Care Facilities | Agencies
Secret Hospital Charges Now Revealed, Wide Disparities
05/08/2013
Hospital Prices No Longer Secret As New Data Reveals Bewildering System, Staggering Cost Differences
By Jeffrey Young and Chris Kirkham
When a patient arrives at Bayonne Hospital Center in New Jersey requiring treatment for the respiratory ailment known as COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, she faces an official price tag of $99,690.
Less than 30 miles away in the Bronx, N.Y., the Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center charges only $7,044 for the same treatment, according to a massive federal database of national health care costs made public on Wednesday. Read the rest of this entry »
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CES 2013 prominently features HealthSpot Station
01/16/2013
“Real doctors. Real medicine. Really convenient.”
HealthSpot Station was prominently featured in the central lobby just as you entered the Las Vegas Convention Center during CES 2013, an honor that only the most interesting companies get.
Doctors and patients meet face-to-face like they always have, only in this case, the face-to-face is virtual: the doctor is in his home or office; the patient is seated in the kiosk; and the kiosk is located in a retail store. The HealthSpot Station kiosk allows board-certified doctors to conduct remote diagnosis and treatment using high-def videoconferencing and digital medical devices that appear behind locked doors when needed.
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Nine States Deny The Poor Health Care
12/28/2012
GOP Governors Deny The Poor Health Care
In Opposing Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion
By Peter S. Goodman and Jeffrey Young
RUSTON, La. — With no health insurance and not enough money for a doctor, Laura Johnson is long accustomed to treating her ailments with a self-written prescription: home remedies, prayer and denial.
Senior Living Options & Costs Infographic
10/22/2012
As seniors age, they may need help with daily tasks. Helping them decide on appropriate living arrangements is critical to staying safe and healthy. Investing in home modifications and some sort of medical alert system is a cost effective way for seniors to feel safe and secure while living an independent lifestyle, as this infographic suggests. Read the rest of this entry »
The Waiting Room, a feature length documentary
10/08/2012
Certified Nurse Assistant Cynthia Y. Johnson at Highland Hospital in The Waiting Room
The Waiting Room is like a punch to the gut for people cast off and left out of our U.S. medical care system, what some call the best in the world. When Democrats and Republicans vie for your votes and debate healthcare reform, remember that these are not the people they are talking about. Most don’t even notice the plight of those at the bottom — this ugly underside. But our politicians, and the billionaires who set their agenda, should be made to watch this documentary, because these are the 47 percent they talk about — the people left out of the American Dream. They’re real people.
This character-driven documentary film uses unprecedented access to go behind the doors of Oakland’s Highland Hospital, a safety-net hospital fighting for survival while weathering the storm of a persistent economic downturn. Stretched to the breaking point, Highland is the primary care facility for 250,000 patients of nearly every nationality, race, and religion, with 250 patients – most of them uninsured – crowding its emergency room every day. Using a blend of cinema verité and characters’ voiceover, the film offers a raw, intimate, and often uplifting look at how patients, staff and caregivers cope with disease, bureaucracy, frustration, hope and hard choices during one typically hectic day.
The ER waiting room serves as the grounding point for the film, capturing in vivid detail what it means for millions of Americans to live without health insurance. Young victims of gun violence take their turn alongside artists and uninsured small business owners. Steel workers, cab drivers and international asylum seekers crowd the halls. (movie trailer follows)
A Proposed Hybrid, Public/Private Model of Health Care
08/28/2012
Occupy Healthcare is a movement to influence and impact the future of healthcare, as well as an online community to discuss healthcare reform issues. Recently they invited me to submit my perspectives, and below is what I sent.
Occupy Health Care – a proposal from Wayne Caswell, Modern Health Talk
Historically, the biggest impact in health outcomes has come from public health initiatives such as clean water, sewage systems, and immunization programs. But that success is minimized by a “sick care” system that is profoundly broken, with perverse incentives to view patients as customers, treat symptoms, and pay practitioners for each test, drug and procedure.
ACA is meant to fix that, with more emphasis on positive outcomes and overall health & wellness, both to minimize the need for medical care in the first place and thus reduce costs, and to maintain a healthy and productive workforce that contributes to a vibrant economy. ACA is a good start, but there’s still more work to be done, and it won’t come from private industry or the insurance model, because natural incentives prevent it.
