“Your Healthcare. Your Choice.”

by Shain Waugh

I remember visiting my great grandmother a few months back at her nursing home, which is located in West Palm Beach, FL. The feeling of security, assurance, and a piece of mind was there with me once visiting the actual facility. The facility was well manicured, pleasant aroma, highly recommended by others, and located in a safe neighborhood. However, the quality of patient care was extremely poor, unprofessional, inappropriate, and bewildering to me as a medical professional. If a patient has ‘drop foot’, that foot must be supported by a non-pressure heel support boot for example, and not left unsupported.

Over the years, nursing homes have declined in its quality of care, value, and public image due to a decline in government funding, nursing shortages, and employee’s desensitization to patient’s needs. The decline in quality has de-compensated so greatly that its has become a primary factor for Medicare and Medicaid. According to the Des Monies Register, there are approximately 128 nursing homes within the U.S.A. that does not meet health and safety regulations. However, only 54 have been made public, which leaves this game of “Nursing Home Russian Roulette” open to all patient’s family members.

Presidential hopeful Senator Obama has voice serious concern and objections to the retention of this list. Since there are 16,000 active nursing home in the U.S.A, there may be others that should be migrated on this list. Most nursing homes have some deficiencies, but the ones illustrated poses immediate threats to the patients well beings.

An intermediate solution for family is to evaluated these facilities personally, obtain second opinions, consult physicians, research nursing home blogs, contact medicare/medicade, understand the facilities plans for quality, and remember your family member comes first.

by Shain Waugh

The integration of technology has obviously revolutionized the legacy methods of diagnosing patient, improve treatment tactics, and reduce length of hospital stay care. In a survey with medical facility’s executives, 50% (70 total participants) believe that the integrated technologies improve patient’s safety and operational functionalities. It is obvious that on a global scale there is a significant opportunity to transform health care by integrating technology, but implementation has been long-winded for many healthcare systems.

Of the large healthcare organization within U.S. with annual information technology budgets over $100 million, 30% have deployed some level of technology as opposed to 13 percent of smaller institutions with technology deployment. This in turns develops a system of mixed technology, which includes great technological advances in one area of the region as opposed to traditional legacy systems in another. Experts believe that the long-wind of technological integration into many of the healthcare systems is a result of financial roadblocks. In fact, 46 percent of survey participants (70 participants) stated that funding is a major issue.

The leaders within the healthcare community must transform health care and improve patient safety by better leveraging information technology to improve the efficiency, accuracy, and effectiveness of our healthcare system. This embracement will in turn assist in improving the patient’s longevity, improving our globalized healthcare system, and improve the medical professional shortage worldwide.

by Shain Waugh

The health systems worldwide are faced with challenges that will either force the embracement of new trends or result in organizational unsustainability. The confluence of trends include increasing demand for medical service, decrease in medical professionals, rising costs of service, uneven practice quality, increase of the uninsured, and misaligned incentives for medical facility by the respective country’s government. As a case in point of unsustainability, the United States of America’s healthcare system is ranks 1st in the world with the greatest amount of monies spent per person on healthcare case; however, U.S. is ranked 37th in the world for overall quality of service and 50 million of its citizens cannot afford health insurance according to the World Health Organization.

In fact, Americans are migrating internationally for better quality health, while emerging middle-classes of India and China are traveling to the Middle East for higher quality care. It is reported that fewer people are coming to the United States for their medical needs, which is in part due to American hospitals establishing foreign outposts to meet a growing demand as incomes and expectations rise.The globalize trend continues with the deficit of 2.4 million too few physicians, nurses, and midwives to provide medical intervention according to the World Health Organization. The situation will only worsen with the aging population, alteration in medial program standards, and increase in visa requirements. However, the migration of medical professionals such as nurse and physicians from countries as India, South African, America, Canada, and so forth has made efforts to stabilized the “sinking ship.”

Per globalize experts, the solution to the immediate trends are to encourage medical professionals to remain in their respective countries and to assist in improving the healthcare system. However, this encouragement will be a challenge within itself, cost billions in potential revenues for other countries, increase instability, and may simply not work.

by Shain Waugh

Since the dawn of time, one of the most critical elements in being satisfied with your health care experience is choosing the right physician. The relationship one has with their health care provider should mean better communication, effective treatment, and life longevity. The challenge that we face today is selecting the right doctor. There is an array of reference sites such as the American Board of Medical Specialties, American Medical Association, Administrators in Medicine, WebMD, Mayo Clinic, etc.

However, these references only provide information on a physician’s qualifications, physical location, specialty of practice, insurance, etc. There is no true method of evaluating a physicians performance besides referrals or viral reporting (word of mouth). In past survey studies of the general public, three out of every five people are unhappy with their current physician and three out of every five people are actively looking for a new physician.

The question for this dialogue is what do we do as a community to become more informed about physician’s medical practices? What are some tactical strategies that you the reader have utilized successfully? Your feedback provides great insight to those of us struggling to address this question each day.