San Francisco-based ConsejoSano, which makes a health services navigation platform for Spanish speakers in America, has raised $4.9 million in Series A funding in a round led by 7wire Ventures. Tufts Health Ventures, TOTAL Impact Capital, Wanxiang Healthcare Investments, Acumen, Oxeon Partners and Impact Engine also contributed, bringing the companys total funding to date at $7.2 million.

The company, whose name means HealthyAdvice in Spanish, mainly works with health plans, employers and at-risk providers who are trying to increase engagement from their Spanish-speaking customers, employees and patients. ConsejoSanos integrated platform arms clients with multi-channel messaging, care navigation, data analytics and 24/7 access to native Spanish-speaking medical navigators. The latest funding will be used to develop more sophisticated data collection and analytics that will be parlayed into preventive care.While many healthcare and technology companies offer Spanish-language options,like Anthem BlueCross's Spanish telemedicineand messaging capabilities, most function as add-ons to the more comprehensive services offered mainly in English. That's where ConsejoSano wants to set itself apart.

America is bilingual, but healthcare isnt, ConsejoSano on its website, referencing the 54 million Hispanic people in the country, of whom 73 percent prefer to speak Spanish. Working off the fact that mobile phone penetration among the Hispanic population is significant 92 percent own a cellphone, according to a 2015 Research Center survey ConsejoSano offers secure, two-way text messaging so users can reach out directly to their target population with timely, customized information and behavior change programs.

"The extraordinary interest we have received from clients seeking to better serve their Spanish speaking employees, insured customers, and patients has clearly demonstrated the need for ConsejoSano's unique services," ConsejoSano Founder and CEO Abner Mason said in a statement. "Over 40 million people in the United States prefer or need to speak in Spanish about healthcare issues, and we're committed to helping clients and partners to provide the care and support they deserve."

ConsejoSano was founded in 2014, and it was selected as a preferred vendor by global consultancy firm Mercer last year. Among their first clients were LaSalle Medical Associates, a large Southern California provider that primarily serves a Medicaid population, and labor union health plan Unite Here Health, which serves restaurant and hotel workers. The company also has an Industry Advisory Council of healthcare professionals with a mission to reduce healthcare disparities for Hispanics across the country.

Todays health care system can often be complex, and almost impossible to navigate for those who speak a primary language other than English, Derek Abruzzese, managing director of Tufts Health Ventures and chief strategy officer of Tufts Health Plan, said in a statement. ConsejoSano performs a very important service for its clients, simplifying the complicated health care world for Spanish speaking individuals. This investment is in line with our mission of improving the health and wellness of the diverse communities we serve.

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ConsejoSano raises $4.9M for Spanish-language healthcare services platform - MobiHealthNews

The annual Lake Nona Impact Forum takes place this weekatMedical City, bringing together several U.S. Surgeons General, health-care executives, policy experts and public figures like Dr. Deepak Chopra.

Officials will also announce new health and well-being initiatives for the Lake Nona community.

Now in its fifth year, the Impact Forum was inspired by other well-known forums for thought leaders such as the Aspen Institute.

What makes the conference unique is its local role.

The meeting aims to familiarizethe world with Lake Nona Medical City, and presentLake Nona as a living lab fortesting ideas and creating potential partnerships, said Gloria Caulfield, executive director of the Impact Forum.

Most folks who come to Impact Forum say they had no idea that theres this vibrant life-science center here, she said.We want to tell people and business leaders that this community cares about promoting Orlando as a destination for companies that to bring high-paying jobs in life-science, technology, health and wellness.

Achieving thisgoal may be a bit tricky and even more important this year, because right across the street from where the conference is being held, sits Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute. Central Floridas only nonprofit research institute was one of the Impact Forums hosts last year, but is now planning to leave Florida.

This year, the forum is held in a walking distance from Sanford Burnham at GuideWell Innovation Center, UCF College of Medicine and UF Research & Academic Center.

The choice of meeting location wasnt so much because of changes at Sanford Burnham, butbecause of new opportunities that have presented themselves since last year, including the opening of the GuideWell Innovation buildinglast March, said Caulfield, vice president of strategic alliance at Tavistock.

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The 3-day invitation-only conferenceaims to have a more direct call to action message for its guest, particularly because itstakingplace during a year when the U.S. health-care system is at its most volatile.

Weve never had an interesting time like this, with a new administration and lot of questions and uncertainty regarding health care, said Caulfield. So this is the time to remind this audience that its not about the status quo and that innovation is crucial to the path forward.

In addition to health-care and policy leaders, the conference is also hosting executives from industry giants like Google and LinkedIn.

Its always been a goal for us to have more of those prominent guests to help re-imagine what they would do with technology weve invested in here, said Caulfield.

Since last years Impact Forum, Lake Nona has introduced a healthy smart home named WHIT, and has opened the doors to GuideWell Innovation CoRE, a co-working space for health startups.

Both grew from ideas brought up during one of the conferences, Caulfield said.

The Impact Forum kicks off on Wednesday evening, with remarks by UCF College of Medicine dean Dr. Deborah German, City of Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs. It wraps up on Friday with a discussion about the future of public health by a panel of former U.S. Surgeons General Dr. David Satcher, Dr. Antonia Novello, Dr. Richard Carmona and Dr. Jocelyn Elders. CNNs Sanjay Gupta will moderate the panel.

The public isnt completely excluded from the conference.

Certain sessions will be live-streamed on Impact ForumsFacebook page. Videos from other sessions will be available at a later date onthe forumswebsite.

