refill their prescriptions. Twenty percent say they don’t take the full course of treatment and fifty percent of patients don’t take drugs as directed. What’s a doc to do?…
To read the rest of the post, please click here.
October 7th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Medblogger Shout Outs
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Thanks to Ian Furst for hosting me during my period of blog homelessnes. Here’s the post that he featured at his blog:
Thanks to Dr. Val for making a guest appearance at Wait Times. Val is a former Candian now living south of the border. When you make it to Waterloo (or Toronto) I’ll have some back-bacon on a bun and a pint of Canadian waiting for you.
Check out Ian’s blog here.
October 7th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Medblogger Shout Outs
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While I was “homeless” my blogging friends kindly invited me to guest post at their websites. Henry Stern at InsureBlog posted this for me:
Are Health Insurance Dollars Being Wasted Due To Medication Non-Compliance?
In case the answer to that question isn’t obvious, it is a resounding “yes.” Non-compliance costs the health insurance industry a staggering 177 billion dollars a year. It is estimated that fifty percent of patients forget to take their meds and over 30 percent don’t refill their prescriptions. Twenty percent say they don’t take the full course of treatment and fifty percent of patients don’t take drugs as directed. So much for preventing that heart attack, stroke, or limb amputation.
The health insurance industry (as well as pharmaceutical companies) have invested heavily in patient compliance initiatives, most of which have failed to produce substantially improved outcomes. The reason?…
To read the rest of the post, please click here.
Thanks to my friend and fellow blogger Bob Coffield for hosting me (during my homeless period) at the Healthcare Law Blog. Here is an excerpt of my post:
