Archive for the ‘Medicare’ category

A Possible Solution to Local Rural Physician Shortage

February 23rd, 2023

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) projects that a physician shortage could reach a high of 124,000 by 2024. The strain this will cause will not be borne equally.

“The COVID 19 pandemic has highlighted many of the deepest disparities in health and access to health care services,” said AAMC President and CEO David Skorton, “and exposed vulnerabilities in the health care system.”

Gerald E. Harmon, president of the American Medical Association, also raised alarms about the future of U.S. health care.

 “Because it can take up to a decade to properly educate and train a physician,” Harmon said, “we need to take action now to ensure we have enough physicians to meet the needs of tomorrow.”

He added, “The health of our nation depends on it.”

This bleak scenario recently was presented to Indiana Regional Medical Center, Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), and Indiana County leadership.  As a local response, it was suggested that IUP, as one of the larger state universities in Pennsylvania, should take a lead role in creating a rural family practice medical school. Such an initiative would be a game-changer for not only the university but also for the entire Commonwealth.

Over the past ten years, universities throughout the United States have seen declines in student enrollment. These decreases have led to painful programming cuts as well as other downsizing initiatives. Still, most of the exceptionally strong programs still thriving at IUP are heavily directed toward STEM (Science Technology, Engineering, and Math). These programs have had continued robust enrollment numbers in healthcare and science-oriented degrees.

In December, IUP President Dr Michael Driscoll confirmed that the IUP Board of Trustees has approved exploration of this medical school initiative. The caveat? Funding will be a major factor in determining a “go or no go” decision.

The financial challenge may be exacerbated by Duquesne University’s decision to build a College of Oseopathic Medicine, which has garnered support from some Pittsburgh-based granting organizations. This might limit those organizations’ enthusiasm or capacity for an IUP medical school. That would be unfortunate because, although Duquesne University’s medical school is a positive addition to the area, the reality is that urban-trained physicians tend to remain in urban areas, and city training and resources are not always ideally suited for a rural setting.

Therefore, the most critical major potential source of support for this project is the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE). Working with state legislators,  PASSHE could muster resources that would help create a Western Pennsylvania Medical School based at IUP.

Moreover, each year entry-level seats could be held for students from each of the 14 state universities that come under the PASSHE umbrella: West Chester, Slippery Rock, Shippensburg, Millersville, Mansfield, Lock Haven, Kutztown, Edinboro, East Stroudsburg, Clarion, Cheyney, California, Bloomsburg, and IUP

Numerous potential critical players in this scenario. Including private and community foundations, have not yet fully realized the extent to which a school like this would improve our region. The primary question they should ask is “How do we fill the dozens of physician openings we already have in this area?”

Without a plan to address this challenge, the number of openings will only grow.

Another regional asset that could provide significant depth and impact to this medical school is the Chan Soon-Shiong Institute for Molecular Medicine. CSSI currently houses not only 500,000 donated tissues samples for research, but also has on staff talented PhDs in genomics, informatics, and tissue banking who could contribute extensively to the educational research needed to support a medical school.

Finally, consider the cost we all bear when hiring physicians locally. Because the competition is intense, we must employ recruiters. Other expenses including advertising for the position; fees to locum tenens (substitute docs) during the hiring process; candidate interview costs; time spent on interviewing, onboarding and credentialing the doctor; candidate relocation costs; primary care physician salary and benefits, and incidentals. This list, according to the UNC Solutions blog, totals about $341,000.

Being able to locally source and train physicians from 30-plus graduates a year over a ten-year period would pay for itself three-fold.

We desperately need physicians in our region. We need this medical school. We need to support IUP in this initiative to help give students from Pennsylvania an opportunity to go to medical school in our region because that will ultimately benefit everyone in our region.

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Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Marketing, Hospital, Hospital Administration, Hospital Blog, Hospitals, Integrative Health, Leadership, Medicaid, Medicare, Medicine, Public Health

COVID VACCINE CHALLENGE

September 23rd, 2020

COVID vaccine challenge
NICK JACOBS
Published Tue Sep 22, 2020 8:48 PM EDT

Besides wearing a mask, which we’ve known since 77AD protects us from the plague, the other best opportunity for stopping the progress of COVID-19 is through the discovery of an effective vaccine.

Rather than getting COVID via the natural infection pathway, a vaccine could produce herd immunity without harming or potentially killing people.

