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Category Archives: Health Care

Science of Health Care Delivery: Reengineering Care for the 21st Century – Video

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Science of Health Care Delivery: Reengineering Care for the 21st Century
The Mayo Clinic Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery is home to multidisciplinary teams who use their collective knowledge to research innovative ways...

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Science of Health Care Delivery: Reengineering Care for the 21st Century - Video

Meditation for Patience – How To Meditate for Beginners – You Have 4 Minutes – BEXLIFE – Video

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Meditation for Patience - How To Meditate for Beginners - You Have 4 Minutes - BEXLIFE
FREE EASY MEDITATION TIPS: http://bexlife.com/signup SUBSCRIBE FOR NEW VIDEOS: http://bit.ly/SubBexLife ------- GET MORE GOOD STUFF BELOW ------- HEALTHY SNACKS IN YOUR MAILBOX:...

By: Rebekah Borucki

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Meditation for Patience - How To Meditate for Beginners - You Have 4 Minutes - BEXLIFE - Video

Health Care REIT funds increase

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Published: Friday, 5/9/2014 BUSINESS BRIEF

BLADE STAFF

Toledos Health Care REIT Inc. on Thursday reported first-quarter funds from operations of $289.7 million, or $1 per share, up 21 percent from a year ago when the figure was $238.8 million, or 91 cents a share.

Funds from operations is considered the most important metric for a real estate investment trust because unlike a manufacturing plant, a REITs assets appreciate in value rather than depreciate. Health Care REIT, which owns and manages senior living housing and health-care properties, had quarterly revenues of $801.8 million, up 27 percent from $629.7 million a year ago. Its net income fell to $50 million from $55 million a year ago.

The firms quarterly funds available for distribution, which includes capital expenditures, rose to $260.5 million, or 90 cents a share, from $213.6 million, or 81 cents per share, a year ago. Funds available for distribution include capital expenditure funds that pay the upkeep on a REITs properties.

Health Care REITs stock rose $1.47 a share, or 2.3 percent, to close at $64.31.

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Health Care REIT funds increase

Health Care REIT Beats FFO Ests, Ups View – Analyst Blog

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Health Care REIT Inc. ( HCN ), a real estate investment trust (REIT), reported first-quarter 2014 normalized funds from operations (FFO) of $1.00 per share, 2 cents ahead of the Zacks Consensus Estimate and up 9 cents year over year.

The 10% year-over-year increase in normalized FFO per share is primarily driven by same-store net operating income (NOI) growth and notable portfolio investments in premium assets. Based on these factors, the company has increased its 2014 outlook.

Moreover, normalized funds available for distribution (FAD) stood at 90 cents per share, up from 81 cents per share in the year-ago period.

Total revenue escalated 27.3% year over year to $801.8 million and marginally exceeded the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $801 million.

Inside the Headlines

In the first quarter, same-store NOI increased 4.4% from the year-ago period, driven by 8.1% year-over-year rise in the seniors housing operating portfolio.

Health Care REIT concluded gross investments worth $542 million in the quarter under review. This included a joint venture investment worth $386 million, $64 million in development financing and $57 million of acquisitions.

Early in the second quarter, Health Care REIT completed the recapitalization of the Sunrise Senior Living management company, upon which, the company now owns 24% interest in Sunrise Senior Living while Revera holds the rest.

Health Care REIT exited the first quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $185.9 million, up from $158.8 million as of Dec 31, 2013.

2014 Outlook Raised

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Health Care REIT Beats FFO Ests, Ups View - Analyst Blog

Collaboration between psychologists and physicians important to improving primary health care

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

8-May-2014

Contact: Lisa Bowen lbowen@apa.org 202-336-5707 American Psychological Association

WASHINGTON - Primary care teams that include both psychologists and physicians would help address known barriers to improved primary health care, including missed diagnoses, a lack of attention to behavioral factors and limited patient access to needed care, according to health care experts writing in a special issue of American Psychologist, the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association.

"At the heart of the new primary care team is a partnership between a primary care clinician and a psychologist or other mental health professional. The team works together to produce a comprehensive, integrated personal care plan for each patient that includes attention to mental and medical disorders, addresses substance abuse issues and incorporates health behavior change," wrote Susan H. McDaniel, PhD, of the University of Rochester Medical Center, and Frank V. deGruy III, MD, of the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine, in An Introduction to Primary Care and Psychology.

The special issue has 11 articles, co-authored by psychologists and primary care physicians, covering areas including pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, palliative care, military service members' and veterans' health services, and care for special needs groups such as people with serious mental illness, refugees and deaf people.