Also, Chopra will lead a free meditation session for Lake Nona residents on Thursday evening.

Johnson & Johnson is the conferences main sponsor.

nmiller@orlandosentinel.com, 407-420-5158,@naseemmiller

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Annual Lake Nona Impact Forum tackles future of US health care - Orlando Sentinel

Forbes

GOP, This Is What Americans Want From Health Care Reform Forbes Just like the passage of Obamacare was a raucous affair, the dismantling of the law is on the same path. Rep. Jason Chaffetz felt the wrath of his constituents at his town hall meeting in Utah. Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Florida started a heated discussion ... Discrimination-free health careThe Missoulian Insurers ramp up lobbying for favorable changes to health care lawMyPalmBeachPost Mid-level provider funding should be removed in new health care lawBucks County Courier Times The Columbian -PR Watch -Hudson Valley One all 108 news articles »

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GOP, This Is What Americans Want From Health Care Reform - Forbes

New York Times

After Health Care Law Repeal, What? Wisconsin Republican Can't Say New York Times The questions from voters on display this weekend at a series of town-hall-style meetings in Wisconsin's Fifth Congressional District, many of which were focused on the future of the health care law, underscored the quandary many lawmakers are facing ... and more »

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After Health Care Law Repeal, What? Wisconsin Republican Can't Say - New York Times

Miami Herald

Wealthy Miami Beach executive charged anew with bribing state healthcare regulators Miami Herald Philip Esformes, a healthcare executive worth millions, has a very large closet in his two-story, Mediterranean-style home on North Bay Road near the exclusive La Gorce Country Club in Miami Beach. And in that bedroom closet, prosecutors say ... and more »

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Wealthy Miami Beach executive charged anew with bribing state healthcare regulators - Miami Herald

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Kaitlyn Hood had to have surgery that cost $50,547. But unlike Matthew Stewart, a young man with liver disease who faces bankruptcy and perhaps death, Hood managed to stay safely within the (otherwise tattered) American safety net.

Like Stewart, Hood fell ill with an autoimmune disease that required serious and expensive surgery. But because her insurance actually worked, her condition was fixed without undue expense and she is continuing to live a productive life. It illustrates an undeniable fact: Despite the Byzantine complexity of the extant American health care system, its most critical problems are not remotely difficult to solve.

Hood's story began in 2012, during her second year of grad school at UCLA. She started having serious pains in her abdomen, which after much weight loss was eventually diagnosed as colitis (inflammation of the bowel) caused by Crohn's disease. She was prescribed steroids and Humira, a drug for Crohn's which helped a lot. However, she continued having pain, which dramatically worsened during a trip to Tennessee. She went to the ER, where they diagnosed appendicitis, and had emergency surgery which removed not just her appendix but also six inches of necrotic intestine.

She eventually recovered, but the immune problem later cropped up in the form of arthritis, requiring more expensive drugs, plus yet more to treat the side effects from the others.

While Hood's condition is probably not quite as severe as Stewart's, the broad strokes are very similar. She has a complicated, life-threatening illness requiring expensive treatment, including an invasive surgery that cost over $50,000, according to medical bills she provided to The Week. No non-rich person, much less a grad student, could possibly have paid for her drugs (Humira alone is some $5,000 per month) and surgery if she were on the hook for it all.

But that's not what happened. As her bills show, once Hood hit a $200 deductible, she was not charged one cent to fix her intestine. She was not just insured, but doubly insured, she says, being enrolled both on the school's plan and her parents' plan (she was young enough at the time to qualify for the ObamaCare rule about children under 26). Premiums were $300 per month, part of which UCLA paid for, drug copays summed to $110 per month, and her out-of-pocket maximum was a "mere" $2,000. Expensive, but easily within reach.

All this allowed her to live a normal life again. "Before I was diagnosed, I was in constant pain I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, I lost like 30 pounds in three months," she says. "And when I was having this arthritis pain, I had a hard time just moving, I couldn't even get off the couch for a couple weeks. So having all this treatment makes a big difference in my life and in my work in how much I can work, how productive I can be."

Without treatment that was provided to her essentially for free, Hood would have unquestionably been forced to drop out and might easily have died. Instead, she recovered, stayed in school, and eventually graduated with a Ph.D. in applied mathematics in 2016. She's now a postdoc at MIT, where she's working on cancer screening research, angling for a professorship, and mentoring young girls in math and science, she says.

The differences between Hood's and Stewart's case are a great lesson in designing the basic architecture of a health care system.

First, all but the very rich must have access to some sort of comprehensive insurance scheme if they are to avoid being bankrupted by serious illness, because modern medical treatment can be extremely expensive.

Second, as a necessary corollary, insurance pools should be made as large as possible, so as to spread the cost of treatment as widely as possible. Luckily for every Hood out there, there are dozens of people like me who virtually never go to the doctor, and so they must be brought into the risk pool.

Third, regulations should tamp down the price of care as much as practicable, so as to prevent the total cost of treatment outstripping the general economy's ability to pay.

The most simple method of attacking this problem is single-payer public insurance plus price control. A single government-operated risk pool for everyone, which all providers must accept, one and done. That's the approach in Canada, Australia, and Taiwan (which incidentally all call their systems "Medicare"). Others have single-payer and single-provider, where the government also owns and operates the hospitals, as in the U.K. Others, such as Switzerland, have an ObamaCare-style approach but are far more aggressive both with penalties for uninsurance and with subsidies, so no one is left out or unable to pay.