Thousands of Americans seem to have chosen the risk-it-all route as they go without masks, and attend large, unprotected social events and rallies.

Unfortunately, not unlike playing Russian Roulette with your loved ones and friends, this route is filled with potential suffering and an almost complete lack of predictability.

In an article in Time magazine, Alice Parks recounts how it was Edward Jenner who, in 1790, discovered that infecting people with small amounts of smallpox virus could produce immunity. Today, there are more than 100 vaccines being developed in an attempt to provide us with immunity from SARS COVID-19, and across the world, billions of dollars are being pumped into this effort.

There are numerous challenges to be faced in this effort including those of manufacturing and then distributing the vaccine in a humanitarian manner.

The good news is, regardless of political pressure, the major vaccine makers have already pledged to conduct complete safety studies before submitting their vaccines to international regulators. The not-so-good news is HIV/AIDS has been around for nearly 40 years and an effective vaccine is still not available.

Approximately 132,000,000 people in the United States are living with pre-existing health conditions. Thus, the challenge becomes who gets a vaccine and when. These decisions may literally produce a life and death lottery game.

The Time article cited researchers from CUNY’s School of Public Health’s computer simulation that calculated if 75 percent of the world’s population were immunized, to control the ongoing pandemic, vaccines would need to be about 70 percent effective. Any of us who are regular recipients of the annual flu vaccine know that some years it’s effective and some years it’s not.

Consequently, we will be faced with arguments over the world’s current state of nationalism combined with America’s anti-vaccination movement. Plus we still have the challenges of discovery, manufacturing and actual implementation.

Oh, and there’s one more speed bump in that the United States has chosen not to join the other 172 countries of the world in the COVAX initiative on international unity for epidemic preparedness innovations originated by the World Health Organization.

If we prioritize our high-risk populations which include health care employees, first-responders, people with pre-existing conditions, and the elderly living in group environments, and then add critical workers such as teachers, food growers and service providers, people in group homes and the incarcerated, we finally end up getting the vaccines to our most precious hope for the future, young adults and children.

In short, none of this is going to be easy. One batch of improperly manufactured polio vaccine in the 1950s resulted in thousands of children being accidentally infected with polio. and because there are so many variations of vaccines being developed, there is also the risk of triggering excessive immune responses that could end up being more harmful than helpful.

Finally, and this is one more example of the broken public health system in this country, any plans for massive immunizations will be dependent upon public-health initiatives that are appropriately supported and resourced.

Keep in mind many of our states have been seeking leadership, supplies, direction, and funding from the federal government since March. At about $35 per dose and in most cases the vaccines require two doses, herd immunity is not likely to be achieved either quickly or in a cost-effective manner.

One thing is clear, however. An effective plan needs to be implemented to stop this out of control COVID transmission and to produce a clear pathway to normalcy. We need to get back to normal through a national strategy.

 

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Posted in Current Affairs, Epidemics, Family, Future, Healthcare, Hospital, Hospital Administration, Hospitals, Immunization, Leadership, Medicare, Medicine, Public Health, Uncategorized, workplace

Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Op-Ed

December 11th, 2017

Nick Jacobs, among his other affiliations, is an officer of the Integrative Health Policy Consortium, which represents more than 600,000 IHM practitioners; president of the Clinical and Translational Genome Research Institute, which he founded; and a consultant to the Department of Defense in breast cancer research.

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Pennsylvanians received good news recently when the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council reported that hospital readmissions and mortality rates continue falling locally and statewide.

The report shows these rates declining for a number of common types of treatments. It gives much of the credit to a “commitment of PA hospitals to provide quality care” and to the Affordable Care Act, which ties reimbursements to that quality care. This, in turn, encourages health care facilities to strive for improved mortality rates because doing so helps keep government funds flowing through their doors.

Regardless of the motivation, this is good news. But it’s not good enough.The mortality rate could be improved even more dramatically if more healthcare administrators and physicians would introduce integrative health and medicine practices into their services.

Integrative health and medicine (IHM), as defined by the American Board of Integrative Medicine and the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine & Health, recognizes the importance of the relationship between practitioner and patient. IHM focuses on the whole person, is evidenced-based and employs a wide range of appropriate therapies, healthcare professionals and disciplines to achieve optimal health and healing.

