December 26th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Health Tips
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Health care facilities should consider mandatory flu vaccinations for their employees if other attempts don’t increase rates to 90%, a draft statement from a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) working group stated.
All public health services, HHS staff and Federally Qualified Health Centers should follow suit, stated the Health Care Personnel Influenza Vaccination Subgroup in draft recommendations.
The working group released five steps to boost vaccination rates:
–Employers should establish comprehensive flu infection prevention programs as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to achieve the Healthy People 2020 influenza vaccine coverage goal of 90%.
–Employers should integrate flu vaccination programs into their existing infection prevention programs.
–HHS should encourage CDC and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to standardize the methodology used to measure Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
December 21st, 2011 by BarbaraFederOstrov in News, Opinion
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Now that the latest controversial decision over federal “morning after” pill restrictions has faded from the headlines, it’s worth following up on this question: how available is emergency contraception right now in your own community?
To recap: last week, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled her own science advisors in a decision preventing the “morning after” contraceptive pill Plan B from being sold over the counter at drugstores and to girls under 17 without a prescription. The election-season decision, largely regarded as highly political, could be reviewed by a federal judge after a legal challenge by a pro-choice group.
Of course, Plan B has been controversial ever since it was first approved by the FDA in 1999 (you can see Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Reporting on Health - Barbara Feder Ostrov's Health Journalism Blog*
October 29th, 2011 by PreparedPatient in Health Policy, Opinion
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The Obama administration has dealt a mighty blow to one part of the health reform law by effectively killing off the CLASS Act, which was to be a baby step in the development of a national program to pay for long-term care. The CLASS Act, short for Community Living Assistance Services and Support Act, was supposed to be a voluntary and federally backed insurance program for people to use to cover potential long-term care needs. The idea was for Americans to pay premiums into the fund during their working years. If they later became disabled and needed assistance, they would be entitled to a daily cash benefit of, say, $50 to buy services of a personal care attendant or make home improvements that would allow them to stay in their homes—the preference of most seniors. Advocates of the CLASS Act even envisioned that some of the benefit could be used for nursing home care.
The program, though, was never popular with insurance companies and politicians who listened to them, and the Act barely made it into the final bill. It ran into trouble from the beginning. The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, was tasked with Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Prepared Patient Forum: What It Takes Blog*
October 1st, 2011 by Jessie Gruman, Ph.D. in Opinion
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Emerging from a foggy year of treatment for stomach cancer, I am vividly aware of how much time and energy it takes to meet the daily demands of a serious illness. When I think back over the past 35 years and my treatment for now four different cancer-related diagnoses, I am amazed by how much has changed. The diagnostic and treatment technologies are light years more sophisticated and effective.
I am also taken aback by how much more we, as patients, and our loved ones who care for us, must know and do to organize and administer our own care in response to a serious diagnosis.
From an economic standpoint, this makes sense: the marketplace drives innovations to become simpler and cheaper. In modern American health care, this means that new drugs, technologies and procedures are re-engineered so they can be offloaded from expensive professionals to patients and those who care for them – and who work for free.
Think about it: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Prepared Patient Forum: What It Takes Blog*
September 27th, 2011 by DrWes in Opinion
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I don’t know what I was thinking with my last post about the Health and Human Services’ Million Hearts initiative. I thought the whole point of this program was to save money. At the time, I was less than optimistic that the government could acurately reach their goal given the problems with many of the principles behind their program. For instance, maybe it was just me, but how typing on an electronic medical record system would save those lives was lost on me.
But at the time, I had no idea this whole campaign was based on fear.
Watch this introductory video I found on the brand new Million Hearts website, all paid for (of course) with your tax payer dollars: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