There are many complicated problems in the American health care system that will take more careful thought and regulation to fix. There are not enough doctors, the salary structure across medical sub-professions is completely bananas, providers routinely kill people with inept care, many providers have become monopolies, and on and on. Many countries have problems like this, and are constantly tinkering with their policies to patch things up here and there.

But none of those are the really big problems with American health care. We have problems of access and payment, the basic solutions for which were obvious in the early 20th century. There is a huge policy buffet we could choose from, developed by dozens of other countries that nailed this problem decades ago.

The political obstacles are considerable, of course. The reason ObamaCare is such a janky mess is that it was so compromised by capitulation to nearly every concerned interest group (and attack by the Supreme Court) that it didn't even get up to the standard of Europe in the 1940s.

But Hood's story shows that, if we could get the politics sorted, universal and affordable health care could be easily made to work. People who are well-insured get decent treatment. All that is needed is the political strength necessary to ram obviously good policy through our antiquated constitutional government.

Link:

Why fixing American health care is easy - The Week Magazine

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Posted: Feb 13, 2017 10:48 AM

The CNN healthcare debate between Senators Ted Cruz & Bernie Sanders on February 7 was dubbed a success by the network, ranking first in its cable time slot. With healthcare once again thrust into the headlines, and with two big personalities squaring off, this was certainly the marquee event, as was advertised. It turned out to be what one would have expected; a clash of ideologies, but a deeper look into what was said, and specifically what wasnt, turned out to be most revealing.

Senator Sanders positions contained very little substance as he clung to his talking points which reflected his belief that healthcare was a right and that the government needed to provide it for everyone. Senator Cruz countered with several lines of attack, first giving an explanation regarding his interpretation of the definition of rights, maintaining that government giving something to individuals, in this case healthcare, did not constitute a right. He asked why would we want to give the government MORE control over Americans healthcare, when they have done such a miserable job managing things up to this point? Cruz concluded with the point that individuals are better at making healthcare decisions for themselves than the government. When the government does so, as in socialized countries, it leads to rationing- the government deciding what kind of care a patient may receive.

It was interesting that both men agreed that a big part of the problem stemmed from greed and excessive influence of special interests. Insurance and pharmaceutical companies were specifically singled out. Where they differed was their approach to solving this problem, retreating to their respective corners of the ring, with government control on one side versus a free market solution on the other.

The Senators missed the biggest problem in healthcare however, which is not surprising because everyone else has as well - the high cost of care. The healthcare reform debate has focused exclusively on insurance coverage and access. What plan will the GOP create to replace Obamacare? Although a market based approach to healthcare insurance as is being offered by the GOP will result in substantial savings, the current cost of healthcare is unnecessarily high and will continue to be a strain on the American economy. There is a way out of this, but it does not appear to be on anyones radar.

The third major special interest, which went unmentioned in this debate is the hospital industry. Obamacare accelerated a trend which was to drive healthcare into the hospitals- the costliest place of delivery. It is folly to believe that taking an approach which focuses only on making insurance more affordable without doing something about the high costs of the healthcare itself, will have a significant impact on overall costs. Why should services be 5-10 times as expensive in the hospital as they would in free standing facilities? It defies logic.

There are many other factors that contribute to the high cost of healthcare that also need to be addressed. The third party payer system hides the true cost of healthcare, which really is not expensive when all of the overhead created by government and insurance bureaucracy is removed. Medical malpractice and frivolous lawsuits has created an adversarial relationship between doctors and patients giving rise to the practice of defensive medicine- performing an extra test or procedure, just in case something rare could have been missed. This practice results in annual costs between $200- $600 billion of mostly unnecessary spending that could be returned to patients.

The other major disappointment with this debate were the questions from the audience. CNN undoubtedly had an agenda in the selection of the questions and those chosen to ask them. It appeared that they wished to showcase typical victims the ones who would lose their coverage if Obamacare is repealed. While this is understandably a concern for millions, and people are nervous, it might have been more illuminating to hear questions about other problems that are damaging our healthcare system and how Washington plans to deal with these issues. CNN squandered an opportunity to bring a doctor into the debate; one who was sitting in the first row and happens to be an expert in healthcare information technology and its problems. He was prepared with an important and insightful question but CNN thought otherwise.

In this latest round of the healthcare fight in America, a prudent person would realize that the so-called experts on healthcare- the policy wonks, the politicians, the healthcare economists, didnt do so well the last time. To go back to what Senator Cruz said in this debate- why would we want to give them another chance at it? It is time to hear from the real experts in healthcare; those who have had to deal with the misery created by these faux experts. It is astounding how once again, the medical community has been excluded from this debate. CNN had a chance to begin to change the conversation by bringing a doctor into the discussion, but chose not to. They simply blew it.

Trump White House Files Paperwork For En Banc Hearing At Ninth Circuit Over Executive Order

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Reflections on the CNN Healthcare Debate - Townhall

Editor's note: This is part one of a four-part series that will be published throughout the week.

Consumer behavior has dramatically changed with the introduction of digital and mobile mediums. This is a change that has affected many industries and, while healthcare has been slower to adapt than others, were now shifting our focus to embrace consumerism.

Traditionally, healthcare has relied on connections among healthcare providers, payers, pharmaceutical or medical device companies and other auxiliary players, while still requiring the patient to manage their own care. The fragmentation of care caused by this delivery model has led to high-cost treatment rather than the prevention of disease through systematic, patient-specific interventions.

Legislation such as the Affordable Care and HITECH acts, as well as MACRA and increasing global sensitivities to a fragmented healthcare culture, have contributed to the shift toward value-based, consumer-focused care.

