PHOENIX--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Faced with escalating health-care costs, many employers are turning to worksite health programs to help employees adopt healthier lifestyles, decrease their risk of developing costly chronic diseases and improve productivity. Chronic illnesses account for a staggering 75 percent of the nations estimated $2.6 trillion in annual health-care costs.1

Viridian Health Management, a national leader committed to changing employee health behaviors through targeted, outcomes-based health improvement programs and services, will be speaking at the CGI America conference in Chicago on June 7-8, 2012. Former President Clinton will host this annual event focused on developing solutions that promote economic recovery in the United States.

As a CGI America participant, Viridian will join one of 12 topic-specific working groups that will share knowledge, build partnerships and generate a Commitment to Action. Viridians Commitment to Action, Empowering Small Employers to Impact Health and Productivity, will cover innovative strategies to engage small employers in worksite health, as well as share implementation and sustainability strategies. Viridians President and CEO Brenda Schmidt will lead the Healthy Workforce Working Group and examine how individuals, employers and community organizations can work together to improve community health.

Promoting healthy lifestyle choices through worksite health programs can improve the health and productivity of employees and their families, while lowering health-care costs that are driven by chronic diseases and modifiable health-risk behaviors, said Schmidt. We look forward to working with President Clinton and CGI America to address the challenges in developing and implementing cost-effective wellness programs, as well as establishing partnerships with other organizations that are also committed to improving the health of American workers.

Andy Spaulding, Director of the Viridian Center for Community and Worksite Health, will also attend CGI America, and will share Viridians Commitment to Action with CGI Americas entire Wellness Working Group.

Few small employers have the knowledge, capacity and resources to implement evidence-based programs to cost-effectively implement worksite health programs, added Spaulding. As part of our Commitment to Action, Viridian will develop a robust technology platform to impact employee health and productivity through employer worksite health initiatives. These programs aim to improve the health of employees, resulting in increased productivity, fewer workplace-related injuries and lower health-care costs.

Industry Thought Leaders in Worksite Health

Further positioning Viridian Health Management as an industry leader in worksite health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) awarded Viridian a national implementation contract in October 2011 to establish comprehensive worksite health programs based on Viridians proven ability to deliver evidence-based programs that enhance employee health, reduce chronic disease and lower health-care costs. The National Healthy Worksite Program (NHWP) will focus on employer and employee outcomes in the areas of implementing evidence-based interventions, improving nutritional status, increasing physical activity and reducing tobacco use through individual health coaching, environmental supports and workplace policies. As the NHWPs implementation contractor, Viridian will provide operational management of the program, conduct individual and organizational assessments, provide implementation support and data collection, and provide training to program participants.

Schmidt has also been invited to attend the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Colloquium in Washington, D.C. in June 2012. In addition, she will lead an innovator workshop at the Health Enhancement Research Organization (HERO) Forum in October 2012.

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Viridian Health Management Provides Best Practices to Integrate Safety and Health Promotion, Reduce Health-Care Costs ...

Call it the war on supersizing. Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to restrict the size of New Yorkers' soft drinks. He's been on the vanguard of public health policy before, with a 2002 indoor smoking ban and a trans-fat fight in 2006. Later efforts -- including an attempt to restrict food stamp recipients' ability to buy sugary drinks and a failed soda tax -- have been decidedly less successful.

There are logical governance reasons for this nanny-state meddling. Obesity is a major health issue, and New York State has one of the costliest health-care burdens per person in the United States. Controlling obesity would help control out-of-control health-care spending, or so the argument goes. However, banning soda may be the wrong way to rein in rising obesity rates and control out-of-control health-care spending -- but not for the reasons you might think.

Don't tread on my waistline Americans love their freedom of choice. Many were vocal on the issue after news broke of Bloomberg's soda crackdown. "How dare the government infringe on my right to suck down an entire toilet tank's worth of high fructose corn syrup?!" they cried. What most failed to realize is just how influential the government really is on its citizens' health choices, directly and indirectly. It's the indirect influence that I'd like to talk about. The source of our modern obesity epidemic, a plague of cheap corn, can largely be laid at the government's feet.