Contrasting Incentives
I believe that the key to health reform is getting the incentives right, and that means getting private insurance companies out of BASIC health care entirely. Their profit motive gives them an incentive to increase costs, knowing that higher costs = more insurance customers paying higher premiums. What I propose instead is a hybrid public/private model that capitalizes on contrasting incentives, eliminates the need for health insurance, and saves over $1 trillion per year.
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Long Term Care and the Home Healthcare Opportunity
07/12/2012
This article presents statistics about the Home Healthcare Opportunity (see more statistics) and an infographic about Long Term Care costs (from Northwest Mutual).
“We can save Trillions by moving at least 50% of healthcare services from institutions to homes.” (Eric Dishman, Intel)
- Boomers have a “fierce” desire to remain independent.(AARP)
- >90% of people 65+ want to age at home if safe as long as possible.
- This will lead to an expansion of organizations offering home- and community-based care.
- Avg. Nursing Home private room = $83,000 a yearin 2010. Assisted Living rent = $39,000 a year. (MetLife)
- Avg. Independent Living Community = $32,000/yr (Long Term Living Magazine)
- Avg. In-Home Care = $18,000/yr (health aid, meals on wheels, maid, etc.)
- Global Home Healthcare market = $40.5 billion in 2009, growing to $67 billion by 2016 (GBI Research)
- US Digital Health market = $5.7B by 2015 with 55% CAGR (Parks Associates)
- US Home Remote Monitoring = $295M by 2015 (Frost & Sullivan)
- US Remote Patient Monitoring = $7.1B in 2010, with 25.4% ACGR and 2015 estimate of $22.2 billion (Kalorama Information)
- Health & Fitness Apps market = >$400 million in 2016 (ABI Research)
- Global mHealth market = $10B by 2016 (mHealth Networking Group on LinkedIn)
- With over 72% of the globe connected via mobile technology and over 60% of US physicians owning tablet devices, the promise of mobile health to profoundly impact, on the delivery of healthcare cannot be understated.
- Most of these physicians are using iPads and about half of all tablet-toting physicians use the devices at the point of care.
- Asia Pacific mHealth market = $7B by 2017 (GSMA)
- >20,000 medical/health apps = 3rd fastest-growing, with 60% aimed at consumers vs. health professionals
- U.S. Health Care Fraud = $80 billion per year. (conservative estimate from CNBC’s Health Care Hustle series) Read the rest of this entry »
CAPABLE means Home, not Nursing Homes, for Seniors
06/27/2012
Source: Newswise (6/26/2012) — Nursing homes do not have to be inevitable destinations for frail older adults. Many—even those with long-term health problems—can remain at home and be independent. All it takes is a little help to change “disability” to “capability”.
A handyman with a few nails to fix a wobbly bannister can make the difference between staying at home and a nursing home stay. Visits from a nurse or occupational therapist can help simplify a bewildering medication regimen or improve the ability to get around the house and neighborhood. Simple, inexpensive steps may change the equation for thousands of seniors, but in reality, services like these are rarely available for many at greatest need—the poorest and sickest older adults receiving Medicare and Medicaid.
CAPABLE, short for “Community Aging in Place, Advancing Better Living for Elders,” and a $4 million Health Care Innovation Award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is about to change that reality. Read the rest of this entry »
Health Reform needs a WELLNESS emphasis
04/26/2012
How can healthcare systems encourage patients to take greater ownership of their health so they live longer? That was the question posed to a Linkedin discussion group that generated some interesting responses. I initially weighed in with:
Public Health and Social Programs
We don’t often think of clean running water, indoor toilets, sanitation systems, and school vaccinations as having profound effects on the health of our citizens, but they have. So too would programs that address poverty, unemployment, and the widening income gap. That’s why next on my list is access to nutritious food, exercise opportunities, and full-time employment, which translates into access to health insurance.
Others said consumers would need support from various health care organizations and suggested several initiatives designed to move from medical response systems to health, wellness and prevention systems. Read the rest of this entry »
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The Caregiver: Key to mHealth
01/09/2012
By David Lee Scher, MD
The caregiver is an individual who attends to the needs of a child or dependent adult.
There is an estimated ten million caregivers over the age of 50 caring for their parents in the USA. Caregivers attend to people who are predominantly relatives (86%), with 36% being parents and 14% being children. One third of caregivers take care of two or more people. Much has been said about the need for patient engagement and people taking more responsibility for their own care, however caregivers have the unique responsibilities of their own care as well as their charged. That being said, they require mHealth tools that address both issues. I will discuss the role of mHealth and the role of the caregiver. This will not be an endorsement of any specific product.
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