Under these initiatives, the healthcare industry has officially shifted focus to the patient while establishing a coordinated, cohesive effort among all health industry players to deliver more effective and efficient care. This model also transfers some responsibility of healthcare back to the patient, enabling them to make decisions for their own healthcare across various touchpoints. The high-level motivation behind granting patients access to their health information is the idea that involving them will make them more aware of their health risks and enable them to become more invested in improving their health.

Projections of global healthcare spend based off historical and current trends indicate an increase from 6 percent of a countrys GDP to almost 9 percent in 2030 and even 14 percent by 2060. The industry cant sustain that forecast, and providers, vendors and payers alike are being forced to find new ways to manage cost and mitigate risk.

Our industry is diligently working to understand and address the evolution of the healthcare consumer. However, it is still a reactive response. Instead, we need to proactively and strategically prepare for and manage the evolution.

The proliferation of smart devices, apps and wearables have the potential to empower individuals to manage their health before intervention is needed. Looking at the demographics of the U.S. market today, millennials have surpassed baby boomers as the nations largest living generation, making up nearly a quarter of the U.S. population.

Millennials are also changing their healthcare consumption habits: 41 percent said they view a doctor as the best source of health information, compared with 68 percent of respondents from other generations, according to a new survey by GHG/Greyhealth Group and Kantar Health. This generation has an appetite for digital resources and consumer-oriented apps that connect their transactions to their personal health journey in real-time.

While nearly the entire acute care market is live on an electronic health record system, government entities are also investing in digital records and contributing to the advancement of the consumer-oriented healthcare industry. The U.S. Department of Defense selected Cerners EHR to connect the health information of servicemembers across the world. This relationship will help Cerner enhance our offering for global consumers and identify opportunities to enhance data exchange among devices that undergo intermittent periods of connectivity.

Health systems are augmenting their strategies, too. Many are opening retail clinics in local community centers, building micro-hospitals and additional outpatient centers or incorporating new service lines heavily predicated on community involvement like sports medicine outreach.

As payment reform places a greater emphasis on patient satisfaction and value-based outcomes, many healthcare systems have reacted by adding C-suite executives who are solely focused on the patient experience. The emerging roles in health systems covering this important topic Chief Patient Officer, Chief Experience Officer, Chief Strategy Officer are charged to better connect with their patient populations by adopting best practices from other consumer-facing sectors like electronics and the hospitality industry.

Were seeing major consumer companies such as Apple, Google and Amazon investing in healthcare, national shopping chains opening retail clinics, health systems opening grocery stores and pharmaceutical companies developing apps for patients to track symptoms and improve compliance. These are just a few of the marketplace innovations and evolutions established as a result of this great consumer behavior shift.

Were still at the forefront of healthcares consumer evolution. To address our evolving regulatory environment, changing patient expectations and the onset of value-based care, health systems need to continue to adapt and engage with their patients as consumers and understand that consumers in this space will be empowered to dictate what constitutes as value going forward.

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Healthcare industry, or consumer health industry? - Healthcare IT News

Vatican | Feb. 13, 2017

New versions purpose is to remove question marks from modern ethical concerns.

VATICAN CITY The Vatican has issued an updated version of their charter for health care workers, removing question marks from modern ethical concerns such as euthanasia and the creation of human-animal chimeras by offering a clear set of guidelines.

In the past 20 years, there have been two situations, two events that have made the production of a new health care charter necessary, professor Antonio Gioacchino Spagnolo told CNA Feb. 6.

The first, he said, is scientific progress. In these 20 years, there has been a lot of scientific progress in the field of the beginning of life as well as in the phase of the end of life, in the context of living.

But alongside advancements in science, the Churchs magisterium has also produced several texts dealing with new and current issues, offering an authoritative take on how they should be handled.

The charter, he said, encompasses a sort of collection of the various positions there have been, the various pronouncements, keeping the progress of biomedicine in mind.

Spagnolo, director of the Institute of Bioethics and Medical Humanities at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome, spoke to journalists at the Feb. 6 presentation of the new charter and played a key role in drafting the new text.

A first edition of the charter was published in 1994, but in the wake of broad scientific advancements and various updates in the Churchs magisterium, the Holy See, last Monday, rolled out the new version of the charter for health care workers.

Released to coincide with the annual World Day of the Sick celebrations taking place in Lourdes, France, the updated charter includes all magisterial documents published since 1994 and will be sent to bishops conferences around the world.

At roughly 150 pages, including the index, the charter is structured much like the old edition and is divided into three parts: Procreation, Life and Death

The section on procreation covers everything from contraception, in vitro fertilization and the scientific use of embryos, including freezing them, as well as newer topics such as the mixing of human and animal gametes, the gestation of human embryos in animal or artificial wombs, cloning, asexual reproduction and parthenogenesis.

In the Life section, topics covered are all of the health events that are in some way connected to living, Spagnolo said, including vaccinations, preventative care, drug testing, transplants, abortion and anencephalic fetuses, as well as gene therapy and regenerative medicine.

The social part of the charter also covers areas specifically linked to poverty, such as access to medicines and the availability of new technologies in developing countries or countries that are politically and economically unstable. Rare and neglected diseases are also covered in the new text.

In his comments to CNA, Spagnolo commented on recent cases the updated charter covers, including the creation of human-pig chimeras, as well as the case of an elderly woman with dementia who was held down by her family while being euthanized.

The first case refers to the recent high-level scientific research project that culminated in the creation of chimeras, or organisms made from two different species.