The cost of commodity corn ranged near $2 per bushel for decades before its recent spike, and about 10% of that cost was subsidized by direct government payments to farmers. From 1995 to 2009, corn farmers received an average of $5.3 billion a year in direct and indirect subsidies. That amounted to about $0.48 of total subsidies per bushel of corn in 2005. In this last "cheap" year for corn, subsidies made up a quarter of corn's total commodity price.

Michael Pollan explains the history and effects of the American government's role in corn production with far more depth and detail than I ever could. The best distillation of his why-we-eat-what-we-eat best-seller, The Omnivore's Dilemma, is this: "When food is abundant and cheap, people will eat more of it and get fat." And corn, easy to grow, easy to store, and extremely nutrient-dense, makes an ideal starting point for all manner of inexpensive byproducts.

Amber waves of really cheap grain Modern American agricultural policy goes back to the early '80s, when major grain buyers Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland (NYSE: ADM) began to directly influence the language of congressional farm bills. Commodity corn has been sold at the same low levels, roughly $2 per bushel, ever since, with the exception of a wide-ranging commodity price spike that began in 2007. The primary reason for this recent price increase is a massive surge in exports to China, which means we're now effectively subsidizing a future Chinese obesity crisis, too. Still, the cost of commodity corn remains only a small part of our final food costs.

Cheap corn has made its way into about a quarter of the groceries found in most supermarkets, almost all of it processed. A box of cereal is worth about $0.08 to farmers. It's "magically delicious" thanks to science, not farm labor. The industrial-scale mass production of cheap meat is possible because there is always enough cheap corn for feed -- over a hundred million tons of the stuff is gobbled up by farm animals each year.

The hidden health costs of corn American waistlines were largely under control before the plague of cheap corn. Obesity trends changed very little from 1960 to 1980, but from 1980 to 2000, American obesity rates doubled. In 2010, more than 78 million adults, and 12.5 million children, were obese. This obesity epidemic costs the country about $190 billion a year, or 21% of all health-care spending, according to a Cornell University study released earlier this year.

People who choose to drink that jumbo Slurpee do affect you when you pay higher taxes for Medicare and Medicaid. These programs combined to cover 93 million people in 2010, and it's worth noting that the poor and elderly are more likely to be obese than the general populace.

A chart put together by my colleague Morgan Housel shows the impact cheap corn has had on the nation's youth, though he might not have intended it to:

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Big Government, Bad Policy, and Rising Health-Care Costs

TOLEDO, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Health Care REIT, Inc. (HCN) announced today that senior management will present at the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT) REITWeek 2012 Investor Forum in New York. The presentation is scheduled for Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time.

The presentation will be simultaneously webcast and may be accessed at http://reitstream.com/reitweek2012/healthcarereit. An archive of the webcast will be available for 90 days after the event. Additionally, a written copy of presentation materials will be available on the Investor Relations section of Health Care REIT's website (www.hcreit.com).

About Health Care REIT

Health Care REIT, Inc., an S&P 500 company with headquarters in Toledo, Ohio, is a real estate investment trust that invests across the full spectrum of seniors housing and health care real estate. The company also provides an extensive array of property management and development services. As of March 31, 2012, the companys broadly diversified portfolio consisted of 956 properties in 46 states. More information is available on the companys website at http://www.hcreit.com.

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Health Care REIT to Present at the NAREIT 2012 Investor Forum

Let me tell you about Frank. At 86, he has heart disease, diabetes, and kidney failure. He lives at home but struggles with the 16 medications he must take every day. He could also use some social support--maybe an adult day program, help shopping, or just somebody to keep him company.

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Integrating Health Care and Long-Term Care

04-06-2012 16:51 At the House Summit on Community Solutions for Disconnected Youth, Council members and leaders from a range of local and national non-profit, philanthropic, business, government, and national service organizations discuss innovative community-developed initiatives that connecting young people to critical education and employment opportunities. June 4, 2012.

