Physicians get help to become medical homes

The model for Medicare’s 2010 medical home pilot — Vermont’s Blueprint for Health — stresses community-wide involvement. Physicians receive extra payments to coordinate chronic disease care. They also have access to community resources that help patients improve their health. At the heart of the concept is the Community Care Team that includes nurse practitioners, nutritionists, social workers and others. 

Experts agree: To fix health care, focus must be on value

Mayo Clinic President Dr. Denis Cortese says health reform should include the creation of a “value score” that factors in patient satisfaction, safety, cost and outcomes. The information for each medical facility would be publicly available, allowing patients to make choices based on value and requiring providers to compete on service, safety, results and cost. 

Hospitalization for coronary heart disease down 31%

Hospitalizations dropped 31 percent for coronary heart disease, 15 percent for heart attack and 14 percent for stroke from 1997 to 2007, according to a report by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The data also showed hospitalizations increased 28 percent for irregular heartbeat and 3 percent for congestive heart failure.

Health plans use plain language to improve communication

Health insurers are simplifying how they communicate with their members, toning down the insurance industry jargon and launching websites to offer information on costs, benefits and services. CIGNA has “Words We Use” guidelines for all customer communications, and Aetna gives a copy of “Navigating Your Health Benefits for Dummies” to its members.

Connected health approach could reduce costs

Seventy-five percent of respondents who were familiar with a patient-centered, connected health approach said the practice could reduce health care costs by as much as 40 percent, a survey released by the Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council and Cambridge Consultants showed. The approach would help improve interoperability, reduce spending on defensive medicine and medical errors, and improve patient outcomes, the survey found.

Why is there no national nurse?

During one of the Future of Nursing meetings recently, a reporter from the American Journal of Nursing interviewed two nurse leaders from the United Kingdom. The question came up as to why the United States does not have an Office of the National Nurse. Both leaders could not understand the rationale or give an answer as to why this office has not been established here. 

Editor’s Note: The National Nursing Networking Organization is a grassroots organization to do just that. 

Incomplete discharge summaries to blame for preventable errors

A study released by the Indiana University School of Medicine finds that hospital discharge summaries lack information important to patients’ continuity of care. Researchers reviewed 668 discharge summaries from two academic medical centers, finding that hospitals discharged nearly 41 percent of patients with test results pending, and 9 percent of those tests required changes with respect to patient care. However, the hospitals documented only 16 percent of those tests in patient discharge summaries

Medical home interview: Expert insight

Dr. Paul Grundy talks about the patient-centered medical home and its various facets, including the the model itself, along with its challenges and opportunities.

How to think like a futurist

Futurists can’t predict what will happen, but they are good at understanding and preparing for a range of possibilities, Jamais Cascio writes. To get a handle on the future, Cascio recommends starting with a targeted question about a specific problem, imagining several possible resolutions and asking what you can do to attain a better outcome. “Often one of the key insights from many futures projects is the simple realization that the future is in our hands — that our choices matter,” he writes.