Archive for November, 2008

Engage With Grace

November 27th, 2008
The One Slide

The One Slide

Several dozen bloggers in the health care field and beyond are today engaged in a blog rally*, simultaneously posting the item below to encourage conversation about a topic that’s often avoided but needs to be addressed in every family: How we want to die. I’ve written about this before, with regard to my mother. Please try it, using the slide above as a discussion guide. It’s not that hard to have the conversation with your loved ones once you get started.

We make choices throughout our lives – where we want to live, what types of activities will fill our days, with whom we spend our time. These choices are often a balance between our desires and our means, but at the end of the day, they are decisions made with intent. But when it comes to how we want to be treated at the end our lives, often we don’t express our intent or tell our loved ones about it.

This has real consequences. 73% of Americans would prefer to die at home, but up to 50% die in hospital. More than 80% of Californians say their loved ones “know exactly” or have a “good idea” of what their wishes would be if they were in a persistent coma, but only 50% say they’ve talked to them about their preferences.

But our end of life experiences are about a lot more than statistics. They’re about all of us. So the first thing we need to do is start talking.

Engage With Grace: The One Slide Project was designed with one simple goal: to help get the conversation about end of life experience started. The idea is simple: Create a tool to help get people talking. One Slide, with just five questions on it. Five questions designed to help get us talking with each other, with our loved ones, about our preferences. And we’re asking people to share this One Slide – wherever and whenever they can…at a presentation, at dinner, at their book club. Just One Slide, just five questions.

Lets start a global discussion that, until now, most of us haven’t had.

Here is what we are asking you: Download The One Slide (that’s it above) and share it at any opportunity – with colleagues, family, friends. Think of the slide as currency and donate just two minutes whenever you can. Commit to being able to answer these five questions about end of life experience for yourself, and for your loved ones. Then commit to helping others do the same. Get this conversation started.

Let’s start a viral movement driven by the change we as individuals can effect…and the incredibly positive impact we could have collectively. Help ensure that all of us – and the people we care for – can end our lives in the same purposeful way we live them.

Just One Slide, just one goal. Think of the enormous difference we can make together.

(To learn more please go to www.engagewithgrace.org. This post was written by Alexandra Drane and the Engage With Grace team. )

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The Valley of Death

November 20th, 2008

Sharon Begley wrote for Newsweek Magazine an article entitled Where Are the Cures? Scientists call the gulf between a biomedical discovery and new treatment the “valley of death.” This has been a topic about which I have written several times. As a relative newcomer to the world of scientific research, my journey has been somewhat perplexing and always disconcerting. Every day articles, web stories, and scientific papers cross my desk touting the amazing discoveries that are being made at the basic research level. When I query my insiders, however, they point out that these discoveries very rarely ever get to the public for their care and treatment.

Some of the reasons behind this gap in medical science lead back to a broken system with inappropriate incentives locked firmly into place. How do we get the basic discoveries to be translated and moved into actual treatments?

Why are so few of the discoveries making their way to both treatments and cures? It is because our system of NIH-sponsored science is set up to discover things; plain and simple. Once the discovery is made, articles can be written, which is the sought after reward in academia since these publications lead to more grants from the NIH, and so the circle goes round and round.


Image Credit: Corbis

The obstacles to translational research in which the studies actually move from the scientist’s bench to the patient’s bedside are so intense that they are referred to in some areas of the scientific community as the “valley of death.” According to Begley’s article, “The valley of death is why many promising discoveries-genes linked to cancer and Parkinson’s disease; biochemical pathways that ravage neurons in Lou Gehrig’s disease-never move forward.”

The author challenges the incoming Obama administration and Congress to take a look at this daunting dilemma and to begin to revamp our biomedical research system by creating what Richard Boxer, a urologist at the University of Miami, and Lou Weisbach, a Chicago entrepreneur, call a “Center for Cures” at the NIH. Interestingly enough, the model that they endorse is exactly what was created here in Windber where multidisciplinary teams of biologists, proteomic and genomic scientists, technicians, and biomedical informatics specialists work together with Walter Reed Army Medical Center to move a discovery to an actual cure.