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White House Council on Community Solutions Summit - Video

Local exchanges and markets will be better for health care costs than Washington price-fixing.

Jim Bourg/Reuters

It is nobody's fault, but our health finance system has long been a disaster. Since World War II it has slowly evolved, with all the best intentions, into not one but at least three wholly separate entities--each with different infrastructures and different sets of perverse incentives for hospitals, doctors, and other providers. This nutty system of finance is the reason that health care expenses are swallowing the U.S. economy (and federal and state budgets), and that health care is our biggest domestic policy issue. The health care profession has always been quite honorable, but the reality is that these professionals--physicians, nurses, hospital administrators alike--aren't immune to financial incentives, and the incentives created by our current system are completely out of whack.

So what does the average local health care market look like?

1) Medicare: The almost 50 million Medicare beneficiaries (seniors and the disabled) make up about 16 percent of the U.S. population--but account for over 40 percent of the spending for the average health-care system, public or private. Medicare drives everything in local health economics, because seniors consume lots of health care and they are in the hospital often. For three-quarters of Medicare beneficiaries, traditional Medicare programs fix prices nationally. Think about that--every hospital and every doctor gets paid the same thing! Recently there have been minor variations through "Accountable Care Organizations" and other "pay-for-performance" models--but for the vast bulk of services, the worst hospital in town gets paid the same as the best.

Not surprisingly, this crazy pricing scheme incentivizes volume. Physicians try to see more patients; therapists try to do more therapy; hospitals try to book more surgeries. It is predictable human nature, and has been in every society in history. Health care is the only service in the U.S. where the government fixes prices--is it a surprise that volume has exploded?

2) Medicaid: Medicaid is the program for low-income Americans, including the disabled and the elderly (usually in long term care). Actually, Medicaid is not one program, it's 50 totally different state programs. Seventy-seven million Americans were on Medicaid at some point in 2011--almost 25 percent of the population, at a cost of $440 billion. And we plan to begin adding 18 million more Americans on January 1, 2014, for another $120 billion a year, under the Affordable Care Act.

Talk about a mess! Every state provides different coverage, and Medicaid is a chaotic hodgepodge of policy. Even worse, virtually all the states have succeeded in transferring much of the cost to the federal government over the past 25 years through "provider taxes," "intergovernmental transfers," and "upper payment limits," so that no state actually pays anything remotely close to its statutory "match rate." The entire program is a giant state refinancing scam. What initially was a 50-50 federal program, is now more than 70 percent federally financed, with some states, most notably New Hampshire, not contributing a single nickel of state general revenue. This lack of program integrity is a problem, because it makes the program unreformable. There is no policy equity among the states, so any reform proposal will create some winners and some losers, unless you spend even more money. So it will never happen.

States have increasingly moved to Medicaid managed care, but the bulk of daily health services are still paid in the old "fee-for-service" methodology. And guess what: those states also fix prices and pay all providers the same amount, almost always using the Medicare system as the reference payment. If you are a hospital or a health system, you already have 40 percent of your payment coming from Medicare, and in addition you probably have another 12-15 percent of your revenue coming from Medicaid. So 50-55 percent of your payments come from two giant price-fixed national programs--and you get paid the same rates, no matter the performance. How's that for an incentive structure?

3) Commercial Insurers/Blue Cross/Employer Plans: Private insurance generally makes up another 35-40 percent of the health care spending total (the uninsured fill in the remainder). There are a few markets with dominant Blue Cross plans that actually have leverage. But in most markets there are a handful of insurers: rarely does any one player have more than 20 percent of the market, and often it is far less. So why would a hospital care intensely about improving performance, or cutting prices to meet the demands of Aetna, Cigna, or United, when those companies rarely wield significant market share and are bit players compared to Medicare and Medicaid? In fact, most commonly, insurers still pay a percentage of--you guessed it--the Medicare fee schedule. Ask a doctor or hospital what an insurer pays them, and you will likely get "105 percent of DRGs" (the Medicare hospital fee) or "103 percent of RVUs" (the Medicare doctor schedule).