While the project initially began by conducting the experiment on rats and mice, at the end of January, it culminated with the human-pig mix, marking the first time a case had been reported in which human stem cells had begun to grow inside another species.

In the experiment, which appeared in the scientific journal Cell, researchers from various institutes, including Stanford and the Salk Institute in California, injected pig embryos with human stem cells when they were just a few days old and monitored their development for 28 days to see if more human cells would be generated.

Human cells inside a number of the embryos had begun to develop into specialized tissue precursors; however, the success rate of the human cells was overall low, with the majority failing to produce human cells.

Commenting on the case, Spagnolo said this type of hybridization between human and animal cells was primarily done to garner more scientific information, but cautioned that science cannot be indifferent to how the information is used.

If a scientist decides to mingle human cells with those of another species in order to create some sort of hybrid being, this is, of course, something that cant be accepted, because in some way it means using the generation of a life as an instrument to reach ones own ends.

However, if its done for a purpose other than generating alternate beings, such as growing human organs for transplant, Spagnolo said this would be acceptable.

One thing thats already being proposed, he said, is the possibility of xenografts, i.e., tissue grafts or organ transplants from a donor that is a different species than the recipient.

The idea of doing this, Spagnolo said, is to inoculate pigs with human cells, allowing the organs of the pig to receive human antigens, so when a transplant were done with a liver or heart from the pig inside a (human being), there wouldnt be the rejection that there is normally doing it with other species.

Spagnolo said that using the hybrid cells for organ or tissue transplant is acceptable because to transfer a human cell to a pig doesnt mean creating a life.

Rather, it allows the pig to have a genetic patrimony similar to that of a human being to then be able to use the organs to help people, he said, emphasizing the fact that its not pig cells being injected into human beings, but vice versa.

So to make a good, informed decision involves first of all seeing what type of experiments are being done, deciding from that whether its acceptable or not, then looking at what one intends to produce, what are the objectives one intends to reach.

Pointing to the case of an elderly woman in her 80s who was held down by her relatives as her doctors euthanized her.

The woman was not consulted and woke up as the doctor was trying to give the injection. When she fought the procedure, her family members were asked to hold her down while the injection was completed.

When medicine no longer does what it should, [it] completely alters the doctor-patient relationship, Spagnolo said.

He pointed to a bill that is currently on the table in Italy that would effectively legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide, requiring doctors to act on the advanced statements of their patients in this regard, and prohibiting them from conscientious objection.

This bill, as well as the case of the woman in the Netherlands, illustrates the difficulty of advance statements, Spagnolo said, explaining that if someone makes an advance statement and later decides against it, the fact of having said it before is used and is done (by) drugging the patient.

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Vatican Updates Health Care Charter - National Catholic Register

Health Care Feb 13, 2017 Share

Also: Cumberland House sets up patient assistance fund

authors Geert De Lombaerde

The top executives of Saint Thomas Health have picked the leader of their group in charge of acquisitions, physician recruitment and development to oversee a new push coordinating women and childrens health programs.

Kristen Toth (pictured) joined Saint Thomas in early 2014 as executive director of Saint Thomas Health Alliance after a dozen years in the pharmaceutical sector. In that role, she helped craft the regional health systems business development, partnerships and service line program development. Her new title is vice president of program development for women and children and will have her oversee the planning, services, clinical processes and business practices for that line of business.

Saint Thomas runs nine hospitals as well as a network of affiliated joint ventures, medical practices, clinics and rehabilitation facilities that cover a 68-county area. The system employs more than 8,000 people.

Alcohol and drug addiction treatment provider Cumberland Heights has created a fund to help patients pay for services, courtesy of a former patient with Music Row ties.

Cumberland Heights, which treats about 2,500 people annually, set up The Timothy Cotton Fund for Patient Assistance with the proceeds of the recent $285,000 sale Cottons home on Setliff Place in East Nashville. Cotton was a longtime driver for many musical acts, including Tim McGraw, Alan Jackson and Lonestar. He died early last year and will his home to Cumberland Heights.

Tim Cotton was a generous soul who loved caring for others, said Cumberland Heights CEO Jay Crosson. His incredible donation and the Timothy Cotton Fund for Patient Assistance will help many, many people recover life from drug and alcohol addiction. Tims memory will live on at Cumberland Heights in perpetuity.

The $285,000 fund is part of Cumberland Heights endowment and will help patients unable to afford treatment or without insurance to cover its costs. Bill Branch of Life Style Real Estate Advisors brokered the sale of Cottons home and donated his commission to Cumberland Heights.

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Health care notes: Saint Thomas names women/children VP - Nashville Post (subscription)

VATICAN CITY A nations health-care system cannot be run simply as a business because human lives are at stake, Pope Francis said.

If there is a sector in which the throwaway culture demonstrates its most painful consequences, it is the health-care sector, the pope told patients, medical professionals, pastors and volunteers attending a meeting sponsored by the Italian bishops national office for health-care ministry.

Anticipating the celebration Feb. 12 of the World Day of the Sick and marking the 20th anniversary of the bishops office, the pope said Catholics obviously give thanks for the advances in medicine and technology that have enabled doctors to cure or provide better care for the sick.

He also praised medical personnel who carry out their work as ministers of life and participants in the affectionate love of God the creator. Each day their hands touch the suffering body of Christ, and this is a great honor and a great responsibility, he said.

But, the pope said, any public policy or private initiative regarding health care that does not make the dignity of the human person its central concern engenders attitudes that can even lead to exploitation of the misfortune of others. And this is very serious.