Integrative health practice includes treatments and therapies such as acupuncture; natural products; deep breathing; Tai chi and Qi Gong; meditation; massage; special anti-inflammatory diets; progressive relaxation; journaling; biofeedback; pet, music and dance therapies; hypnosis and guided imagery. When provided by a licensed or certified health care professional, IHM provides numerous benefits. It can decrease chronic pain, post-operative pain and the need for medications. It can improve patient satisfaction and shorten hospital stays. It can lower mortality rates. IHM methods also are relatively inexpensive.

Many places, including the Cleveland Clinic, have reported cost savings per patient, while also seeing reductions in patient anxiety, pain, and medications. During my tenure as CEO at Windber (Pa.) Medical Center, I worked with physicians, staff, and volunteers to create a healing environment by embracing all methods and therapies used in integrative medicine and combining them with the ambiance of a fine hotel and the amenities of a health spa. We carefully scrutinized and credentialed practitioners specializing in services such as aroma and massage therapy, integrative nutritional counseling, acupuncture, chiropractic manipulation, pet and music therapy, reiki and spirituality, to name a few.

In short, a healing environment permeated our facility.

Yes, we had our share of naysayers and opposition among physicians, allied health care professionals and others, but over time our infection rate dropped below 1 percent and stayed there for a decade. (The national average is 9 percent.) Of our peer hospitals, we had the lowest readmission rates, restraint rates and lengths of stay. Even with a palliative care unit to care for dying patients and their families, we had the lowest death rate among our peer hospitals.

For those who would say it was all coincidence because Windber is a small hospital, I would direct them to the 19,000 papers written supporting the efficacy of acupuncture alone, and then to the thousands of papers written about the healing power of music, massage and so many other treatments dismissed all too readily by traditional practitioners.

IHM practices are not at odds with traditional medical practices; rather, they enhance them. Yet in many hospitals and physicians’ offices, they are ignored, discouraged, even ridiculed. Such negative reactions result from ignorance, misinformation, prejudice and even greed — pharmaceutical companies, for instance, see no profit in promoting most IHM treatments, and some medical practices might earn less if, instead of scheduling patients for costly treatments or surgeries, they instead treated patients with acupuncture, spinal manipulation, massage therapy or even mindfulness.

Resistance to IHM is breaking down, but this shift in attitude needs to be accelerated. If you travel to Europe or Asia, you will see integrative medicine practices thriving because their value is acknowledged and embraced. In America, IHM beachheads are being established in health care systems and universities, thanks to such groups as the Family Medicine Education Consortium, Integrative Health Policy Consortium and the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine, of which I am a co-founder. The academy includes among its member’s hundreds of licensed physicians who have successfully merged IHM with traditional medical practices.

Much remains to be done to more broadly spread the healing benefits of IHM, which will happen only when more patients take more responsibility for their health and demand IHM treatments, more physicians research and adopt them, and more insurance companies pay for them. When that day comes, there will be a lot more good news about mortality rates and other measures of medical care for Pennsylvanians and people all over the country to celebrate.

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Posted in Boomers, Children, Current Affairs, Diet, Family, Future, Healthcare, Hospital, Hospital Administration, Hospitals, Integrative Health, Leadership, Medicare, Military Medicine, Nutrition, Public Health

Four ways to improve access to Integrative Medicine Practices

November 13th, 2017

Licensure, regulation, medical evidence, and funding are four sure ways to speed up the process needed to allow integrative medicine practices to be embraced. If we begin with the assumption that money has a lot to do with everything medical in the United States, then we must look at the winners and losers and the WIFM’s?  (What’s in it for me?)  If you’re a practicing surgeon, and acupuncture or chiropractic care results in the patient not needing a surgery, that can be a financial threat to you. Let’s be fair, that probably doesn’t happen that often, but sometimes it does, and when it does, that’s money lost to your practice.

 

If you’ve spent four years in undergraduate school, four years in medical school, four or five years in a residency, and your educational debts amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars, the last thing you need is a clinical study demonstrating through medical evidence that thousands of patients won’t need your services, and your skills will become exponentially less in the demand.

 

On the other hand, if, like ophthalmologists who surround their practices with optometrists, orthopods did the same with chiropractors and acupuncturists, could that not create a steady stream of referrals for their practices?