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Health Professionals Will Respond to Incentives, If We Only Let Them

Bill Roshon, healthcare focus group: Bill Roshon, Southwest Florida Works, discusses the healthcare industry focus group. By staff writer Tim Engstrom. Bill Roshon of Southwest Florida Works, was impressed by the speed at which educators focused on soft skils. / Terry Allen Williams/news-press.com

For more information on local programs organized by the Southwest Florida Workforce Development Board, log on to swflworks.org

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Push for health care professionalism progresses

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Published: 6/6/2012 - Updated: 33 minutes ago

BY CLAUDIA BOYD-BARRETT BLADE STAFF WRITER

A clear victory for legislation to extend health-care benefits to the domestic partners of city employees unexpectedly crashed Tuesday after Toledo Mayor Mike Bell threatened to veto an ordinance for which he spent more than a month lobbying.

The mayor's surprise turnaround came after City Council voted to amend his original proposal to include a clause allowing Toledo's main firefighters' union to reopen negotiations on its health-care contract with the city.

The vote to amend came despite vigorous opposition from city law director Adam Loukx, who said the amendment went beyond council's authority under city law.

Local 92, which represents more than 500 firefighters, operates its own health-care fund and could become financially stretched by the extension of coverage to domestic partners, councilman D. Michael Collins argued. Eight of 12 councilmen agreed with him and voted to allow renegotiation of what the city pays per employee into the union's health-care fund.

"I believe it's only fair," Mr. Collins said. He chided the administration for not telling the union during contract negotiations this year that it was considering the extension of benefits to domestic partners. "They should have known that there was going to be a policy change."

Council then approved the domestic partner legislation, 9-3. Councilmen George Sarantou, Rob Ludeman, and Tom Waniewski voted against it.

They needn't have bothered.

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Mayor vows veto on health benefits

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Doubts raised as House looks to cut health costs

By Richard Rubin and Kathleen Hunter - 2012-06-06T04:01:43Z

Senate Democrats from states including Minnesota and Pennsylvania are caught between their support for medical-device industries and their partys reluctance to make major changes to the 2010 health-care law.

The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to vote this week to repeal a 2.3 percent excise tax for medical devices. To Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, the vote is part of a Republican attack on the health law. To Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat seeking a second term, the repeal is necessary to prevent harm to an industry that provides jobs in her state.

Senator Klobuchar is faced with a difficult choice between voting the kind of narrow particularistic interest of industry in her state versus voting her personal and partisan platform, said Lawrence Jacobs, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota.

Klobuchar, first elected in 2006, has been a knight in shining armor for a home-state industry that includes St. Jude Medical Inc. and Medtronic Inc. (MDT), Jacobs said. Medtronics employees have been the seventh-largest contributors to Klobuchars campaign this election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Device companies have been lobbying to undo the tax, and the House repeal bill sponsored by Minnesota Republican Erik Paulsen is co-sponsored by more than 55 percent of the House.

Congress included the tax in the 2010 health-care law as a way to help pay for expansion of health insurance coverage. The 2.3 percent excise tax will be levied on devices such as coronary stents and hip implants that arent sold directly to consumers.

Similar fees and taxes were levied on health insurers, pharmaceutical companies and the indoor tanning industry. The law passed without a single Republican vote, and the party has been trying to undo it since, even as the Supreme Court considers its constitutionality.

Efforts to pick apart the health-care legislation are finding favor with some Democrats who agreed to the measure despite misgivings about individual provisions.

Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, said hes looking for ways to force a vote on the issue.

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U.S. Medical Device Backers Face Tough Health Care Vote

His long hair, goatee and mutton-chop sideburns hint at his years in rock bands in the 1980s, but Erny Papay hardly fits the stereotype of the irresponsible, risk-taking musician. Now in his 50s, his main gigs are quite wholesome: playing kids' songs at preschools, old-time tunes for retirees, and contemporary worship music at a Lutheran church. He and his wife, Karen, live in Monroeville, and have two grown sons, one of whom is also a professional musician.

