This Just In From the Congressional Budget Office

Blogs by definition are supposed to be short. Indeed, this one will be very short.

If you have any interest in health care reform and what will or will not work, you must read the just released Congressional Budget Office document entitled 'Health Care Reform and the Federal Budget'.

It may take you 30 minutes or more to carefully read and understand this 16 page tome. If however you are overwhelmed by the politics of health care reform and confused by the disparate points of view, would a 30 minute investment of time be worth it to get to a modicum of reality?

I beg you to read this CBO paper. Please! Then ask your friends to read it. I dare you to ask your local and state legislators if they have read it. Transformational health care public policy should be based on unfiltered unbiased information. Get informed now. Then get involved.

Thank you.

The Health "Blogosphere"

I had the good fortune Tuesday to attend an on line "HealthCast" (webinar) sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation entitled "The Health Blogosphere: What It Means for Policy Debates and Journalism". Jeepers! Did I really think the RauserHealthReview was ahead of the curve . . . . . . . . ?!

I was surprised to learn HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt is a blogger. Given his enormous influence over health care policy, those with a serious interest should connect to the Secretary through an RSS feed. Ditto a Wall Street Journal Blog on health care. In fact, there are dozens of really good health care sites with a wealth of information. The Kaiser Network and WSJ blog serve as great aggregators of information from many sources while Secretary Leavitt's site - like the RauserHealthReview - is based on more personal experiences from our daily work; he of course at the very pinnacle of the health care industry while I am just a foot soldier.

Secretary Leavitt revealed he has been writing his blog since August of 2007 and now has about 2100 visitors each week; yours truly started late in May. Recent traffic is on pace for about 270 weekly visitors. (I can only imagine how many daily 'hits' the Kaiser Foundation receives at their site.) The appetite for good information on health care can only grow with the aging of America. I would sure welcome any suggestions (comments) for posts.

Where Is The Outrage - Part II

Here is a true story about an "elderly lady" living very independently and alone until recently, in a city with no other family members anywhere close. She falls and breaks a hip, often a sure sign of decline for this age group. Taken unconscious by ambulance to the nearest hospital, she has very successful orthopaedic surgery. The break is easily fixed and the surgeon predicts a full recovery after extensive physical therapy.

Discharged from the hospital after 6 days to a rehab facility across town, her physical and mental condition deteriorates badly instead of improving. Only after three full weeks does anyone finally contact her primary care physician who reveals she had been on an antidepressant for years. This med had not been administered at the hospital or the rehab facility. The complete loss of appetite (which makes her too weak for the PT critical to her recovery), disorientation and anxiety are consistent with the withdrawal symptoms from the antidepressant.

How could such antediluvian behavior occur in today's modern world of medicine? Is it possible a patient could be so unaware of her own drug regimen (or, incapable of communicating)? Is it possible the patient's family - out of state or not - could so poorly advocate for her care coordination? Is it possible a hospital could be so uninterested in contacting the primary care physician (in this case, from a different "integrated health system"), relying instead on their own "hospitalists" to develop from scratch a treatment plan?

A national database of patient health histories would go a long way toward improving the care of patients like the one in this anecdote. There are innovative initiatives that can make this a reality; Google Health may be one of the best because their on line patient records tool is portable and users can access and control them from anywhere.

People change insurers and doctors. Emergencies obviously do not always happen near our hospital or health system of choice. Some might like the idea of an Orwellian Big Brother owning our health records but personally, my family and I will learn from the story above and take charge of our own records and be better prepared than the "elderly lady" above . . . . . . .. who just happens to be my mother . . . . . . . . and is still teaching her kid, even so late in her life.

Where Is The Outrage?

Imagine if in the United States a 747 crashed every other day; that would amount to a death toll of about 100,000. Wouldn't there be an outcry for improved safety? Wouldn't the FAA demand that the industry correct whatever problem was causing such a loss of life!

So where is the outrage that right now in America, more than 100,000 people die each year unnecessarily because of preventable medical errors? As reported by the Health IT NOW Coalition, about a fifth of these errors are simply attributable to the lack of immediate access to patient records!

There is growing support for the establishment of an health IT system. The reduction of errors and saved lives will save billions and billions of dollars, by some estimates enough money to insure more than three quarters of all uninsured Americans. It is just one of many bright spots in how the delivery of health care can be improved. Read more at the link provided above.