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The Need for Physician Leadership Development
It is critical now that medical practices take the steps needed “to retain, develop, and align [its] medical staff to meet the challenges of a fast-changing and highly competitive healthcare landscape.” Good physician leaders can help achieve those goals. This is the message in a recent post from Physicians Practice, “Medical Practices Must Focus on Physician Leadership Development.”
Equally important, however, is the need for physician leaders to see and develop opportunities as a result of forces in the very fast moving healthcare environment outside of their own medical practices.
Questions, like the following, are constantly swirling around medical practices, and I fear they are as often ignored as they are avoided:
- Should we align with the hospital?
- Should we join a large physician group?
- Should we develop our own super group?
- Should we join the hospital sponsored clinically integrated network?
- Should we start our own network?
Hospitals and venture capitalists have the money, the time, and the leadership to develop and pursue healthcare business opportunities, and they are doing so. They are taking the lead in presenting answers to these questions. Physicians are at a disadvantage, because they rarely have the money or the time or, unfortunately, the leadership to be proactive in evaluating and accepting or rejecting opportunities as they present themselves.
If survival as independent practices is the goal, then in this highly competitive business environment, physician leadership has never been more important. This has been the message of many physician practice commentators, including Kevin Pho, M.D. on his blog, as well as physician leadership training programs like the one done at the University of Cincinnati.
No one is waiting for physicians to step. When they do, they can control their professional destiny. When they don’t or can’t, others will be in control.
Fighting Lies and Ignorance to Keep the Democratic Process Democratic
The health care crisis and how to solve it has become one of the defining issues of our time. There is much debate over the right course of action. The debate should be principled and intelligent, but we have come to a point in American politics where lying or being stupid or both have become a perfectly acceptable way to debate an issue.
If one assumes that Romney, Ryan, Rand Paul, Cruz, Rubio, Bachmann, Palin, Rick Scott, Pam Bondi, and many other outspoken opponents of Obamacare are intelligent people (an assumption that may be a stretch in some cases), then they must be liars. Other than their being ignorant beyond comprehension (which could be the case for some of the named individuals), lying is the only explanation for what they have been saying about Obamacare.
Honest, intelligent people make sure of their facts before making public statements about this complicated, important legislation.
An open and honest debate, where ideas are discussed and criticized and improved upon, is what is needed desperately in this country. It is the way things are supposed to be done in America.
Americans of good intentions must be educated to fight the campaign of misinformation that has been waged against the President’s plan for health care reform.
Obamacare Facts is one place to get a detailed and unbiased description of what the law does and doesn’t do. Go there, learn, so that, regardless of your position, you will know what’s true and what’s false and who is lying and who is telling the truth. Perhaps, you can even help educate those whose ignorance is keeping them in the dark.
‘Navigator’ flaws compound new health care law’s glitchy start
A program intended to help educate uninsured people in Western Pennsylvania about Obamacare started sluggishly because ‘navigators’ are not trained, and several positions remain vacant nearly two weeks after online insurance marketplaces went live.
Seriously, there is no way that a program this big trying to help so many people in the face of so many obstacles would not have start-up issues. Making things better should be the focus, rather than the rants of the Tea Party Congressmen.
See on triblive.com
Poorest of the poor left out of Affordable Care Act’s health insurance expansion
Because North Carolina rejected the Medicaid expansion earlier this year, the state’s poorest residents will go without insurance despite the national law that was intended to slash the number of uninsured.
This is another example of the short-sightedness (or just plain meanness — it’s hard to know which) of conservative state legislatures that decided taking a stand against Obamacare was more important than the health of its citizens. The Presdient and the ACA will be blamed by the campaign of misinformation from the Tea Party, but this is their fault, not the President’s and certainly not the law’s.
See on www.charlotteobserver.com
See more on Scoop.it – Changing Healthcare for the Better
How Health Care Reform is Supposed to be Working
The RAND Corporation has published a study, “Effects of the Affordable Care Act on Consumer Health Care Spending and Risk of Catastrophic Health Costs.”
RAND provides the following summary of the study:
This study examines the likely effects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on average annual consumer health care spending and the risk of catastrophic medical costs for the United States overall and in two large states that have decided not to expand their Medicaid programs (Texas and Florida). The ACA will have varied impacts on individuals’ and families’ spending on health care, depending on income level and on estimated 2016 insurance status without the ACA. The authors find that average out-of-pocket spending is expected to decrease for all groups considered in the analysis, although decreases in out-of-pocket spending will be largest for those who would otherwise be uninsured. People who would otherwise be uninsured who transition to the individual market under the ACA will have higher total health care spending on average after implementation of the ACA because they will now incur the cost of health insurance premiums. The authors also find that risk of catastrophic health care spending will decrease for individuals of all income levels for the insurance transitions considered; decreases will be greatest for those at the lowest income levels. Case studies found that in Texas and Florida, Medicaid expansion would substantially reduce out-of-pocket and total health care spending for those with incomes below 100 percent of the federal poverty level, compared with a scenario in which the ACA is implemented without Medicaid expansion. Expansion would reduce the risk of high medical spending for those covered under Medicaid who would remain uninsured without expansion.
You can read the Study online or download a copy here.
Obamacare and the Politics of Ignorance, Hate, and Fear
Everyone knows that the current healthcare system is broken, unsustainable, and is bankrupting the country (while providing inadequate access to what has become substandard healthcare). Nevertheless, Republicans remain focused on repealing the only meaningful piece of healthcare reform legislation passed in years. Obamacare is not perfect, and politicians should be working to improve it.
