February 11th, 2010 by CodeBlog in Better Health Network, Health Tips, Interviews
Tags: Caregiver, Caring Bridge, Health Status, Hospital Status, Monitoring, Nursing
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When Beth found out that her husband had cancer, a friend suggested that she look into creating a page on CaringBridge.org. As she puts it, “CaringBridge became a tool to help us communicate with others.”
I spoke with Sona Mehring last week, who is the owner of CaringBridge. The site started as a simple webpage for a friend of Sona’s who was going through a difficult pregnancy. Sona and her friends used the site to keep friends and family informed of updates, keeping everyone in the loop without having to make several phone calls each day. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at code blog - tales of a nurse*
February 11th, 2010 by RamonaBatesMD in Better Health Network, True Stories
Tags: Abdominoplasty, Dancing, Joy, New Lease On Life, Plastic Surgery, Weight Loss
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“Mrs. C**, how are you doing?”
She left the wheel chair in the waiting room, smiling “I’ll show you.”
She dances nimbly down the hallway to the exam room, having lost her forty pound apron a week ago. Her laughter is infectious.
“Let’s get rid of these drains.”
**Not her real name.
*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*
February 10th, 2010 by Toni Brayer, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
Tags: Health Insurance, Healthcare Trough, Pigs, Primary Care, Specialty Care
1 Comment »
I went to my physical therapist yesterday for knee treatment and we talked about the fact that Blue Cross is cutting their reimbursement to the point that the cost of providing care will not even be covered. All I could do was lament with him and listen. One insurer even told him (the owner of the business) to just “make the sessions shorter and don’t give as much care.” As if that is how it works…”You get little money..so just do a little”.
Clearly the insurance intermediaries, who never actually see a patient or deliver any care, haven’t got a clue how this whole health thing works. They are happy with mediocre doctors that cut time and care. Those doctors (and physical therapists) run mills, but the insurance companies are happy with them. Quality and quantity of time are not rewarded, and in fact are punished in the health care environment we have. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*
February 10th, 2010 by BobDoherty in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
Tags: CMS, COBRA, Government, Health Insurance, Healthcare spending, medicaid, Medicare, US
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… in national health care expenditures, that is. This, of course, is nothing new: spending on health care in the U.S. has long out-paced any other industrialized country. What is noteworthy is “the largest one-year increase in [health care’s] GDP share since the federal government began keeping track in 1960” blogs Chris Fleming, of Health Affairs. He writes that a new study shows that health care spending increased by an estimated 5.7 percent since 2008 despite a projected decline in the gross domestic product (GDP) in the same period.
The recession is having a big impact on respective roles of the public and private sectors. “Health spending by public payers is expected to have grown much faster in 2009 (8.7 percent growth, to $1.2 trillion) than that of private payers (3.0 percent growth, to $1.3 trillion)” Fleming writes, which is attributable to an increase in “projected growth in Medicaid enrollment (6.5 percent) and spending (9.9 percent) as a result of increasing unemployment related to the recession. Conversely, enrollment in private insurance is expected to have declined 1.2 percent in 2009, despite federal subsidies for Americans who have lost their jobs to extend their private insurance coverage via the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) that increased participation in these plans.” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The ACP Advocate Blog by Bob Doherty*
February 10th, 2010 by Edwin Leap, M.D. in Better Health Network, Opinion, True Stories
Tags: Detective Work, Emergency Medicine, Illicit Drugs, Medical Archeologist, Psychology
1 Comment »
I’m becoming an amateur archeologist. The hilltop where we live is strewn with arrowheads and bits of Native American pottery shards. I have slowly, surely, trained my eye to find them. There is little flint here; so most of the pieces I find were made of quartz. (Hard to work with, but remarkably beautiful and almost always a brilliant white.)
My kids and I walk the red-clay paths and look down for bits of stone protruding up, especially after a good, soaking rain. Elijah, my youngest boy, was the first to find one. ‘Is that an arrowhead, Papa?’ ‘Yep, good eye son!’ He had found what was probably the point of an atlatl (a kind of mix between arrow and spear).
We look for rocks that seem shaped by human hands. That’s the ticket; look for something that seems to suggest a purpose or a history. Things with no shape, no marks from being worked, are probably not worth our time. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