Of course, with the cuts made to the NIH funds, creating anything new that is unfunded could take away from basic research, and limit hopes for these cure discoveries. The article explains that while the NIH budget was doubling, new drug approvals fell from 53 in 1996 to 18 in 2006. What’s wrong with this picture? Twice the money, less than half the discoveries.

The sad case, however, is that even those organizations that try to establish these new world order cure centers are not funded by the NIH because of this fundamental design to enhance only basic research. The article ends with this: “I’d be willing to put up with potholes in exchange for a new administration spending serious money to take the discoveries taxpayers have paid for and turn them into cures.”

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The Coming HIPAAcalypse?

November 14th, 2008

Mayan CalendarThere was a television show on at about 3:00 AM the other morning that, once again, predicted the end of the world. This time, it was the manifestation of predictions from two ends of the earth: both the ancient Chinese and the Mayan Indians concluded 5,000 years ago that the world would end on December 21, 2012. (I think that Merlin the Magician was involved too, but he would have been just a kid 5,000 years ago!) Both predictions were written at nearly the same time, and both predicted the same date, but I believe that I have discovered what may contribute to this major catastrophe:

It is my prediction that the collapse of the planet as we know it will come from HIPAA.

According to Wikipedia,

“The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1996. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services explain that Title I of HIPAA protects health insurance coverage for workers and their families when they change or lose their jobs. Title II of HIPAA, known as the Administrative Simplification (AS) provisions, requires the establishment of national standards for electronic health care transactions and national identifiers for providers, health insurance plans, and employers.”

Sounds pretty reasonable, doesn’t it? Just hire a full time security person for your electronic medical records, oh and don’t forget to spend millions to create the medical records in the first place. After that, life will be just fine? Right? Wrong.

If you have had little training in what the term oxymoron means, this would be a classic example; “The Administrative Simplification provision.” This provision was intended to deal with the privacy and security of health data. That is also a very noble idea. If two patients are in the same room, and someone is discussing the status of either patient, there should be a sound proof curtain between them. Soundproof curtains would also qualify as an oxymoron. For those of us who have lived this nightmare called HIPAA, Senator Kennedy has often been quoted regarding the fact that his intentions when designing this act have become grossly bureaucratic in their implementation.

Here’s the totally mystifying, Merlin-type description; the standards are meant to improve the effectiveness of our health care system by encouraging the extensive use of electronic data interchange in the U.S. health care system. Seriously, all of this sounds good. The problem comes when hundreds or thousands of government bureaucratic health care wonks and healthcare attorneys are introduced into the equation.

Well, a few weeks ago, according to Managed Healthcare Executive Magazine, the department of Health and Human Services, Office of Civil Rights (OCR) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) and Providence Health Services, Providence Health System, and Providence Hospice and Home Care entered into the first case where a monetary settlement was paid to resolve a potential violation of the HIPAA privacy and security standards.

Providence agreed, without admission of liability, to pay $100,000 to the government over a data breach. This case did not involve a single egregious violation. So, it appears that, HHS may believe that enforcement time has come as they become more aggressive in their investigations and enforcement of these laws. Hence, the end of the world may be approaching. If all of the hospitals are fined into closure, and then the avian flu hits, the most often heard phrase will be “Hasta la vista, Baby.”

I don’t mean to make light of such an important topic as patient confidentiality or the potential portability of health insurance, but, if any of us mere mortals could objectively step back and witness the chaos, expense, and outright insanity created by the current implementation of these statutes, the only objective phrase that could eventually emit from that experience would be, “Holy, $%#@&!”

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On the Road Again

November 9th, 2008

This week we are off to Charleston, South Carolina to present a keynote speech for the Carolina’s Healthcare Public Relations and Marketing Society Fall Conference. The primary theme of the presentation will be directed toward creating a market niche through instituting an Optimal Healing or Planetree Environment and then promoting that niche through Web 2.0 techniques. Truthfully, the art (not the science) of marketing and public relations has been a dominant driver in my career, and this presentation will be coming directly from the heart, as I combine my two greatest work passions for a single presentation.

