October 8th, 2011 by HarvardHealth in Health Tips
No Comments »
Each year, countless people vow to get healthier: Lose five pounds. Exercise every day. Quit smoking. Unfortunately, replacing unhealthy behaviors with healthier ones usually isn’t easy, and many ambitious attempts often fall short. But you’re more likely to succeed if you start by choosing the right goal.
Choosing a goal seems simple enough. If that muffin top is bothering you, you should plan to lose those extra 10 pounds, right? Not necessarily, says Dr. Edward Phillips, Director and Founder of the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine and assistant professor of the Harvard Medical School’s Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. If you tackle the goal you’re most likely to accomplish—rather than the goal you think you should make—you’re better able to achieve it and build up a head of steam to tackle tougher goals.
Listen to Dr. Phillips’ advice on how to make a healthy change that will last: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*
September 19th, 2011 by Stanley Feld, M.D. in Health Policy, Opinion
No Comments »
As we get closer to January 2012, the originally scheduled implementation date for Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), the time has come to reexamine the showpiece of President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) of 2010.
The final rules for ACO’s are now scheduled for release on January 2012. The implementation was originally scheduled for January 2012. As the original rules are being studied and interpreted the program for ACOs implementation became more confusing. Dr. Don Berwick (CMS Director) has refused to discuss the final rules until they have been published in the Federal Register.
“The ACO program is based on the hubristic assumption that the federal government can design the best organizational structure for the delivery of care, foster its development, and control its operation for the entire country.
The federal government has big-footed health system reform. Although there is no one right way to organize care, the federal government (Dr. Don Berwick and President Obama) thinks it has found one—and exerts top-down, bureaucratic control through PPACA to implement it.”
ACOs are supposed to be organizations that improve coordinated care. If an ACO decreases the cost of care Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Repairing the Healthcare System*
November 13th, 2009 by Happy Hospitalist in Better Health Network, Humor, Opinion
No Comments »
What’s the deal with hospital stickers these days? I found this sticker laying around in Happy’s emergency department the other day. Should we be encouraging children to come to the emergency room and feeling happy and excited about the sticker they get? I’m not sure putting a happy robot on a sticker and proclaiming ones exciting visit to the emergency is the best public health policy. Perhaps we need to take a different course of action before another entire generation of citizens feel obliged to use the emergency department as their sole source of medical care. Perhaps instead of a hospital sticker, children in the emergency room would all get a saline injection in their shoulder. Now that’s the kind of memory you want kids to have of their emergency room visit. They should fear the hospital and do everything in their power to stay healthy as adults. Not feel giddy about happy robots on hospital stickers.
Do children get hospital stickers at your facility?
*This blog post was originally published at A Happy Hospitalist*
