Archive for the ‘Boomers’ category

IUP College of Osteopathic Medicine

June 14th, 2024

IUP COLLEGE OF MEDICINE

America’s healthcare system prioritizes sickness over wellness and prevention. According to the Commonwealth Fund, despite spending the highest percentage of GDP on healthcare, the US ranks last among 11 of the wealthiest countries in the world.

Their findings show that we continue to lack access, quality, efficiency, and equity. To understand better, we can look at COVID statistics in Japan where their citizens suffered exponentially less and had a much lower death rate per capita than in America.

The focus on sickness rather than wellness and prevention in the United States also explains why less than 20% of all physicians in our country are Primary Care physicians, while the majority of medical schools orient their programs toward specialties.

Some may say, “Follow the money,” which explains a system that is inundated with illness caused by successful lobbies in the fast and junk food, alcohol, and tobacco industries. These companies prioritize profits and refer to the physical destruction caused to our population in the form of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer as collateral damage.

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) projected a continuing shortage of primary care physicians across the United States through 2033 with rural areas being particularly affected. A Graham Center report found that as specialist training continues to grow, the number of family practice physicians dropped by 31%.

The perfect storm of our aging population, more physicians heading toward retirement age, and an increased demand for healthcare will all contribute to this gap. The National Center for Healthwork Analysis showed that in 2021 only 17.5% of our physicians were classified as Primary Care and that 17,400 more primary care doctors are needed.

The OECD iLibrary notes that when the European Union faced a similar lack of primary care physicians, countries like France dedicated at least 40% of all new postgraduate training places to general medicine. Even with this effort, attracting a sufficient number of candidates to fill these positions has been challenging.

What’s one answer? In 2020, after initial discussions with key external stakeholders followed by a pre-feasibility study in 2022, and with support of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania Council of Trustees, IUP moved forward to explore the possibility of a College of Osteopathic Medicine at IUP.

Osteopathic medical schools have a long tradition in rural communities, and physicians who are trained in osteopathic medicine are more likely to select family medicine as a specialty than those trained in allopathic medicine (46 percent vs 11 percent) and to practice in rural areas (18.1 percent vs 11.5 percent). The Proposed IUPCOM is centered around an osteopathic-focused foundation in accreditation—tailored to meet the needs of Indiana and Pennsylvania’s rural communities—to create a flagship model for rural health training throughout the country.

 

What does this mean for the region? IUP’s College of Osteopathic Medicine will be uniquely positioned to provide Family Practice physicians trained specifically to provide care in Rural Health areas with significant emphasis on wellness and prevention. The uniqueness of this training will include techniques in both integrative medicine and genomics. Graduates serving underserved, especially rural communities, are projected to contribute to healthcare cost savings in excess of $136.8 million annually.

Creating a College of Osteopathic Medicine is no small undertaking. As the only public university-based College of Osteopathic Medicine in Pennsylvania located in a rural community, IUP’s proposed College of Osteopathic Medicine could offer lower attendance costs and reduced student loan burdens.

As part of the State System of Universities, Pennsylvania’s retention of these primary care physicians will also be enhanced. Besides creating over 400 jobs, the IUP College of Osteopathic Medicine will bring nearly an additional $70M into the local economies.

Founding Dean, Dr. Miko Rose and President Michael Driscoll, are committed to finding the $103M in funds necessary to start the project and identify the individuals and organizations that will help underwrite the cost of tuition for the medical students.  Dean Rose and IUP have answered the call for action.

Achieving this vision, however, requires the support of the health systems, foundations, legislatures, leaders, and engaged citizens of this region and State. We stand on the precipice of a rural healthcare crisis, and this initiative offers one potential local solution.

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Tops in Care in PA

August 14th, 2023

If you were to see a list that included UPMC Shadyside, UPMC Passavant, St Clair Hospital, Geisinger and Chan Soon Shiong Medical Center, but no other local hospitals in this immediate geographic region, your initial question might be something like, “What’s this list represent?”

Here’s the succinct answer to that question for people living in the Greater Johnstown Area. This is part of a list of the top rated hospitals in Pennsylvania.  

 Let’s be perfectly clear about this, too. When you consider every aspect involved in evaluating a hospital for elite status, it’s very relevant that this is not some type of purchased PR accolade meant to create a smoke-screen for publication. It is, in fact, the result of serious patient analytics by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. More importantly, it is a sincere recommendation meant to assist patients in their healthcare selections.