Papay also juggles 60 students, teaching piano, guitar and bass. It takes a lot of lessons to cover the couple's health insurance premiums, which total $1,400 every month. He's considered taking the risk of not having health insurance. "But one of us seems to end up in the hospital each year," Papay says he calls it "the $10,000 visit to the spa.'"

Whether they're piano teachers or punk rockers, part-time or full-time, musicians have a tougher time than most when it comes to finding health insurance. According to a survey by the Future of Music Coalition, one in three musicians is uninsured nearly twice the 17 percent national average.

Like many lifelong musicians, Papay held a regular job for many years; as a chemist, he received healthcare benefits through his employer. When the company eliminated his position in 2001, music became his full-time job. For 18 months, he relied on COBRA, a federally mandated program that allows people to continue with their group health plan temporarily after leaving a job. Eventually, though, he had to look elsewhere.

Papay's current policy, through UPMC, is an improvement over earlier plans inferior coverage that cost him $2,000 each month. But the Papays cut corners where they can, passing up dental insurance, for example.

Papay's experience is not unique, suggests research by the FMC, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group. Its survey of 1,451 musicians found that most of those with insurance obtained it through employment outside their musical activity. And the more working hours you devote to your music, the less likely you are to have insurance. Of survey respondents who earn more than half of their income from music, four in ten are uninsured.

In some ways, a musician's challenges resemble those of any freelancer trying to obtain adequate, affordable coverage in a health-care system geared toward those with full-time employment. The FMC suggests musicians face "structural barriers" to obtaining coverage. Musicians often work on contract, "performing or composing for specific events, albums or projects." Without a steady employer, "[T]hey must seek out individual health insurance policies." And those are frequently far more expensive than insurance obtained through a group plan.

Kevin Erickson, a spokesperson for the group, says the group may take up the issue again, depending on how the Supreme Court rules on President Obama's health-care overhaul.

Even full-time, "professional" musicians are affected: 35 percent are uninsured. But for the most part, these are the lucky ones, members of a group that includes symphony musicians and others with relatively high, union-negotiated salaries and benefits. It's a group that also includes Erny Papay's 32-year-old son, Jeremy.

Jeremy Papay has spent nearly four years on the road playing drums for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus. Living in an RV, he drives to a new town each week to play several shows. The circus musicians carry a union card, and their employer provides competitive salaries, health insurance and other benefits.

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Health-care Blues

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BOSTON As the Massachusetts House of Representatives debates a bill that some are touting as a way to rein in health care costs, one conservative-leaning think tank has raised concerns over its projected savings.

State representatives began their debate Tuesday on a bill that House leaders have said will save the state's economy more than $160 billion over the next 15 years.

The bill is designed to even out disparities in the costs of hospital services by requiring hospitals that charge more than 20 percent above the state median price for a service to pay a 10 percent surcharge into a fund to help support hospitals serving the poor and most vulnerable.

Among many things, it also would reduce premiums for patients who show they're committed to maintaining their health and overhaul medical malpractice laws by letting doctors apologize without fearing a lawsuit. It also sets guidelines for the size of "accountable care organizations" - health care networks that take a coordinated approach to medicine. There are already five such organizations in Massachusetts.

Joshua Archambault, the director of Health Care Policy at the Pioneer Institute in Boston, said much of the bill's expected savings is contingent upon other factors.

According to his analysis, only 40 percent of Massachusetts residents would be directly affected by the bill, as they are fully covered by traditional private insurance companies. Meanwhile, 60 percent of residents would not be affected because they receive coverage through Medicare, self-insured companies, are federal employees or are already on MassHealth, the state's Medicaid program.

He said while the bill aims to lower health care costs by an average of around $10 billion a year, publicly available data suggests health care costs for patients who would be affected by the legislation average around $13 billion a year. That means that either those patients would need to nearly eliminate their health care costs, or more self-insured companies would need to join the state's plan or another one affected by the legislation, in order for the plan to work, he said.

Because of this, he called the House's proposal a "faith-based initiative," adding that he believes bill increases spending through provisions like the one-time hospital surcharge for the distressed hospital fund, which he said would cost consumers millions of dollars.

