The publication reported:
Dramatic signs of its turnaround, says Modern Healthcare:
The publication reported:
Dramatic signs of its turnaround, says Modern Healthcare:
By ANNA GORMAN, for Kaiser Health News
Low-income Californians are increasingly satisfied with the healthcare they receive, underscoring the impact of changes made by clinics and providers since the Affordable Care Act went into effect, according to a report released Wednesday.
More than half of low-income patients – 53 percent — rated their quality of care as excellent or very good in 2014, up 5 percentage points from 2011, according to the survey by the Blue Shield of California Foundation. That means that about 400,000 patients were happier with their care, the report said. (Kaiser Health News receives funding from the foundation.)
Compared with patients who were uninsured in 2011, low-income residents who in 2014 had coverage through the state’s insurance exchange, Covered California, reported much higher satisfaction with their care. Low-income Californians were defined in the survey as having household incomes less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or $48,000 for a family of four.
Some of the biggest gains in satisfaction were at community health centers, which see the largest share of the low-income population and received billions of dollars underthe health law to improve their services. Patients there gave higher scores to courtesy and cleanliness than in 2011, and more said somebody at their facility knew them well.
Community clinics have undergone a culture shift because of the Affordable Care Act and started to focus more on patient satisfaction, said Peter V. Long, president of the foundation.
“They realized, ‘We have to do things differently or it’s going to be a challenging world for us,’” he said. “They have prioritized this and actually made a difference.”
Many, for example, began assigning patients to a specific doctor. That continuity of care makes a big difference to patients and helps them develop a relationship with the community clinics, Long said. “Having the same doctor and having someone who knows me and cares about me builds that level of trust,” he said.
There is still room for improvement, the report said. Just 34 percent of patients at clinics serving low-income patients gave high marks for wait times. And low-income patients in general said it was difficult to get a night or weekend appointment and to access specialists.
Carmela Castellano-Garcia, president of the California Primary Care Association, said there was an understanding among clinics that the environment would be more competitive after the health law took fuller effect. Under Obamacare, many uninsured patients became eligible for free coverage through Medi-Cal or subsidized plans through
Covered California, the insurance exchange. As a result, they had more choices about where to seek care.
To retain patients, Castellano-Garcia said they devoted significant resources to improving both care and customer service. The survey showed that the changes made a difference, she said.
“This is a great shot in the arm and shows the clinics that their efforts and investments are paying off,” she said.
Researchers surveyed more than 1,500 Californians between August and October of 2014. The margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points for the low-income sample. The survey included patients at community clinics, public and private clinics, as well as doctors’ offices and other settings.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
”A growing number of hospitals are equipping operating suites with magnetic resonance imaging, CT scanners and other technology that enables surgeons to scan a patient in real time, without having to move them from the operating table.”
The huge health insurer now says that hackers had access to customer data all the way back to 2004.
Anthem is also offering two years of free identity-theft protection to millions of affected consumers. But the fact is that there are no fool-proof methods to protect customers from hackers, who in the Anthem case are suspected to be people working for the Chinese government.
And what can hospitals, clinics and clinicians do to better protect patients from the growing scourge of hacking? The one thing that would discourage it the most — getting more stuff offline and back onto paper — seems unlikely
This discussion looks at Google’s announcement that would include medical data fact-checked by healthcare professionals in search results. MedPage Today asked some primary-care physicians:
“Is this a step in the right direction, or is the move away from the physician’s office and into self-diagnosis an unhealthy one
“Will this contribute to the ‘medicalization’ of America or reverse that trend?”
“We like our specialty, in part, because it is so episodic. What you see is what you get, and the bottom line problem for that day is what we like to solve. But the new world will require a broader vision. We will need to pay more attention to what was going on before the patient came to us and, even more important, what will happen next. We need to see ourselves more as part of a system, and our plan must reflect the larger care plan and problem set of the patient as a whole. We need to think more (good grief) like a primary care provider!
“The danger for emergency physicians lies in a failure to adapt. Rather than being the poster child for ‘cost containment’ and inappropriate utilization, emergency medicine needs to show how we can add real value in the new healthcare paradigm.”
The professional attire was defined as “a collared shirt, tie, and slacks for male physicians and blouse (with or without a blazer), skirt, or suit pants for female physicians.”
The study’s lead author, Christopher Petrilli, M.D., an internal- medicine resident at the University of Michigan Health System wrote:
“Every time a patient comes in to the clinic or sees physicians on the wards, there’s a certain expectation of how their physician will dress.” The first visit is the most important, with Dr. Petrilli and his colleagues finding that patients are less concerned with physicians’ clothing after the first visit.
The ABIM’s efforts “to boost revenues announced new maintenance of certification (MOC) requirements. These largely unproven, waste of time and money efforts, did something that all the legislation and finger pointing on Capitol Hill had largely avoided”: An angry pushback by overworked doctors already strangling in red tape.
”Maintenance of certification has become the spark that has finally ignited the beleaguered physician. Faced with a nonsensical healthcare system mired in administrative minutia, we have found a rallying cry that symbolizes all that trampling we have endured over the last few decades. The hope rings out from city to city, that if we can just conquer MOC, then maybe Meaningful Use will be next. ”
Chad Hayes, M.D., looks at what he thinks it would look like if auto mechanics were paid like physicians. And many people think they should ne paid like mechanics in the exciting new world of healthcare-payment reform.