 No, Chan Soon-Shiong Medical Center is not in the same league clinically as the hospitals listed above in range of services, but the services offered there do contribute significantly to one very important aspect of evaluation. When patients are asked if they would recommend CSSMC, their sincere answer to many detailed questions is “Absolutely, yes.” In other words, the range and scope of services offered at CSSMC are top-notch.  

 If you’re wondering how an achievement like this is possible, there is only one answer, teamwork, teamwork under the umbrella of incredible clinical leadership that is endorsed at the very top by the CEO, Tom Kurtz. Dr. David Csikos, MD, Chief Medical Officer, and Sherri Spinos, Vice President of Nursing are two of the hundreds of members of the CSSMC staff who should be standing in the winner’s circle accepting this Gold Seal of approval.

 Not only did Tom Kurtz, CEO turn around a small rural hospital that, like all of its peers in the State at that time, was heading toward either merger or closure, he did it with a spirit of good humor, compassion, kindness and positive energy. His positive energy was passed on to CSSMC’s physicians and staff in ways that create patient satisfaction at the highest levels.

 Congratulations to Chan Soon-Shiong, to Tom Kurtz and the Windber clinical leadership, staff, and physicians involved in this significant accomplishment. They have achieved “Best of Show” as Blue Ribbon winners in this national recognition. As the former Windber Medical Center continues to achieve these incredible quality standards as a small, rural hospital, we need to recognize and thank them for their efforts to provide quality healthcare to our region.

 They’ve done it again. Keep up the magic.     

 

Becker’s Hospital Review

The top recommended hospitals in every state

Mackenzie Bean (Twitter) – Friday, August 4th, 2023

Becker’s has compiled a list of the hospitals patients are most likely to recommend in every state using Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems data from CMS.

CMS shares 10 HCAHPS star ratings based on publicly reported HCAHPS measures. The recommended hospital star rating is based on patients’ responses to the question, “Would you recommend this hospital to your friends and family?” Hospitals must have at least 100 completed HCAHPS surveys in a fourth-quarter period to be eligible for a star rating. Learn more about the methodology here.

The star rating is based on survey data collected from hospital patients from October 2021 through September 2022. The figures are from CMS’ Provider Data Catalog and were released July 26. Asterisks denote that CMS included a footnote about the organization’s data, which are summarized below.

The hospitals that received five stars for patient recommendations in every state:

Pennsylvania
Advanced Surgical Hospital (Washington)
AHN Hempfield Neighborhood Hospital (Greensburg)
Bryn Mawr Hospital
Chan Soon-Shiong Medical Center at Windber
Chester County Hospital (West Chester)
Doylestown Hospital
Edgewood Surgical Hospital (Transfer)
Evangelical Community Hospital (Lewisburg)
Geisinger Jersey Shore Hospital
Geisinger St. Luke’s Hospital (Orwigsburg)
Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia)
James E. Van Zandt VA Medical Center (Altoona)
Lebanon VA Medical Center
OSS Orthopaedic Hospital (York)
Paoli Hospital
Physicians Care Surgical Hospital (Royersford)
Rothman Orthopaedic Specialty Hospital (Bensalem)
St. Clair Hospital (Pittsburgh)
St. Luke’s Hospital-Anderson Campus (Easton)
Surgical Institute of Reading (Wyomissing)
Troy Community Hospital
UPMC Passavant (Pittsburgh)
UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside (Pittsburgh)

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The Integrative Journey

March 28th, 2022

 

After having returned from the Ornish Coronary Artery Disease Reversal program in Sausalito, California, my life, my mental health, and my view of healthcare had been changed forever. Having previously been selected as the CEO of a traditional hospital that, like all hospitals, was all about sickness, I now realized I had new tools in my toolbox, new arrows in my quiver, and new eggs in my basket. . . you get the idea.

That workshop had taught me that there is no one right way to go through life, to achieve a better quality of life, to deal with health issues, and to survive this journey. I came home armed and informed that sickness could be stopped or reversed, and this concept did not just apply to heart disease. There was significant evidence that Type 2 diabetes, some autoimmune diseases, erectile dysfunction, some prostate cancers and other diseases could be positively impacted by diet, exercise, stress management and group support.