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House begins health care bill debate

BOSTON, June 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The U.S. faces major obstacles in taking advantage of "value-based health care"one of the most promising developments in health care, according to a new study by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120606/NY19587 )

BCG assessed the progress of 12 developed-world countries in adopting value-based health care, an approach to better controlling health care costs by improving health outcomes at the same or lower cost. The results of the assessment appear in a report titled Progress Toward Value-Based Health Care: Lessons from 12 Countries, which is being released today.

The assessment evaluates national health systems along two dimensions. The first is the degree to which key supports of value-based health care are in place at the national levelfor example, common national standards and IT infrastructure, national legal and consent frameworks, the ability to link health outcomes with costs, and high engagement on the part of clinicians and policymakers. The second is the quality of a country's existing disease registries (institutions that track selected health outcomes in a population of patients with the same diagnosis or who have undergone the same medical procedure), both in terms of the richness of the data and the sophistication of the medical community's use of the data.

"When it comes to implementing value-based health care, Sweden is the most advanced country of the 12 we studied, followed by Singapore, Canada, and the U.K.," said Neil Soderlund, a BCG partner and coauthor of the report. "By contrast, Germany and Hungary have the furthest to go."

The U.S. health system, which has the highest per capita costs of the 12 nations studied and spends 17.6 percent of GDP on health care, is also one of the laggards in the group. "The U.S. has some successful national disease registries, such as the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Patient Registry, the Society for Thoracic Surgeons' STS National Database, and the American College of Cardiology's CathPCI Registry," said Peter Lawyer, a BCG senior partner and coauthor of the report. "And some integrated players such as Kaiser Permanente have made considerable progress in using clinical outcomes in their own patient populations to identify and disseminate best practices across their centers."

However, the fragmented nature of the U.S. health-care system has seriously limited the collection and use of national health-outcome data. "Reporting standards and clinical outcome metrics differ substantially across the system, even within the same speciality," said Lawyer. "There currently exists no national mechanism for compelling providers to report outcomes to disease registries. Nor is there a unique patient identifier in place that would enable research to combine data across different disease states to examine the effect of complex comorbidities."

Detailed International Comparisons

The report is one of the most detailed international comparisons of progress toward value-based health care, combining a top-down assessment of national enablers with a bottom-up assessment of data quality and use at existing disease registries across 12 major health conditions. It uses 35 specific assessment criteria developed on the basis of previous BCG research in the field, a comprehensive survey of the medical literature, and 139 interviews with representatives of national health departments and with international health-outcome experts.

"We learned that a number of countries have begun to build the infrastructure and processes to support a value-based approach, but some are significantly farther along the learning curve than others," said Stefan Larsson, MD, a BCG senior partner and coauthor of the report. "Despite this differential in development and despite major differences in the structure and organization of national health-care systems, there is much to learn from each country."

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U.S. Faces Obstacles to Improving Health Care Value

It's the single most contentious element of President Barack Obama's health care law: the requirement that nearly everyone have insurance or face a financial hit.

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In Mass., individual mandate sparks little outcry

04-06-2012 09:54 A 0:15 spot with Princess Darien, a cancer patient, sponsored by Carolinas Kids Cancer Research Coalition and Levine Children's Hospital. (0:15)

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Princess Darien - Carolinas HealthCare System - Video

LEWISTONWhat to expect from the planned changes in health care and what issues will affect peoples care will be discussed at a community presentation called Health Care Reform: What it will mean for our community and small business, from 8 to 9:30 a.m. June 13 in the Community Room of Our Lady of Peace nursing care residence, 5285 Lewiston Road.

The panel discussion and question period will be sponsored by Mount St. Marys Hospital and the Niagara River Region Chamber of Commerce. It will include a discussion of collaborative efforts to share important clinical information to improve the quality and reduce the cost of medical care.

A continental breakfast at 7:30 a.m. will precede the program. Advance registration is required with Fred Caso, St. Marys vice president for community relations, at fred.caso@msmh.org.