Indiscriminately adopting a business model in health care, instead of optimizing resources, he said, risks treating some of the sick as disposable. Optimizing resources means using them in an ethical way, with solidarity, and not penalizing the most fragile.

Protecting human life from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death means that money alone cannot guide political and administrative choices in health care, he said. And the increasing lack of health care among the poorest segments of the population, due to lack of access to care, must leave no one indifferent.

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Health care is not a business, but a service to life, pope says - Crux: Covering all things Catholic

Forbes

How Trump's Health Agenda Threatens Kindergarteners Forbes The lack of a clear plan to repeal, replace or repair the Affordable Care Act could wreak havoc on budget planning by states, threatening everything from social service programs to Kindergarten through 12th grade education. A new report from Fitch ...

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How Trump's Health Agenda Threatens Kindergarteners - Forbes

Photo: Colleen Ingerto / Times Union

Diane Bartos, Administrative Director of Critical Care and Cardiology Services at Saratoga Hospital, in the ICCU at Saratoga Hospital, on Friday, December 2, 2016. (Colleen Ingerto / Times Union)

Diane Bartos, Administrative Director of Critical Care and Cardiology Services at Saratoga Hospital, in the ICCU at Saratoga Hospital, on Friday, December 2, 2016. (Colleen Ingerto / Times Union)

Diane Bartos, Administrative Director of Critical Care and Cardiology Services at Saratoga Hospital, in the ICCU at Saratoga Hospital, on Friday, December 2, 2016. (Colleen Ingerto / Times Union)

Diane Bartos, Administrative Director of Critical Care and Cardiology Services at Saratoga Hospital, in the ICCU at Saratoga Hospital, on Friday, December 2, 2016. (Colleen Ingerto / Times Union)

January/February 2017 edition of Women@Work magazine.

January/February 2017 edition of Women@Work magazine.

Women in health care: Meet Diane Bartos

Diane Bartos, administrative director of Critical Care and Cardiology Services at Saratoga Hospital, knew she wanted to get her doctorate, even as an undergraduate in nursing. She spent 20 years as a nurse at St. Peter's Hospital before going to Saratoga Hospital 13 years ago, working on her master's degree for 10 years before moving on to pursue her doctorate of nursing practice. She focused that work on rebuilding Saratoga Hospital's intensive care unit, just part of a more than $35 million overhaul, which involved intense feedback from every member of the hospital staff.

Q: What led you to nursing?

A: There's nobody in my family that's a nurse at all. I started working in a nursing home as a nurse's aide, and I loved it. And when I decided I wanted to do nursing, I didn't get a lot of support because nobody was a nurse. They were all engineers and accountants, and they were like, "Why do you want to do that?" I persevered through. I went to Boston University as an undergraduate.

I've always wanted higher ed ... and so I pursued that and was able to do some research in the master's program and found that very helpful. It took me almost 10 years to do that because the research just took forever. I did it by myself, and I decided for my doctorate, I didn't want to do that because I'm getting way too old. So I did a different type of program. The doctorate in nursing practice is actually what I have, so it's a practice program. It takes the research that is out there and implements it into practice. It's an interesting degree because it's really a hands-on type of degree. When I was going for my doctorate, we were also in the midst of building the ICU, so what we did was looked at all the research ... in health care environments and used the research to design the new ICU.

Women@Work

This story the first in a series in the Sunday business section about women in health care also appears in the January/February issue of Women@Work magazine. For more inspiring stories about Capital Region working women and articles that offer career advice, sign up today for $25 at tuwomenatwork.com. You'll get a year's subscription to the magazine and become part of a network of 1,700 Capital Region women who want to grow their careers and help other women grow, too.

Q: You also did some research of your own for that, right?

A: What we really wanted to try to do was be really inclusive. What we did was ask everyone and when I say everyone I mean everyone. We put the architectural plans up in the unit and asked people to put up their thoughts and ideas. When I say everyone it was doctors, it was housekeepers, it was pastoral care, we got all sorts of input from all these different people.

Then we actually built a room, it was all a mess up here, but we also brought everybody up and did the same thing for the room. We used yellow stickies (to represent the furniture/room components) and we kept moving things around. Everybody's input was valuable. The housekeeper said, "How are you going to clean that?" We have these booms that hang from the ceiling, and she was interested in the cleaning aspect. The booms(are) just columns and on those columns they have oxygen, suction, electrical, they had the monitors, so we had to really pay attention to where we wanted everything.

Q: How important is education in nurses advancing into leadership?

A: Education definitely helps when you're talking to physicians and MBAs; you have to be able to speak their language. Sometimes some of the other areas take a higher precedence, such as finances. And nurses need to be educated on that also, so they can talk at the table about finances and quality metrics, reimbursement, all of that.

Q: But there's so much to keep up on just in the medicine part. How do you do both?

A: You have to kind of decide which way you want to go and support each other along the way. There is a huge power base within nursing that has that hands-on, and they know what will work because of simply being there. So somebody might be into the research and keep abreast of all the research. It's really imperative to work with the leaders in that organization to bring that research forward and to implement it. Others might be strong in the finances and need to work with building budgets with their peers.

I think that most females generally have children, and I think it's very difficult. How do you manage and juggle all of it? I try and do everything that I can to help the nurses here that are in school that have families, as far as giving them time off and things like that, but they have to do the work. The good side of that is that nursing is so flexible. You can go back to school and work three days a week. You can still work full-time and still go to school one day a week and get it done. You can work part-time. You can work off shifts. You can work weekends.

Q: Did you have strong mentors?