As Americans in one of only two developed countries that permits advertising of pharmaceutical products on our air waves, we had been carefully trained, pruned, mentally shaped and, if you will, brainwashed to believe in the “heal to the pill” method of care. We get sick, go to the doctor or hospital, are prescribed pills, and move on. Or we get a shot, or get the offending body part cut out, and life goes on, or not. Those were the options previously permitted on the proverbial healthcare menu.

It was only a few years later when the chief scientific officer of a major drug company explained his world to me like this, “You don’t understand the pharmaceutical industry. We’re like the movie business. We only want the blockbusters. We want to give you a pill that you’ll have to take from the time you’re five until you die at 75 or 80 that will never make you better. It will just help control the symptoms.”

In 1987, I was working toward another Masters Degree at Carnegie Mellon University, and our epidemiology professor challenged us to find something that would significantly alter the health, lives, or future of at risk people in our hospital’s catchment area. I decided to have our physicians give pneumococcal (pneumonia) vaccines to our at-risk senior population.

When I told my CEO of that plan, he suggested I present it to the primary care physicians at their monthly meeting. I boldly stood in front of a room full of internal medicine and family practice physicians and made my pitch. You would have thought I asked them to bring in their first born child to be assassinated. I was very nearly strung up. I heard cries like, “How are we supposed to pay or bills? How can we pay off our loans? What am I supposed to do, pull my kids out of college? Treating those patients is how we make our livings.”

Ironically, in 2017, I found myself in front of the leadership of a major health system with 125 cardiologists, and I informed them we were going to enter into the coronary artery disease reversal program. The spokesperson for the group put up his hand and said, “Let’s talk about the elephant in the room, do we really want these people to get better?”

Bottom line, we have created a medical industrial complex that is dependent upon sickness, and what I had learned in California was, “Yes, we’re all going to eventually die, but why not give your body a chance and live as healthy as you can for as long as you can?”

Interestingly, the Ornish program was not yet being offered in many places in the country, and when I asked if we could bring it to Western Pennsylvania, there was a long pause on the other end of the line, and Dr. Ornish asked,”What do you want?” He explained that he was working on a licensing project with our local Blue Cross, and I was not going to be able to bring it into my hospital, but that didn’t stop me.

We worked out a deal with some local churches to bring elements of the program that were available to the public just to test the water. Within weeks, we had heart disease participants in their 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s doing stretching exercises, meditation in whatever form they selected, nonjudgmental group support, and vegetarian covered dishes to church halls and basements.

The amazing thing about this program was that people who were suffering from angina pectoris (chest discomfort) found relief in sometimes less than a few weeks. They were no longer living in fear of dropping dead, and more importantly, they were taking control of their life without having to be afraid of the outcome. It was giving their bodies a chance to do what those bodies are so great a doing, healing.

Of course no good deed goes unpunished, and those non-believers, or those individuals who were potentially most negatively impacted by a health and wellness program began to identify me as a zealot, a fanatic, a vegetarian warrior. I was openly mocked at board and physician meetings when I ate my specially prepared vegetarian meals, and when I started holding meetings on the indoor track we had created with our new wellness center, those who would not benefit from my new found center for wellbeing went on a mission to discredit these ideas.

At one point the powerful head of a local Baptist Church began to take steps to have various conservative sects actually picket our hospital for teaching yoga and trying to take away the souls of our participants. (Their interpretation of yoga.) One of our powerful physicians sent emails on a regular basis to our staff with the intention of discrediting me and my programs for wellness and prevention. It was not unlike Salem, Massachusetts for a few years. Then something incredibly powerful occurred.

I was, for only the second time in my 30+ year career in hospital administration, invited to have dinner at a physician’s home. At that dinner, I was seated beside our local congressman, John P. (Jack) Murtha. The host’s wife did not know what to prepare for my meal so she gave me a large white plate with two egg whites on it. When the Congressman saw it, he asked, “What the heck is wrong with you?” I carefully explained my experiences in California with heart disease reversal, meeting patients who had successfully stopped and or reversed their disease, and how well they were living. He leaned back and said, “We’re spending a billion dollars a year on heart disease in the military. Maybe if you got to Bethesda or Walter Reed and find someone who would work with you, I might be able to help>”

We knew that his 25 plus years in Congress had given him some seniority, but what I didn’t realize was that he was in charge of the subcommittee on appropriations for the department of defense. His committee was responsible for well over $300B dollars of government spending. Well, my board chair was a former Navy airman and he flew me to Bethesda where we met with and were politely turned down by the Navy. A few months later when I was in D.C. for a meeting, I got in a cab and, without any knowledge of military life, command, or structure, I showed up at the front door of Walter Reed Army Military Hospital which became Walter Reed National Military Medical Center Bethesda several years later.