 

Let’s face it, there is a role for all three of those professions, and there are skill levels in every profession and duties relegated to each that both overlap and potentially conflict. So, wouldn’t it be better to have the three practice as a team of professionals working together to help you?

 

“There’s not enough medical evidence”  has been the hue and cry of the uninformed for years. Ironically, once traditional medical evidence is thoroughly interrogated, it’s not unusual to find numerous flaws in even the most accepted medical practices. We’ve seen slanted reporting in even the furthermost prestigious journals where various drugs, procedures, and devices have been proven to be ineffective years later.

 

There are over 19,000 papers that have been written and submitted to medical journals in which acupuncture has been endorsed and proven to be effective, but there never seems to be enough medical evidence for the naysayers.

 

Credentialing is a very challenging area as well.  Not unlike the highly skilled surgeon with her medical degrees from the Sorbonne in Paris that is not permitted to practice medicine in the United States, there are sometimes economic and political reasons to limit the number of practitioners allowed in the United States. In my experience, by creating a hospital-based credentials committee that specializes in integrative medicine, the nay-sayers ability to discredit highly trained practitioners with different skills will become more limited.

 

Regulation may be the most difficult challenge in this discussion because, as we have come to know very well, political power can come from political contributions, and when it comes to regulations, those with the gold have more clout than those without. That is not to say that our politicians can be encouraged to be more flexible because they can.  All it takes is for hundreds of constituents to stand in front of a Congressional office to encourage change to occur.

 

So, what are we really dealing with here?  In 1910, the AMA put out a request for proposal to determine what should be taught in the medical schools of Canada and the United States and no physician would accept that assignment.  Consequently, a Ph.D., Abraham Flexner, did, and his approach was to eliminate everything that wasn’t already proven science.  From there we have evolved to a “heal to the pill” mentality where words like root cause and placebo have been dropped from the vernacular.

 

Finally, funding is the key. It has been proven time and again that integrative medicine practices can reduce health care costs exponentially. With that in mind, every bill that comes out of Washington ignores that fact, and funding for many of these well-documented practices is not present. There were over 5000 codes in the Affordable Care Act that were intended to fund such practices as acupuncture, but when the FAQ initially was released, it said, in essence, “Don’t worry about paying these codes.”

 

If you go almost anywhere in Europe and Asia and you will see integrative practitioners thriving because their value is acknowledged and embraced. Of course, we’re not professing that a massage therapist performs open heart surgery, but we do know that Integrative medicine can help to reduce costs across the board.

 

There are many good things that can come from Integrative medicine. You just need to be open-minded.

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Posted in Boomers, Communication, Current Affairs, Disability, Energy, Family, Future, Healthcare, Hospital, Hospital Administration, Hospital Blog, Hospitals, inspiration, Integrative Health, Leadership, Medicare, Partnerships, patient-centered care, Public Health, Public Policy, Science, Sports, Systems Medicine, Uncategorized

NickJacobs.org???

April 2nd, 2009

Let me open this blog with a little housekeeping chore. Because I’ve retired from being a hospital president (Yes, they replaced me with two great people, count ’em, two.) , I’d like to change the name of this thing. It’s not that I’ve established a P-Diddy-type Twitter following where 100,000 human beings are waiting with baited breath to see what my next move will be, it just doesn’t seem right to keep calling myself a hospital president. We know who reads this thing, and we are grateful to our loyal, talented, and brilliant followers. We also know that we can link the old blog names to get you here. So, regardless of what you typed, or what gets Googled, our genius social media maven & webmaster, Michael Russell, can help to bring you home to this site.

Okay, so as a transformational advisor, a broker of sorts, most people with whom we have consulted have described me as a person who can fix things that are broken before they actually break. Maybe we should call it the “Break it if it’s not already fixed” blog. I’d love it if it was a name that would generate millions of hits and companies would fight to advertise on it.

My first thought was to use nickjacobs in the title because there is a Nick Jacobs on Facebook who teaches Aboriginal people in Australia, and he seems popular. There is another Nick Jacobs who is a professional organist, and one who is an athlete. There’s a Nick Jacobs who is a consultant and another a paramedic in London, one who had a blog who is a yachtsman, there’s my son, the commercial real estate broker, and finally, there’s a Nick Jacobs who does pornographic movies who is not my son. Actually, that Nick Jacobs’ followers would probably be the most disappointed by this blog.