A: Even as a CNA in the nursing home, I can think of one nurse back then that encouraged me. And she was like the pristine nurse. She was meticulous, down to her shoestrings. She knew what she was doing all the time.

There were certain bosses that I had that were certainly mentors to me. There were certainly clinical people that were mentors to me. There were people who had these great ways of thinking about health care, and which ways we needed to go.

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Women in health care: Meet Diane Bartos - Albany Times Union

San Francisco Examiner

Health care is a civil right San Francisco Examiner When I was in the third grade, a boy named Nestor was added to my school who, like me, was born blind. He was put in my class, even though he was a year younger and had never been to school before, because of our blindness. Before then, he had, ...

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Health care is a civil right - San Francisco Examiner

Christie: Health care repeal shouldn't cost people coverage Charlotte Observer Gov. Chris Christie says Republican lawmakers seeking to repeal or replace the Obama-era health care law must ensure that people covered by its Medicaid expansion aren't harmed. Speaking Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" show, Christie stood by ... and more »

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Christie: Health care repeal shouldn't cost people coverage - Charlotte Observer

I often tell people that if all I had to do was take care of patients, life would be grand. It is the countless hours of dealing with the administrative aspects of health care that have practically ruined the practice of medicine for many physicians. You should care; it takes away from our time with you.

TheHill.com noted that physicians and their staff spent more than 15 hours per week complying with quality reporting requirements and that for every hour a physician spends with patients, an additional two hours are consumed completing administrative tasks related to the visit. This meaningless (to physicians, anyway) work has costs in both time and money, leads to burnout, and is increasingly mentioned as the reason for early retirement. I, for one, found myself daydreaming in a committee meeting the other day and I calculated that it was 3,361 days until my 65th birthday. Thats nine years, two months and 15 days. No, I am not planning to retire early, but sometimes I sure wish I could. Health care needs reform.

The average person thought Obamacare was health care reform. In reality, Obamacare did nothing to actually improve the health care system; it simply added more people to the rolls. Dont get me wrong. Having more people insured is not a bad thing. But we need more than just additional enrollees in a broken system.

After Trump was elected, there was an initial, overly optimistic assumption that Obamacare was on its last leg. Recent infighting among policy makers suggests Obamacare may be more like the proverbial cat with nine lives. I only hope true reform is part of whatever replacement or repair Congress and the president come up with.

In particular, lets hope some of that reform will significantly scale back a bloated, paranoid bureaucracy that sucks hundreds of billions of dollars out of health care that could go to those who actually care for patients. And, perhaps, some could go back into the taxpayers pockets.

Back in 2012, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett called health care the tapeworm of the American economy. To be more accurate, the federal government is health cares tapeworm. In an online article in Medical Economics last year, Ryan Gamlin, who studies what drives inefficiency, waste and harm in U.S. health care, found that as countries spend a larger percentage of their health care dollars on administration (as opposed to public health, or providing patient care, for example), things get worse for patients and health care providers. High administrative expenditures seem to be associated with negative experiences of providing and receiving health care. That is a nice way of saying theres a ton of money wasted going to paper pushers.

Helen Adamopoulos, writing in Beckers Hospital Review in 2014, noted that U.S. hospital administrative costs account for more than 25 percent of hospital spending, more than double that of Canada, for example, where hospitals receive global, lump-sum budgets. In contrast, U.S. hospitals must bill per patient or DRG (diagnosis-related group), requiring additional clerical and management workers and specialized IT systems. They also have to negotiate payment rates with multiple payers with differing billing procedures and documentation requirements, driving up administrative spending. Not to mention all the personnel, time and IT required to satisfy CMSs (the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) monstrous appetite for quality and safety data, with the ever-present threat of fraud and abuse hanging over every unintentional misstep.

What should be a simple process of billing for services provided is a minefield. And anyone who has ever tried to understand a hospital bill knows it is an impossible task. Aliya Jiwani, writing in BMC Health Services Research, notes that billing and insurance-related administrative costs in 2012 were estimated to be $471 billion and that 80 percent of this spending, which provides little to no added value to the health care system, could be saved with a simplified financing system. Jiwani predicted that greater use of deductibles under Obamacare will likely further increase administrative costs, stating, Empirical evidence from similar reform in Massachusetts is not encouraging: Exchanges added 4 percent to health plan costs, and the reform sharply increased administrative staffing compared with other states.

A CNBC report of a Health Affairs study tagged the extra administrative costs of Obamacare at more than a quarter of a trillion dollars, an average of $1,375 per newly insured person, per year, from 2012 through 2022. The Health Affairs blog authors reported, The overhead cost equals a whopping 22.5 percent of the total estimated $2.76 trillion in all federal government spending for the Affordable Care Act programs during that time.

What do I wish could be different in our health care system? In March, I will discuss some specific changes that would reduce the administrative burden on health care providers and, in many ways, return us to a simpler, more direct, and frankly better transaction of health care.

Dr. Sid Roberts is a radiation oncologist at the Arthur Temple Sr. Regional Cancer Center in Lufkin. He can be reached at sroberts@memorialhealth.org. Previous columns may be found at srob61.blogspot.com.

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ROBERTS: What I would like to see in health care reform, for starters - Lufkin Daily News

Washington Post

'We need this Affordable Care Act': Voters discuss health care at Florida town hall Washington Post February 11, 2017 7:15 PM EST - Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.) held a town hall meeting to discuss health care with voters. (Thomas Johnson / The Washington Post). February 11, 2017 7:15 PM EST - Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.) held a town hall meeting to ...

