70 million elderly by 2030…NY Times excerpt

With a nudge from the new health care law and pressure from Medicare, hospitals, doctors and nurses are struggling to prepare for explosive growth in the numbers of high-risk elderly patients. More than 40 percent of adult patients in acute care hospital beds are 65 or older. Seventy million Americans will have turned 65 by 2030. They include the 85-and-older cohort, the nation’s fastest-growing age group. The New York Times Milt Freudenheim sums it up best. Click here for the whole story

Kissito Healthcare Welcomes International Director

We just love to hire people, and we do it well. This new hire is very near and dear to our hearts. We want to welcome our first ever Executive Director of Kissito International, Elizabeth Parsons. This is BIG! This means that we have grown to the point where our international efforts need full time key leadership. Elizabeth is going to transform the way we develop and fund projects through out the world. Before I could even publish this announcement post she has sent our CEO to do a ground breaking of our new hospital in Ethiopia. She organized half of the executive team and whisked them off to Haiti to train the Haitian people devastated by the recent earthquakes, how to care for their displaced geriatric population; and I hear a multi-media website is to be launched on June 28th highlighting all our international work and projects. So suffice to say we have hired a another good one to propel our mission beyond our borders. Hang on a second, the news media is calling. “Yes, okay, oh you want Elizabeth Parsons. I’ll transfer you.” Now add to the list international media tour. So who is this international champion of the people? Glad you asked….

Elizabeth Parsons, Director, Global Projects

 Elizabeth’s role at Kissito International is a natural extension of a lifelong commitment to building relationships and bridging cultures. For Kissito International, Elizabeth oversees resource development, operations and most everything in between.   Her goal is to identify and extend Kissito’s reach to populations others may have overlooked—from the elderly of post-quake Haiti to the agrarian peoples of Western Ethiopia, for whom the World Health Organization estimates only one doctor serves every 35,000 individuals.  Elizabeth holds a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology, a Master’s degree in Writing and has lent her communications and management skills to organizations as diverse as the Grammy Awards and the Office of Human Rights in Ambato, Ecuador. She is also a widely published writer and journalist.

Hospitals and Drug Makers Nothing to Fear?

I came across an interesting article in the NYT that actually said “Hospitals, Drug Makers, and Physicians have nothing to fear [about healthcare reform]” The claim by analysts is that all the soon to be newly insured patients are being treated for free by hospitals. With the new reform a lot of the uninsured will either opt for Medicaid or a national plan providing the hospital with a payer source they right now do not have for these patients. But isn’t this just the beginning? In order to cut healthcare costs the CBO has clearly made it’s point that ACO’s and bundled payments (which hurt hospital revenue by not paying for readmitted patients within 30 days) is really the only way to see healthcare costs cut at the level they need to be cut to stop the bleeding. So is having more Medicaid and insured patients really of benefit to the hospitals? I guess we’ll see what the trade-off is soon enough.

The article then went on to say that physicians would benefit because all the newly insured patients would need physician services. I agree. I think the physicians will probably be okay. I have spoken to about 20 physicians in the last 2 months and asked them if they were feeling secure. The response was overwhelmingly no. The physicians I have spoken with say until Congress takes the cuts proposed for physicians under Medicare off the table, no physician is going to sleep easy. I have seen first hand over the last year more and more physicians banding together, expanding and diversifying their practices and business models to offset any kind of future cuts.

The third group that was supposed to see the most downside may not be seeing any at all according to the NYT article. Pharmaceutical drug makers stand to gain significantly from 32 million newly insured patients. Of course they do, that’s 32 million more patients seeing physicians to write 10’s of billions of dollars worth of new prescriptions. The drug makers may just be the biggest proponents and winners of them all! Certainly ironic since they were supposed to see the most downside from new reform.

One thing is for certain, healthcare reform even though passed, is uncertain. But it’s getting to be an exciting ride.

Please see link below for the article this post is making reference to:

In HealthReform, Boons for Hospitals and Drug Makers-NYT

Health Reform Would Help America’s Seniors

Health Reform Would Help America’s Seniors- from the Future of Aging Blog

March 4, 2010

President Barack Obama yesterday renewed his call for Congress to enact real health reform this year. I hope the members of Congress heed his challenge.

America’s seniors should hope so, too. The health care proposal under consideration would increase funding for the Medicare drug benefit, create more options for seniors who rely on home and community-based care and strengthen the safety net for those who require long-term services and supports. These initiatives would benefit seniors enormously.

read Larry Minnix’s entire post

What do Nike, CHF, and i-phones have in common?

They all play a role in creating a data driven health revolution projected to lower hospital re-admissions and lower costs. Eric Topol addresses the wireless healthcare frontier at TEDmed 2009.

Collaboration- there’s that word again!