Since the .com version of nick jacobs was already taken by some guy in England, we captured nickjacobs.org, and that will work for right now.

If you have any ideas, however, that you think would really rock the blogspere, let us know and we’ll check with our domain registrar to see if it is available. In fact, if you are the winner of a Name Nick’s Blog Contest, I’d be happy to consult for free BY PHONE for at least one hour of brainstorming with you about the topic of your choice: music, healthcare, proteomics, teaching, PR/Marketing, the travel business, or even physician recruitment.

Remember, Hospital Impact is already taken, and, because my last three consulting jobs have been with a newspaper, a nonprofit arts oragnization, and a chain of hotels, we don’t want to think too restrictively. Gotta earn a little money, too.

When we ran the breast center, we found that the website got more hits than anyone could imagine. The problem was that the readers were mostly thirteen-year-old boys who probably weren’t too interested in running a hospital. After Miss America had visited us, the hits went up exponentially when those two searches were combined. Somehow, I don’t think that Nick Jacobs’ Breast Center for Miss America would probably get me the type of following I’m currently hoping to attract. On the other hand?

A very good friend recently asked me to write a brief bio about what my new life is like, and it struck me that it is very much like my old life but without any restrictions. This is what I wrote:

While teaching junior high school instrumental music in the early 1970’s, Nick Jacobs made an extraordinary discovery. He learned that, by empowering his students and surrounding them with positive influences, he no longer was providing a service or even an experience for them.

What this entirely unique teaching style resulted in was a method for helping to transform students. By providing with both passion and commitment the tools needed by them to undertake their journey, his involvement with the students became a means of dramatically helping them to make whatever positive life changes they were seeking.

It was during that early period in his career that he also discovered that this formula could work to positively change lives in almost any aspect of living as he ran an arts organization, a convention bureau, and finally a hospital and research institute.

Since that time he has dedicated his personal work to helping others make their lives better, and that is exactly what he is doing in his position as an international executive consultant with SunStone Consulting, LLC.

Maybe that will give you something to chew on? Okay, something on which to chew.

SunStone Consulting. With more than 20 years experience in executive hospital leadership, Nick has an acknowledged reputation for innovation and patient-centered care approaches to health and healing.

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Posted in Boomers, Breast Care, Communication, Current Affairs, Development, Healthcare, Healthcare Marketing, Hospital, Hospital Administration, Hospital Blog, Hospitals, Integrative Health, Leadership, marketing, Medicare, Medicine, Music, Music Education, Nutrition, patient-centered care, Public Relations, Uncategorized, Wellness

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Quality of Care

July 31st, 2008
Back in the 70’s, competitive marching bands came into vogue in Western Pennsylvania. Let me explain the before and after of this phenomenon: Before there were competitions, bands were made up of nearly 10 times more students than they typically have today. My bands ranged in size from 120 to 185 students. Once competition came into play, the borderline students were not able to survive. Consequently, it is not unusual now to have 20 students or less in a band.

Steelcity_border

What’s happening in medicine and in health care overall? The Government is taking a three-pronged approach to improve quality in health care:

1. They are pushing quality through public reporting. (Check a website near you.)

2. Enforcing quality through the False Claims Act. (Check a prison near you.)

3. Incentivizing quality through payment reform. (Check a checkbook near you.)

Senator Chuck Grassley is quoted as saying, “Today, Medicare rewards poor quality care. That is just plain wrong, and we need to address this problem.”

HMO’s are currently embracing “pay for performance” plans for physicians and hospitals. Medicare is introducing value-based purchase plans. Medicare is proposing the linking of quality outcomes to physician payments.

As I have written before, hospitals will no longer be paid for hospital acquired conditions. That seems like a rather simple fix, but to appropriately determine if the condition was not acquired at the hospital, extensive testing must be added pre-admission at considerable costs to the hospitals.

James G. Sheehan, Medicaid Inspector General of New York said, “We are reviewing assorted sources of quality information on your facility to see what it says and if it is consistent. You should be doing the same.”

Except for the financial implications, not unlike my competitive band story, the goal was to work toward perfection. The public reporting of quality of care is intended to:

1. Correct inappropriate behavior

2. Identify overpayment’s

3. Deny payments

KirkOgrosky
The False Claims Act, on the other hand has different goals. When asked how he viewed the False Claims Act, Kirk Ogrosky, U.S. Deputy Chief for Health Care Fraud said, “You will see more and more physicians going to jail.” I guess the prisoners will be receiving better care.