When I walked inside, I saw hundreds of soldiers, family members, and medical personnel, but I didn’t have an appointment. Consequently, I walked up to the first white coat I saw, explained who I was, where I was from, and who had suggested I come there. Serendipitously, he was the only physician who had ever received a federal earmark and it was about $75M from Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska to create a center for the study of prostate cancer. He looked at me, smiled, and said, “Follow me.”

After meeting with a Walter Reed cardiologist, I went home, wrote a white paper, and several months later we established two Ornish Centers, one at Walter Reed and one at Windber with a grant that was made possible through Congressman Murtha. The reason you need to understand this back story is that without these grants, there would have been no way a hospital our size could have supported a program featuring integrative medicine.

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Meditation

August 16th, 2020
Western Pennsylvania Guide to Good Health
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Grandma and Grandpa

June 20th, 2018

A few weeks ago, I got a box of cassette tapes. One of the tapes had “Grandpa and Grandma” on the label. I instantly remembered sitting with my family with my little tape recorder as I interviewed my grandparents for posterity in 1960. Let me share just a few tidbits from those now deceased voices talking, laughing, and telling, in broken English, their story of poverty, struggle, and life. While they spoke I thought about the life of my English grandparents whose families came here in the 1600s. It was like “Downton Abbey” or “Up the Down-staircase.”

I asked my grandmother what her family told her life was like in the early 1800s she said, “Longa time ago, our family lived in a family cave, and even when we were little, we useda olive oil to light our house with little lanterns.”

Then my granddad who came to America at age 13 said, “ When I was a kid, I had to take care of the cows. My brother and dad would use them to plow the fields, and I had to clean up after them, feed them, and take care of them. I hated that. That’s why I ran away.”

I asked him, “Did you go to school?” And he said, “The old man used to say, ‘Get a book and learn to read.’ So, I taught myself everything.”

Then I asked what he remembered about his mother, and he said, “She went to church every day, and every dime she got, she gave to the priest. She gave him bread all the time even when we were hungry. He had a big belly.” Then I asked him, “Did you ever go to St. Peter’s in Rome?” He said, “When I lived away from home, we went there all the time, but I don’t know whata you people think. The Pope is just an old man.” (Obviously, he wasn’t happy the priest got all the bread.)

Both families had farms close to the town of Alvito between Rome and Naples. Her family’s was three miles away, and both fathers were sharecroppers. Half of what they grew went to the rich men who controlled the land. My grandfather said, “One summer dad cried like a baby because everything dried up, and another summer he didn’t geta good grapes for wine, and he cried even harder that time.”

I asked if they made wine, and my grandmother said, “The mena mada the wine by stomping on a da grape in their bare-feet.” My English mother asked, “Did they wash your feet?” The result of that question was lots of laughter. “The alcohol killed the germs,” my grandfather said laughing between breaths.

“When we were ina this country and was married, I made a jug of wine,” my grandmother said, “and Patsy (my grandfather) tested one time.” Then she said, “My winea was betta than his dad’s wine.” My granddad looked at me, smiled and winked. “Yep, he laughed, yours was better.” (That’s why they were married for so long.)

“Did you wear shoes?” I asked. My grandfather burst into laughter, “The first shoes I have was when I come in America.” “So, what did you do in the winter?” I asked. He said, “We would wrap rags around our feet in the winter time.”

For whatever reason, as a 13-year old boy, I asked, “Did you ever see a wolf?” To which my grandmother said, “My dad had to walka to church one time at 4 in the morning and something came after hima growling. He yelled because he thought it was a wolf, but it was a biga dog.” Then she laughed and laughed. Grandad said he saw wolves.

Then he said something that stuck with me. He said, “We had a lot of fun, but it wasa stupid fun.” From the sound of the laughter on that tape, maybe it wasn’t so stupid.

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What a weekend

May 13th, 2018
Nina had her piano lesson from the church music director, and when he walked into the room, three-year-old Pete yelled out, “I know him. He’s the guy who played the music when the Lord came out of his cave.”  (Pete and Joe were both at Easter mass.)