But they’re not.
So, let’s just be honest.
The fight against Obamacare is nothing about healthcare. Any one with any knowledge of Obamacare knows it, because there is nothing about Obamacare that explains the rabid Republican-led reaction against it. Instead, the fight is about a deep hate and fear of the President, of the poor, of the foreign, and of the non-white. This hatred, this racism is obvious and clear.
Granted that there may be a “principled” argument to be made against the individual mandate, but, really, is that what is upsetting people?
The misinformed public has no understanding of the benefits of Obamacare. They are victims of the purposely false and deceitful campaign of misinformation waged by Republican leaders, who never mention that Obamacare makes health insurance available and affordable, it eliminate lifetime caps and preexisting conditions, it fights healthcare fraud, and it moves to less expensive preventive care. There are no death panels, there are no governmental bureaucrats making healthcare decisions.
Unfortunately, logic and reason are no match against ignorance, racism, and hate. Patriotism seems to have lost out also.
Protect Healthcare Reform
There is no greater battle before us than to fight the ignorance and misinformation campaign of those who would seek to defund Obamacare. The outcome may well affect the well being of generations of Americans.
Presidents since Teddy Roosevelt have understood the need and the importance of reforming healthcare in America. Obamacare may well be President Obama’s greatest achievement and will be long remembered after everyone has forgotten that he was the first African American president. The law’s flaws do not outweigh its many benefits, the most important of which is that it has shifted the focus of healthcare from procedure based to performance based — doing tests on sick patients is no as profitable to healthcare providers as keeping patients from getting sick.
We must not let this important first step to fix to the healthcare system to die by the actions of a narrow minded minority. Contact your Senators and Representatives.
The ACP Advocate Blog — “If I were King”
Bob Doherty, ACP’s Senior Vice President, Governmental Affairs and Public Policy, blogs about important health policy issues in The ACP Advocate Blog.
This is from Doherty’s August 2 blogpost, “If I were King.” It is a thoughtful article that focuses on the issues that need to be addressed in U.S. healthcare and offers sensible approaches to resolving them.
“But yet, is my wish list really too much to expect from elected lawmakers in Washington who take a solemn oath to a Constitution that requires them to promote the common welfare and ensure domestic tranquility? Is it too much to ask that we provide every American with health insurance, that we free doctors from unnecessary red tape and paperwork, that we enact policies that support the value of primary care, that physicians and nurses put aside their differences so that they can work together to provide the best possible care to patients, that we facilitate choice and completion by posting comparative information on price and quality, that we keep guns out of the hands of insane people and convicted felons and that we limit access to guns that allow murderers to kill as many people as possible in as little time as possible (including schoolchildren), that we repeal the ridiculous SGR formula, and that we reform our politics so government can actually start governing again? Is that really too much of a fantasy to ask of the people we elect?”
See on advocacyblog.acponline.org
Cutting Off Your Nose to Spite Your Face
Honest, rational, intelligent Americans must stand-up to the new nit-wit movement of some fringe members of the Republican Party to defund ObamaCare, at whatever cost, including shutting down the United States government.
Most people who oppose ObamaCare refuse to understand it, and politicians shamelessly promote and take advantage of that ignorance.
Let’s try to be honest. ObamaCare is an historic first step at fixing an out of control and hopelessly broken healthcare system. The Deloitte 2013 survey of U.S. physicians found that most physicians “believe that the performance of the U.S. health care system is suboptimal, but the Affordable Care Act [i.e., ObamaCare] is a good start to addressing issues of access and cost.” ObamaCare is already making positive changes in healthcare, and millions of middle-class Americans are currently being helped by ObamaCare. No more pre-exiting conditions and arbitrary lifetime caps. By requiring healthcare insurance to contain minimum benefits that are needed by most Americans, we can purchase a policy and know what is covered and what is not and not fear denials later when we need to use our coverage. There are many examples of how ObamaCare is helping patients and providers.
ObamaCare’s goal is improved access to affordable healthcare — for the life of me, I cannot understand why that causes such irrational responses? Of course, ObamaCare is flawed and costly, requires too much regulation, and is full of special interest tinkerings (like all legislation these days unfortunately), and it can be (and deserves to be) much improved. To defund it or repeal it and start from scratch will leave us with the same uninsured population, spiraling out of control costs, and no hope for improvement.
Shame on Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and all the other members of the Congressional flatworld caucus. Improving healthcare in America, including making the necessary changes to ObamaCare, is a job for smart, dedicated people, not petty, stupid ones. This is a time for more conversation and less baying at the moon.
Hospitals Offer Better Food As Patient Satisfaction Becomes More Important Under Federal Health Law – Kaiser Health News
Administrators say the focus on food has taken on extra importance since Medicare last year began paying them based partly on their patient satisfaction scores, a change that is part of the federal health care law known as Obamacare.
“Food service helps the overall experience,” said Jim McGrody, director of food and nutrition at Rex, as he inspected his kitchen cold room used for brining pickles, curing turkey pastrami and fermenting cabbage into sauerkraut. Several letters of praise from former patients hang in the kitchen.
— Good healthcare, not good food, should be the focus, but sloppy unappetizing food preparation doesn’t say much about the quality of the facility’s healthcare.
See on www.kaiserhealthnews.org
Joseph Rugg's Health Law Blog 