Where’s it all going? Competitive band. Will it improve health care delivery? Probably, for the patients who can find the few docs and hospital that will be left? I recently had a conversation with a young computer specialist who took care of physician practices. He said, “Doctors and hospitals haven’t figured it out yet, but they are simply becoming data entry centers for ‘Big Brother’ as the facts and figures are accumulated to be used against them any way the payers decide to move forward.”

Looking back at the school year that included gym class twice a week for the entire year, rich courses in music and art, and remembering a time when priorities included those classes intended to make every student well rounded, we have to ask, “Is education today better?”

Maybe this is all too complicated to get our arms around, but if there are 78 million Baby Boomers, and the Medicare Trust Fund is heading toward bankruptcy, then we probably will see every rule in the book being applied to keep from paying out money, because there is simply not enough money to go around.

Will health care improve? Once we understand that technology is not the end all and cure all that creates healing; once we endorse prevention, wellness, optimal healing environments, and systems approaches to health and wellness, health care will improve. I’ll bet you that it will have very little to do with the rules that are unfolding right now and much more to do with the creation and acceptance of a National Health Policy.

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Posted in Boomers, Healthcare, Hospital, Hospital Administration, Hospital Blog, Hospitals, Integrative Health, Medicaid, medical errors, Medicare, Music, Wellness

A Time to Reflect On Life

June 15th, 2008

With the passing of Tim Russert, we are all made critically aware of the fragile nature of life and our need to embrace every moment as a gift.  Obviously, within a split second, every aspect of our lives can change, and, as in Mr. Russert’s case, can end.  This is not a blog about instant death, and it is not just about recognizing our mortality.  It is about preparing for our passing carefully.

Russert
Liz Szabo, a writer with USA Today described in a recent article the cancer patient experience by saying, “Patients with advanced cancer often don’t know how long they have to live or how chemotherapy will affect their lives.”  According to a study by the Journal of the American Medical Association, many physicians either don’t give patients that type of information or the patients only “hear what they choose to hear, or very often misunderstand what is said to them.”

This situation often leads to patients requesting incredibly disruptive and sometimes painful therapies that have no hope of succeeding.  According to the study, more than 20% of Medicare patients who have advanced cancer begin a new chemo regimen two weeks before they die.  Many times patients are admitted to hospice days or hours before they die.

What has been observed in cases like this was that the patient often misses the opportunity to repair relationships, get their spiritual house in order or even prepare the necessary documents such as advanced directives.

Where is this going?  Sarah Harrington, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine in Richmond, co-author of the quoted article, indicated that “in the last few weeks or months of life, a lot of good work can be done.”

One of the points brought up in the article was that only about 37% of physicians told patients how long they had to live. This fact was not surprising to us because we have seen dozens of patients who were admitted to hospice over the years return home and live several more months or years. This particular prediction is not always dependable. The other fact quoted in the article, however, was that many patients learned more about their cases from other patients than from their physicians.

The article concluded with the suggestion that “patients and their families may have to take the initiative in finding answers to important questions.”  Thomas Smith, co-author and Chairman of Hematology and Oncology at VCU’s Massey Cancer Center suggested that the following questions should be asked by any patient in this situation:   What are my options?  Can I be cured?  Will I live longer with Chemo?  Should I consider Hospice or Palliative Care?  Who could help me cope?  What do I want to pass on to my family to tell them about my life?

Eldercare_visit
Palliative care is not limited to cancer.  All end-of-of life diagnoses qualify patients for hospice and palliative care.  Tim didn’t need or have this opportunity, but for those who do, embrace it. The primary thing that can be delivered to the patient and their family is the comfort of having caregivers dedicated to helping you move through your transition.  It is what they do.  These amazing people, volunteers, employees and physicians are dedicated to “paying it forward.”

So, as we eventually face our own mortality, as we evaluate what it is that we want to share with our families, as we consider the legacy that we wish to leave, having a clear mind and looking to those professionals who can help us is not only necessary, it is imperative. This transition can come in the blink of an eye.

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Posted in Boomers, Healthcare, Hospital, Hospital Administration, Hospital Blog, Hospitals, Medicare