On Thursday evening we all went to the elementary band and choral concert at my grandkids’ school.  We were five minutes late and ended up parking illegally on the grass.  When we got inside the auditorium, the real fun began. Trying to keep Pete under control for 90 minutes of really good elementary music is, to quote Jerry Seinfeld, “Like putting a baby goat in a pillow case and hoping it behaves.” His mother ended up taking him into the hallway for at least twenty minutes, and as my long departed father-in-law would say, “ She took him out there to “blow the stink off.”  That kid  ran up and down the hall at Road Runner speeds until her head was spinning.

Friday evening was birthday party number three for the third grader in Pittsburgh. I’m not sure why, but kids seems to have a minimum of three birthday parties now: close family, full family, and family and friends. Of course there are always presents involved. There was also more cake, and, believe it or not, more Barbie Dolls. I’m happy to report that the dolls have evolved and are now representative of all shapes, colors, and forms.  Let your imagination run wild because there’s no limit to the ethnicities of these dolls. It may not be long before there’s a border wall built around the Mattel corporation to limit access to the United States.

On Saturday, Nina competed in the State gymnastics tournament and placed second in her age group for the whole State. Five hours to see five minutes!  Then the two Pittsburgh girls had their musical, a program they’ve been working on since last fall. This event involved feeding and then transporting every available family member to the show.  (Everyone, that is, except Pete.) We recruited our best relocated Johnstown to Pittsburgh friends for extra beds, food, and toys to hold this grand gathering together. The show was great, and, because she was going to miss her acting friends who were moving into seventh grade, Zoey cried for hours after the last curtain call. She had the staring roll as the leading lamb with one line, “Baaaaaaa,” and she managed to steal the show. And Lucy, well, Lucy’s always great.

Sunday morning was the Pittsburgh Marathon, and let’s just say that trying to get around in the City on marathon day is like trying to get out of East Berlin in the early ‘80’s.  You could drive in circles, but couldn’t get anywhere. We finally gave up and walked everywhere with a “hangry” little guy who didn’t care about the 40,000 plus runners, the clanging cowbells, or the people around him. He just wanted his mom, and the rest of us were clearly speed bumps in his way.The extenuating circumstance was his mom, big brother, and dad were all in the race and not near him.  It was our job to find them, cheer them on, and finally to reunite with them and get them back to the condo for showers.   They all did great, but I can only describe this experience as Arrrgh.

After the Johnstown kids were gone, we met the Pittsburgh kids for dinner at a restaurant where the wait would have been three days or longer. So, we headed off to another place, slammed down a salad and went to see our friend’s son, Matt, in “Hamlet.”  Truthfully, it brought back lots of memories of advanced high school English.  He was amazing.  I couldn’t help but think if they had only had psychotropic drugs, no one would have died.

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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.

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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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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Random Thoughts About Things That Confuse ME

October 12th, 2015
 People have often asked me, “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?” In fact, I was in gym class. Six years after that, on April 4, 1968, I was in Pittsburgh when Martin Luther King was shot. I was back again in Pittsburgh on June 5, 1968 when Bobby Kennedy was killed. Finally, as a young teacher in Johnstown, on May 4, 1970, four students were killed and nine more were wounded by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University. Between the riots and civil unrest that followed these events, I was pretty sure that our world was spinning out of control, and I had just graduated from college.

It was during that time of the Vietnam War, the escalation of the Cold War, the race riots and political rallies, that a chasm began to appear between those men who still had crew cuts and white socks, and conservative hippie kids like me with my wire-frame glasses, sideburns, and mustache.

In fact, at my very first job interview, the department head, a man who was still firmly planted in the 50’s, asked me if because I was my college class president, I’d ever been involved in a campus riot. Meanwhile, there had only ever been one small demonstration at my university, and I wasn’t even on campus when it happened. But his question offended me so much that I replied, “Only the one.” Needless to say that job went to someone with a crew cut and white socks.

Throughout my life I held profound optimism that because we were a country that embraced education, espoused Judeo-Christian love, and incorporated tolerance and diversity in our stated beliefs, our philosophies would prevail and the world would become a better place. Wrong.

Because I spend much of my time on the road, Facebook is often the way I keep in touch with my virtual and real families. It keeps me apprised of changes, challenges, and the daily activities of those I both care about and want to be connected to through this last quarter of my life.

Of course, Facebook is filled with puppies, kittens, babies, and opinions, and many of those opinions remind me of the Archie Bunker character who so famously dominated the airwaves in the All in the Family sitcom of the 1970’s. That series, along with MASH and The Jefferson’s attempted to challenge the way Americans dealt with race, war, and general closed-minded prejudices.