"Improving our national health care system requires strengthening primary care, which covers a large majority of health care needs for individuals and families," said Norman B. Anderson, PhD, APA chief executive officer and American Psychologist editor. "Research clearly shows that psychological, behavioral and social factors are key drivers of health problems seen in the primary care settings. This special issue highlights some opportunities, challenges and successes in incorporating psychology into collaborative integrated health care to achieve truly comprehensive, whole-person primary care."

"The majority of people in the United States receive care for mental disorders, substance use disorders and health behavior problems in the primary care setting," wrote McDaniel and deGruy, who served as the issue's scholarly leads. "Yet primary care professionals have up to this point been poorly equipped to address these behavioral concerns adequately - they diagnose less than one-third of patients so afflicted and provide acceptable treatment for less than half of those correctly identified."

Articles include:

Proximity of Providers: Co-locating Behavioral Health and Primary Care and the Prospects for an Integrated Workforce

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Collaboration between psychologists and physicians important to improving primary health care

Highlights from "The Frontlines of Health Care IT: War Stories and Lessons Learned" Event – Video

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Highlights from "The Frontlines of Health Care IT: War Stories and Lessons Learned" Event
Efforts to solve most serious health care challenges - quality, cost, racial and gender disparities, or the implementation of "Obamacare" - rely on major investments in new information technology....

By: Simmons School of Management

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Highlights from "The Frontlines of Health Care IT: War Stories and Lessons Learned" Event - Video

Communicating Through the Cancer Journey: Can We Talk? — Wayne Beach and Deborah Mayer – Video

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Communicating Through the Cancer Journey: Can We Talk? -- Wayne Beach and Deborah Mayer
Visit: http://www.uctv.tv/) Talking about cancer is difficult for all involved, whether it is the person with cancer, their family or their health care providers. Why is this so hard? Communicatio...

By: University of California Television (UCTV)

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Communicating Through the Cancer Journey: Can We Talk? -- Wayne Beach and Deborah Mayer - Video

Experts say 'insourcing' innovation may be the best approach to transforming health care

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

7-May-2014

Contact: Katie Delach katie.delach@uphs.upenn.edu 215-349-5964 University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

Philadelphia - A group of health care and policy experts from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania is urging health care institutions to look more to their own in-house personnel, including physicians and nurses, as a source of new ideas for improving how care is delivered. The practice referred to as insourcing relies on an organization's existing staff to drive needed transformations. The team also suggests a four-stage design process which, when adopted internally, may help organizations implement more efficient health care delivery solutions.

In a Perspective piece published in the May 8 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, the Penn authors David Asch, MD, MBA, professor of Medicine and executive director of the Penn Medicine Center for Health Care Innovation; Christian Terwiesch, PhD, professor of Operations and Information Management at Wharton; Kevin B. Mahoney, chief administrative officer of the University of Pennsylvania Health System; and Roy Rosin, chief innovation officer for Penn Medicine argue that too often organizations look to external consultants to create health care change. Lessons from other industries are often "translated into health care" as easily as if they were "translated into French," the authors write, leading to misinformed recommendations.

"In order to identify and effectively solve a problem, you have to be willing to immerse yourself and try things out," said Asch, lead author on the piece. "Management gurus and experts from other industries can lend tremendously valuable expertise, but it's the physicians and nurses who combine the passion and the knowledge necessary to move ideas into implementation and testing, where the real value lies."

The Penn team argues that copy and paste solutions derived from other settings are not likely to work well in health care because health care is not one problem but thousands of problems. Instead, they urge hospitals and other health care institutions to consider adopting a four-stage design process for use in the specialized health care environment.

The four stages, which together help health care professionals to identify issues and create more effective solutions in a timely manner are: 1) contextual inquiry: understanding the way things currently work and seeing the nuances others have missed by immersion in the work; 2) problem definition: reexamining what the organization should be solving for in a way that avoids incremental improvement to a current process; 3) divergence: exploring alternatives to initial solutions; and 4) rapid validation: testing critical assumptions and proposed solutions quickly at low cost.

The authors write that each of the four stages of the design process can be applied by people already inside the health care setting. An advantage, they say, is that in contrast to many industries where the thought leaders are secluded in corporate headquarters, many of the thought leaders in health care organizations, including physicians and nurses, are right up front interacting with the "customers."

"Sometimes organizations think it's easier and more effective to spend a large sum of money on an outsourced shrink-wrapped solution when the expertise needed to identify and solve problems is already in the building," said co-author Roy Rosin, Penn Medicine's chief innovation officer. "Clinicians are mission driven to help their patients, and are constantly thinking of ways to improve health care delivery. If the focus were shifted toward creating and protecting time for staff to drive change from the inside, we could see the implementation of more successful solutions."

