Kaiser Permanente has been equipped since 2007 with Health Connect; which is the largest private electronic health record implementation in the world. This is a highly sophisticated electronic program that integrates inpatient, outpatient, and clinic medical records with appointments, registration, pharmacy, and billing for all kaiser members. In addition, this electronic program includes an entire medical library with a whole set of care support tools which are accessible to doctors, nursing staff and patients (Kaiser Permanente, n.d.). At kaiser permanente; nurses are expected to print out “the after-visit summary” (AVS), which contain the doctor recommendations for each patient that we see.
CCVS Health's business consists of two main and differentiate parts: a retail domain and a pharmacy benefit management business. The company enjoys a competitive position on both segments. CVS does have a competitive advantage, as it makes above normal profit than its competitors. Walgreens is the main competitor with sales of $72 billion and profit earnings of $2.7 billion while CVS makes $107 billion in sales and $6.3 billion of profit earnings (Dietz, 2012). CVS is a step ahead of its competition because its ability to offer special services to its customers.
"Healthy People 2020 (HP2020) provides a comprehensive set of 10-year, national goals and objectives for improving the health of all Americans" ("Healthy People 2020", 2015, p. 2). It monitors and evaluates whether the goals of improving health indicators are met or getting worse. Community health problems should be analyzed in order to comprehend and effectively resolve the problem ("Analyzing Community Problems", 2015). Levels of prevention are phases wherein healthcare professionals can intervene in the health of individuals and communities. Primary prevention involves seeking ways to prevent a person from having a disease they can be prone to.
Electronic health records are essential in allowing physicians to monitor their patients’ health, notice trends, and potentially prevent hospital readmissions, quickly diagnose diseases, and reduce medical errors. This is the first in a series of blog posts where we ask the question “What is Meaningful Use of an EHR?” In this post, we interview a physician at a family practice to learn more about how he is meaningfully using his EHR to coordinate patient care, prevent a hospital readmission and ultimately improve patient health. On the day we spoke, Dr. Frank Maselli of Riverdale Family Practice in the Bronx had just finished seeing 30 patients.
Healthy People is an organization that identifies the Nation’s health improvement priorities. Established for more than 30 years, Healthy People is a recognized science-based national health objective that focuses on monitoring progress, motivating action, and the guiding efforts to improve health across the country (Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2011). Also, Healthy People 2020 locates nearly 1,200 objectives in the preparation of 42 topic areas of which each represents an important public health area. Consequently, the aims of Healthy People 2020 Progress Reviews are to provide health officials and the public with information on the current status of the objectives within each of the Healthy People 2020 topic areas. Therefore, the health officials include the Assistant Secretary for Health, senior Health and Human Services (HHS) officials and Healthy People 2020 stakeholders (Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),
Full Coverage Health Insurance Full insurance coverage is very beneficial when it comes to regular health assessments and screenings in women. Some of the purposes of regular assessments is for primary prevention, it also helps the primary care physician identify risk factors for any common chronic diseases and it can be essential to detect diseases that have no apparent symptoms, which is considered to be secondary prevention. With regular assessments the patient will have up to date clinical data and it also gives the nurse a chance to educate the patient on promoting healthy behaviors (Shiel, Jr., 2014). By women seeking regular health assessments they are taking steps to live a longer, healthier life (no author, 2015).
More companies are expanding sites for their employees insuring high quality care, saving them time and travel costs. This will be a convenience for employees as it will not require them to take extra time off work. Cigna wants employers to achieve a healthier workforce and provide a wide range of services that will meet the needs of individuals. Cultural Competency in Health Care wants to focus on delivering quality care to diverse populations. With the population continuing to increase, Cigna wants to incorporate existing barriers in understanding ways to improve a healthy outcome.
Another group, the Quality Partners, a nonprofit group established to be a Medicare improvement organization, tested an intervention to reduce thirty-day hospital readmissions. As a Medicare-funded pilot program, it involved coaches meeting with patients to empower them to reach out to community providers when symptoms begin, rather than when waiting until there is a need for the hospital (“Intervention Lowers”, 2011). These studies display the opportunity for change when healthcare
"It's much cheaper to keep people well than it is to treat them when they're sick," he says. "Part of wellness will be monitoring what's specifically important about each patient, like bathroom scales for congestive heart failure patients or glucometers for diabetics that transmit data directly to their EHRs." -John D. Halamka, MD, MS(McBride). That being said the Electronic Health Record or EHR has made monitoring health even easier with the ability for patients to access their records from home, email their doctors among other
Starting in 2009, in the result of the HITECH Act, institutions were rewarded financially for implementing these electronic health record systems into their practices, with more than $35 billion invested. According toWithin a few years, the rates of Medicare or Medicaid EHR adoption increased dramatically for physicians and hospitals. From 2010 to 2012, hospital EHR implementation rates grew to 44%, while physician EHR implementation rose from 20% to 40%, and those rates should keep rising (Cite One). The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act is mainly looked at for reduction in health disparities. One tactic being used to fight these health disparities is researching demographic data and applying this data to electronic health records.
The Affordable Care Act has provided many Americans access to affordable healthcare. The group of newly insured Americans have reported that they have timely access to physicians and healthcare. Previously there was concern that the Affordable Care Act would limit access to physicians based on provider networks. Provider networks have proved less of an issue than previously anticipated partially because many of the previously uninsured Americans were not able to secure a relationship with a set provider or physician group. Some areas of concern that remain are high out of pocket expenses incurred with some marketplace plans.
“Managed Care is a health care delivery system organized to manage cost, utilization, and quality (Medicaid, n.d).” Managed care is set up for easy affordable access to healthcare, the care is regulated so that needed procedures are performed on the patients within the limits of network providers available. There are many undesirable and helpful aspects of managed care. For example, a managed care system provides lower costs, quality service, employer opportunities to make available insurance for their employees, in network provider connections allowing for easy finds of doctors for the patient’s specific plan (Cyrene, n.d). There are however many disadvantages, those include not having the accurate provider or lack of provider for the required
By reducing health disparities, vulnerable populations are empowered, increasing the equality in access to health care services, quality of care and efficiency of services. The United States is currently integrating the population health framework into its health care system to be understand the different determinants of health. As described by Jonas & Kovner, population health involves primary prevention, as well as the ability to involve social, behavioral, and environmental determinants of health in a way that the patients will be able to carry out their medical providers’ recommendations about lifestyle behaviors to reduce potential complications as well as to prevent social crises such as homelessness and losing jobs (95).
Introduction People hope for long and healthier lives. Thus, health care is the act of taking Improvement or preventative medical procedures to improve people well-being. Improvement or preventative may be done with surgery, the administering of medicine, or other alterations in a person 's lifestyle. These services are usually offered through a health care system made up of hospitals and physicians. Although, the health care system is set up to reduce or to prevent disease etc., there is a gap or disparity in the US health care system.
Introduction People hope and seeks long and healthier lives. Thus, health care is the act of taking preventative or necessary medical procedures to improve people well-being. Improvement or preventative may be done with surgery, the administering of medicine, or other alterations in a person 's lifestyle. These services are usually offered through a health care system made up of hospitals and physicians. Although, the health care system is set up to reduce or to prevent disease etc., there is a gap or disparity in the US health care system.