It makes me sad when my friends, people that I love and most often respect, write posts that are passionately in support of social beliefs that embrace continued gun violence, racial prejudice, twisted religious beliefs, intolerance, greed and hatred. It would be easy to unfriend them, to write them off, and forget about them, but the teacher in me wants to try to educate them and to help them find their way. That never works because most of them are Archie Bunker’s age and older. All I’m asking is for tolerance, the embracing of diversity, and a non-violent philosophy of loving others. It’s the Golden Rule. Unfortunately, it’s often the Rule of Gold that seems to prevail.

I can tell you where I was on April 20, 1999, April 6, 2007, December 14, 2012: Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Sandyhook. Unfortunately, I can’t even tell you the name of the school or how many kids were killed on January 4, September 14, September 30 of this year. October 1, 2015, however, became more tangible because the hospital that cared for the wounded in Oregon is run by a friend, and Troy Polamalu’s cousin Brandon, a teacher at Umpqua Community College, was on campus at the time of the shooting.

Minimally, as a country, can’t we invest in behavioral health initiatives and enforce background checks.

Meathead really was the voice of reason on so many levels

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Along the Way…Things Became Very Interesting

January 31st, 2011

Two years ago I began this new journey, but not until a few months ago did my work in consulting really begin to take shape in a way that could never have been predicted.

As the challenges of our present economic times have become increasingly daunting, my personal and professional journey has become even more dedicated to innovation and creativity. One goal has been to provide new alternatives to past practices that will create value for patients. This means making a contribution to saving and transforming lives, while producing cost savings and financial stability, and developing new markets to enable provider growth in their missions.

Olympic National Park, Port Angeles, WA - Nick Jacobs, FACHE - Healing Hospitals - SunStone Consulting

The driving force behind my exploration began with asking how we can begin to control those out of control expenses that are currently blurring the lines between continued care for our population, and rationing or elimination of services?  But, the answer(s) must enable us to continue to add healing opportunities for our patients at every turn.

Because my creative energies have always been focused on producing more ways to generate new monies for whatever organizations I have personally represented,  it seemed somewhat foreign to me to spend more time on fiscal issues than creative alternatives.  However, with literally millions of Baby Boomers coming of age each year, it was obvious that our entire culture is at risk both fiscally and socially. Consequently, after listening carefully to my peers, several opportunities presented themselves that would address all levels of these concerns.

Through the combination of their proprietary software and dozens of years of combined knowledge in the healthcare finance field, SunStone Consulting, LLC, spends each and every working day addressing the challenges of finding monies that should already have been captured by hospitals and physician practices, while also creating new opportunities that have heretofore not been explored. That’s where SunStone Management Resources comes into play.

SunStone Consulting - Nick Jacobs, FACHE

We have identified new companies, new entrepreneurs and new creatives who can not only improve healthcare, but also significantly improve the bottom line of those organizations willing to embrace their programs. One such company with whom we are partnering can increase Emergency Room productivity by as much as 35 to 50%.  They can also help do the same for cancer centers and operating rooms. They utilize robotic systems that communicate patient needs and simultaneously seek out the appropriate medical services required as soon as the patient is triaged. The patient’s condition and potential requirements are communicated to every individual who will or should have contact with them throughout their hospital stay.

We have also identified what I refer to as “no brainer” opportunities. By making otherwise locked fiscal percentages  a commodity, even small and medium sized organizations can save huge dollar amounts. How? By changing out only the electronic reading devices used hospital-wide. This simple change has resulted in huge fiscal savings for clients.

Add to examples like those above the introduction of  a new invention that, in the right hands, can help to extend some types of Stage 3B and Stage IV cancer patients’ lives from months to years through a relatively simple post-surgical procedure. Also consider the invention of new materials that would support bone growth, while virtually eliminating the need for casts or even slings. Imagine a series of protocols that have brought over 40 people out of deep, irreversible comas. Then, on a completely different path, consider having access to  the cumulative knowledge garnered from over a hundred million dollar investment in breast cancer care.  (This is about to be made available to small and medium sized hospitals across the world.)

These are but a sampling of  just some of the opportunities currently driving my passion in this new healthcare world order.

You may want to make a simple inquiry into what’s behind the innovative, practical, and incredible creations of the brilliant people doing this work.  It’s not just so many words on a page.  It is the future, and the future for you and your organization could be now.

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