After the Carolina blitz, we are off to the Clinical Breast Care Project off-site with Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Hershey. This year we will celebrate over a decade of amazing progress, advancements, and scientific growth.

COL Craig D Shriver, MD

COL Craig D Shriver, MD

We will also celebrate our Principal Investigator’s mile-stone birthday, a significant birthday that brings him closer to the age of “Yoda” wisdom. When we began this journey together Dr. Craig Shriver was a young Lieutenant Colonel and I was, well, I was the age that he just embraced at this birthday. Time flies as we work diligently to find breakthroughs and eventual cures for breast cancer. Dr. Shriver has been an amazing partner and friend, and I can only hope that we will have opportunities to continue our work together in some significant ways in the future.

So, what else has been happening? With SunStone Consulting we have been working with Corathers Consulting and numerous regional hospitals to begin serious fiber networking and telemedicine technology for telepsychiatry. How did this come about? A funny thing happened on the way to an economic bailout. Inserted in the $700+ B bailout was parity for mental health coverage and included in that parity is the ability to compensate psychiatrists for their work in telemedicine. Let the networking begin.

Intelli-Surge is doing a tremendous amount of work in the region to assist several local hospitals in their efforts to construct new buildings. The uniqueness of their approach is that hospitals will be able to build thier facilities without necessarily having to come up with the enormous amounts of cash typically required for this work.

Finally, Pittsburgh Gateways is helping several of us to come together for economic development gains for the Greater Pittsburgh region. With their guidance and connectivity we are hopeful that the future will be filled with opportunities for economic stability for many of the start-up companies in our area.

So, off for another round of busy . . . as we do our thing in the air and on the ground.

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Something’s Gotta Give, Something’s Gotta Give, Something’s Gotta Give!

November 1st, 2008

My Facebook friend, Anne Zieger, editor of Fierce Health Finance, wrote a compelling piece the other day regarding the potential demise of hundreds of hospitals. Her prediction is based upon some very valid financial realities, and we are witnessing them locally as well as nationally. Not unlike the little banks in our area that seemed to have been insulated from Wall Street’s collapse, some of these national problems seem to be washing over some of the smaller hospitals with relatively minimal damage. Yes, many of us have seen as much as a 10% decrease in elective, outpatient procedures.

In fact, while visiting a really upscale mall for a photo session with my two year old granddaughter, Lucy, an employee engaged me in a conversation about the rotten economy. About five minutes into the conversation, she indicated that there are currently 150 stores in the chain for which she works, and that only five percent of them made budget last month. Portrait pictures must fall into the category of a luxury as their business is severely impacted by this economy. More directly, however, she indicated that she needed stitches removed the other day, and that, “she did it herself” rather than spend the $20 co-pay.

So, are we seeing decreases in important tests? Are we seeing patients avoiding emergency room visits? Are we seeing patients cutting their prescriptions in half? Yes, to all of these questions. Anne, however, seemed to be talking about the “big boys,” where their millions or billions in investments have recently tanked. If you are so big that your income from running the hospital is not a major source of protection, and your income from your investments is propping you up, then the problems begin to manifest themselves exponentially.

“Some hospitals are responding by digging into their investment income more deeply than usual, using it to finance capital projects, or even meet operational needs. Others are issuing bonds with the scary codicil that they’ll buy them back if finicky investors want to dump them,” states Zieger in her column.

She further goes on to explain that “both of these situations put a huge squeeze on hospitals’ long-term viability. One robs from their long-term assets to solve medium-term problems, while the other puts the hospitals at risk of being bled dry by investors who get spooked.”

Well, wouldn’t ya know? Yes, we are seeing a few challenges due to decreased electives, but not because we were living off of our investments. The other good news is that, because we froze our fixed pensions several years ago, we are seeing very little impact upon them from the huge drop in those investments as well. Unlike many of our larger peers, neither of these issues is similar. Between the drops in the market, the loss of pension funds, the decrease in electives, and the down-grading of their viability by the bond markets, their challenges look galactic in size compared to ours.

Sometimes smaller is just safer.

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