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'We need this Affordable Care Act': Voters discuss health care at Florida town hall - Washington Post

Common Dreams

Tom Price as HHS Secretary: A Disaster for US Health Care Common Dreams The Senate's vote to confirm Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., as secretary of health and human services, while widely expected, should set off national alarm bells. Price's congressional track record, combined with his extensive health-policy paper trail, have ... As HHS secretary, Tom Price has significant powers to change health carePBS NewsHour Tom Price Now Leads HHS and Possibly the Future of Health CareNewsweek Women's healthcare groups worry about Price confirmationThe Hill Healthcare Dive -Daily Caller -Daily Beast all 415 news articles »

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Tom Price as HHS Secretary: A Disaster for US Health Care - Common Dreams

A look at the $1.1 trillion in taxes over 10 years imposed by former President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. The revenue helped pay for the law's expansion of coverage to millions of Americans.

The revenue estimates are by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation. They could differ significantly from whatever Republicans propose in their effort to erase the law and replace it:

3.8 percent tax on investment income over $200,000 for individuals, $250,000 for couples: $223 billion in revenue over 10 years.

tax penalty on larger employers not providing health insurance to workers: $178 billion.

annual fee on health insurance companies: $130 billion.

0.9 percent Medicare surtax on income over $220,000 for individuals, $250,000 for couples: $123 billion.

"Cadillac" tax on value of high-cost employer provided health insurance: $79 billion.

deductibility of medical costs exceeding 10 percent of people's income, raised from prior 7.5 percent threshold: $40 billion.

tax penalty on individuals who don't obtain health insurance: $38 billion.

annual fee on makers and importers of prescription drugs: $30 billion.

2.3 percent tax on makers and importers of some medical devices, exempts consumer products such as eye glasses: $20 billion.

$2,500 annual limit on employee contributions to flexible spending accounts for medical costs (cap grows with inflation): $32 billion.

10 percent tax on indoor tanning services: $800 million.

Note: Some figures measure slightly different 10-year windows.

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A Look at Taxes Imposed by Obama's Health Care Law - ABC News

Vatican City, Feb 10, 2017 / 01:22 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- When it comes to healthcare and using our resources wisely, we have a responsibility to protect and take care of the most vulnerable in society, especially the elderly, Pope Francis told members of the Italian bishops conference Friday.

To optimize resources means to use them in an ethical and responsible manner and not to penalize the most fragile, he said Feb. 10.

It is necessary to be vigilant, especially when patients are elderly with a heavily compromised health, if they are suffering from serious and costly diseases for their care or are particularly difficult, such as psychiatric patients, he continued.

Pope Francis spoke to the Charity and Health Commission of the Italian Bishops Conference on the eve of the 25th World Day of the Sick and the 20th anniversary of the National Office for Pastoral Healthcare. The audience took place as a bill is currently being considered in Italy that would effectively legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide, requiring doctors to act on the advanced statements of their patients in this regard, and prohibiting them from conscientious objection.

There have been years marked by strong social and cultural changes, the Pope noted, and today we can see a situation with light and shadow.

Together with lights, though, there are some shadows that threaten to exacerbate the experience of our sick brothers and sisters, he said. The most important thing is that the dignity of the sick person is always at the center of all healthcare, because when it is not, he said, the attitudes caused can lead people to take advantage of the misfortunes of others. And this is very serious! Francis condemned, for example, business models of healthcare which, instead of optimizing the available resources, instead consider most people to be a type of human waste. When money is the guiding principle of policies in healthcare and administrative decisions, there can be a temptation to lose the protections to the right to healthcare, such as that enshrined in the Italian Constitution, he said.

Rather, the growing health poverty among the poorest segments of the population, due precisely to the difficulty of access to care, he said, should not leave anyone indifferent and multiply the efforts of all because the rights of the most vulnerable are protected.

Pope Francis praised the many health institutions in Italy founded on Christian principles, expressing his appreciation for the good that they have accomplished and encouraging them to continue to do even more to help the poor and vulnerable.

In the present context, where the answer to the question of the most fragile health is becoming more difficult, do not even hesitate to rethink your works of charity to offer a sign of God's mercy to the poor that, with confidence and hope, knock on the doors of your structures, he said. One of St. John Paul II's goals for the World Day of the Sick, in addition to promoting the culture of life, Francis said, was also to involve dioceses, Christian communities, religious, and families in understanding the importance of pastoral healthcare.

There are many patients in hospitals, of course, but there are many more people in their homes and frequently alone, he pointed out.

I hope that are visited frequently, so they do not feel excluded from the community and they can experience, because of the proximity of one who meets them, the presence of Christ which passes now in the midst of the sick in body and spirit.

He praised the advancements in scientific research which have found cures for some diseases, or eradicated them altogether, while noting that we cant forget also the more rare and neglected diseases, which are not always given due attention, with the risk of giving rise to further suffering, he said. Quoting from his message for this years World Day of the Sick, the Pope said, in the first place is the inviolable dignity of every human person from the moment of conception until its last breath.

We praise the Lord for the many health professionals with the knowledge and belief that they live their work as a mission, ministers of life and participate in the effusive love of God the Creator, he said. Their hands touch every day the suffering flesh of Christ, and this is a great honor and a serious responsibility.

Likewise, we welcome the presence of many volunteers who, with generosity and competence, are working to alleviate and humanize the long and difficult days of so many sick and lonely elderly people, especially the poor and needy.

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Pope Francis: in healthcare, we are responsible to the most vulnerable - Catholic News Agency