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Experts say 'insourcing' innovation may be the best approach to transforming health care

Health care reform lowered death rates in Mass., study finds

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Providing greater access to health insurance led to a decline in deaths, according to a new study of Massachusetts' health care reform law.

Massachusetts passed comprehensive health care reform in 2006, providing a model for the Affordable Care Act -- dubbed by some as "Obamacare." In the four years after the law took effect in Massachusetts, deaths from all causes dropped nearly 3 percent compared with similar counties in states without health reform, the study found.

Researchers estimate that the Massachusetts law prevented 320 deaths a year. That works out to one life saved for every 830 people who gained insurance.

The study, published in the May 6 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine also noted a 4.5 percent decline in deaths from preventable and treatable conditions, such as cancer, infections and heart disease.

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Massachusetts differs in many ways from the nation as a whole. But in a larger expansion of coverage, "there is a very real likelihood that you're going to help people live longer," said Dr. Benjamin Sommers, assistant professor of health policy and economics at Harvard School of Public Health and the study's lead author.

Much like Obamacare, the Massachusetts health care reform law expanded Medicaid, subsidized private health plans and created an individual mandate to hold people accountable for getting health coverage. The reforms took effect in 2006 and 2007, several years before President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law in 2010.

Using data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Sommers and colleagues examined changes in death rates for adults, ages 20 to 64, before and after the state enacted health reform, and compared them with the experience in similar counties in states that had not enacted health reform.

The largest gains in life occurred in counties with high poverty and higher rates of uninsured adults before health care reform.

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Health care reform lowered death rates in Mass., study finds

Deaths decline after Massachusetts health care reform

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Massachusetts' near-universal health coverage has resulted in reduced death rates in the state, particularly lowering the death rates among people with diseases, such as stroke and cancer, who benefit from timely health care, a new study has found.

During the four years after Massachusetts instituted a health care overhaul in 2006, death rates in the state decreased by about 3 percent, meaning there were eight fewer deaths than expected for every 100,000 people in the state, whereas rates didn't change over that time period in similar populations in states that didn't expand health coverage.

When the researchers looked at deaths only related to conditions that are more preventable or treatable with timely care for example, heart disease, stroke, cancer and infections they found the death rate decreased 4.5 percent over the four-year period.

The researchers estimated the coverage expansion saved one life per year for every 830 people who gained insurance, according to the study published May 5 in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

"Given that Massachusetts' health reform was, in many ways, the model for the Affordable Care Act, it is critical to understand the law's potential implications for population health," said study researcher Benjamin Sommers, assistant professor of health policy and economics at Harvard School of Public Health.

The Massachusetts' health care reform provided researchers a rather unique opportunity to study the effects of health insurance on health and mortality. It's been hard to figure out whether uninsured people have higher death rates because of barriers to health care, or because they tend to be on average sicker, have lower income and engage in more risky health behaviors such as smoking than insured individuals, Sommers said.

"So here, we take advantage of this natural experiment of Massachusetts doing something very different with its health care system than any other state, and we find there are significant effects on mortality," he said.

The researchers also found that changes in mortality rates were larger in Massachusetts' counties with lower household incomes and higher percentages of uninsured people compared with wealthier counties.

Better access to health care likely reduces death by allowing people to get the care they need once they're sick, as well as preventive care and chronic disease management, the researchers said in the study.

"We found that when [the] state expanded its health insurance, it led to decreases in cross barriers to care, and people were more likely to say that they had a usual source of care or primary care provider," Sommers said. "They were more likely to have doctor visits in the last year, and they described their health overall as being better."

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Deaths decline after Massachusetts health care reform

READER SUBMITTED: Evergreen Health Care Center Receives Five Star Rating

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Gregory Palmer, Johnson Memorial Medical Center Statewide

7:10 p.m. EDT, May 6, 2014

There are 229 nursing home and rehabilitation facilities in Connecticut. Fewer than 10 percent have a 5-star rating. This rating is determined by the outcomes of health inspections, nursing staff care, and nine different physical and clinical quality measures. To receive a 5-star rating from the Centers of Medicare/Medicaid, a nursing home and recovery center must exceed the quality requirements for health inspections, provide comprehensive care to patients individually, and surpass each of the nine quality measures.

Evergreen Health Care Center is part of the Johnson Memorial Medical Center (JMMC), and partner of Saint Francis Care health system. JMMC is a non-profit parent company of Johnson Memorial Hospital, Evergreen Health Care Center, and Home & Community Health Services. JMMC provides a continuum of health care services to those living and working in north central Connecticut and western Massachusetts. For more information, visit http://www.jmmc.com.

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READER SUBMITTED: Evergreen Health Care Center Receives Five Star Rating


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