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Health care reform is topic of June 13 presentation

PITTSBURGH -- While most of the nation is still trying to claw its way out of the deep economic crater left by the recession, this one-time steel capital is already out -- thanks largely to the relentless growth in health care jobs.

Partly because of the outsized ambitions of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, the health care industry has replaced manufacturing as the regions powerhouse. About 1 in 5 private-sector employees in the Pittsburgh area today work at a hospital, a doctors office or in some other health services business.

But even as the health care boom sped up Pittsburghs recovery, the economic transformation has left many people worried about the side effects.

Among the concerns: overdependence on a rapidly shifting industry, huge nonprofits that dont generate much in tax revenue, and a business model that exacerbates the disparity in income among workers.

And thats not just in Pittsburgh.

This is the U.S. in a microcosm, Eileen Appelbaum, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said about the rise of health care and the issues that has wrought.

Through April, health care services have added about 770,000 to their payrolls since the start of the economic recovery in June 2009 -- about one-third of all new jobs, according to the U.S. Labor Department.

But, spending for medical care is nearing one-fifth of the U.S. economy, much more than in other developed nations and beyond what governments, businesses and consumers can afford.

Health care has fueled job growth for a generation. When Pittsburghs steel industry began its collapse in the early 1980s, health care employment was a third of manufacturings.

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Health care boosts Pittsburgh

A venture fund targeting strategic investments in companies that aim to improve delivery of health-care services has made its first two investments after recently raising $157 million.

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Health-care venture fund raises $157M, makes first two investments

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., June 5, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- To help the nation's health care providers move from paper-based records to digitized data, Verizon has outlined tips for transitioning to electronic health records. A digital collection of a patient's medical history, EHRs enable faster, more accurate exchange of patient information among payers, providers and patients while enhancing portability of the information.

"We are committed to empowering the health care ecosystem to embrace heath IT and EHRs as the means to improving patient care while controlling costs," said Peter Tippett. "EHRs serve as the fundamental building blocks to digitizing all future health care data. This digital age will help reduce medical errors and redundant patient testing, while improving access and storage of patient information."

The following tips can simplify the navigation process for health care professionals moving to EHR system.

1) Put the Patient First: By focusing on what will improve patient care, you will be able to receive returned benefits. For example, EHRs can reduce the chances of patients receiving medications they are allergic to, which in turn can prevent lengthened hospital stays or lawsuits.

2) Maintain Security of Patient Information: Protect patient information from hackers. According to the "Verizon 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report," health care and social assistance industry groups represented more than 7 percent of the total breaches Verizon analyzed in 2011.

3) Be Mindful of Compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act: Compliance teams must be aware of the challenges in protecting the privacy of patient information once it goes digital. While smart device users are used to accessing and sharing any information they please, HIPAA requirements must be addressed within the digital transition. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has a helpful resource page for health care providers, with information about EHR privacy and security: http://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/privacy-security.

4) Evaluate Workflow Integration: Health care organizations must evaluate the impact of EHR integration into their clinical administrative work flow. Typically, not enough time is devoted to the upfront planning with end users to help with continuous work flow.This step will help keep costs and time projections on target.

5) Communicate and Educate: Communicate your EHR program goals to the entire staff. For many, embracing a new technology can be a difficult and unwelcomed challenge. Knowledge is power, and the more staffers know about EHR benefits, the more likely they will be to embrace the technology. Consider hosting training seminars, and establish staff resources such as a frequently-asked-questions sheet.

6) Influence the Influencers: Work with your entire staff, and help early adopters and IT leaders set examples and build proof that the EHRs help improve processes, efficiencies and patient care.

7) Embrace the Consumerization of IT: Various physicians prefer different smart devices. Supporting the devices they prefer can help with the transition to unfamiliar EHR software.

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Verizon Provides Tips to Help the Transition to Electronic Health Records

04-06-2012 09:59 A 0:15 spot with Justine, a cancer patient, sponsored by Carolinas Kids Cancer Research Coalition and Levine Children's Hospital. (0:15)

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Justine - Carolinas HealthCare System - Video