Fast Company just released their top innovative companies of the year. #17 was Cisco Systems or should I say Cisco Systems + Collaborations. There is that word again. Collaboration will be the platform, the only platform that will successfully transform healthcare as we see it today. At Kissito Healthcare collaboration seems to be at our core these days. Imagine the collaborative possibilities in the post acute setting alone given Cisco’s current advances.

March 2010- fastcompany.com ( Cisco Systems #17 )

On November 9 of last year, Cisco Systems introduced an unheard-of 61 new technologies, all focused on collaboration. Tony Bates, the SVP behind them, says collaboration is a $34 billion market, and “by far the most exciting thing we’re working on. The world is bigger than an office and a bunch of cubes.” Among the new offerings: a social video system called Cisco Show and Share (YouTube for your office); Collaboration in Motion (WebEx for your iPhone); and, coming next year, the Cisco Enterprise Collaboration Platform (Facebook/Twitter meets WebEx for your business), which will help far-flung employees share a chat window, videos, wikis, docs, even a company-wide news feed. No longer content to be a plumber, Cisco is focusing on the network as the basis for innovation, which is bringing the company into closer competition with the likes of Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Tune in next year to see how that’s going.–end

1. Telemedicine- physicians consulting patients using secure video/web cam capabilities, physicians can see more patients.

2. Electronic Medical Records- integrated between acute and post acute settings (A Kissito currrent project)

3. Chat, video, wikis – nationwide access between facilities to assist in a diagnoses, patient/customer service recovery, archiving of best practices, etc…

4. Smart phone monitoring- physicians using smart phones to monitor vitals in real-time.

These are just a few off the top of my head. What are the possible collaborations you envision?

Leave us some comments.

Increased Spending In Virginia For Telehealth Program Reaching Rural Areas

February 10, 2010 Senior Housing News-

The Obama administration’s budget proposal for the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2011 is seeking $250 million to strengthen access to health care for 3.2 million Veterans enrolled in VA’s medical system who live in rural areas. This push for rural outreach includes expanded use of home-based primary care and mental health through the department’s “telehealth” program.  The system links patients and health care providers by telephones and includes telephone-based data transmission, enabling daily monitoring of patients with chronic problems.  The budget provides an increase of $42 million for VA’s home “telehealth” program.  The effort already cares for 35,000 patients and is the largest program of its kind in the world.

“Our budget proposal provides the resources necessary to continue our aggressive pursuit of President Obama’s two over-arching goals for Veterans,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki. “First, the requested budget will help transform VA into a 21^st century organization.  And second, it will ensure that we approach Veterans’ care as a lifetime initiative, from the day they take their oaths until the day they are laid to rest.”

Reverse Your Outlook On Healthcare

A palindrome reads the same backwards as forward. This video reads the exact opposite backwards as forward. Not only does it read the opposite, the meaning is the exact opposite. This is only a 1 minute, 44 second video and it is brilliant. Make sure you read as well as listen…forward and backward.

This is a video that was submitted in a contest by a 20-year old. The contest was titled “u @ 50″ by AARP. This video won second place. When they showed it, everyone in the room was awe-struck and broke into spontaneous applause. So simple and yet so brilliant. Take a minute and watch it. Then apply the concept to healthcare reform? Enjoy!

U.S. Dominates the Cost of Health Care

The Cost of Health Care Per Person in U.S. Sky High

The United States spends more on medical care per person than any country, yet life expectancy is shorter than in most other developed nations and many developing ones. Lack of health insurance is a factor in life span and contributes to an estimated 45,000 deaths a year. Why the high cost? The U.S. has a fee-for-service system—paying medical providers piecemeal for appointments, surgery, and the like. That can lead to unneeded treatment that doesn’t reliably improve a patient’s health. Says Gerard Anderson, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studies health insurance worldwide, “More care does not necessarily mean better care.”  —Michelle Andrews

Graphic source: National Geographic

Kissito Alerts May 18

Source: Health Care Finance News

Title: Hospital advocates address delivery system reform

Date: 5/18/09

URL: www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/hospital-advocates-address-delivery-system-reform

• The AHA supports proposals to develop a comprehensive strategy to address workforce shortages, redistribute unused graduate medical slots to increase access to primary care and ban certain physician referrals to a hospital in which the physician has an ownership interest.
• Premier endorsed value based purchasing as a tool that should be applied not only to existing Medicare models but also to the longer term approaches such as bundled payments and the creation of accountable care Organizations.

Source: Health Care Finance News

Title: CMS extends timeline for medicare secondary

Date: 5/18/09

URL: www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/cms-extends-timeline-medicare-secondary-payer-reporting

• CMS has extended its implementation schedule for new Medicare Secondary Payer reporting requirements under the Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP Extension Act of 2007.
• The requirements are intended to ensure that the Medicare program does not pay for a beneficiary’s care when another insurer has primary responsibility.
• Organizations subject to the provisions can register for reporting through Sept. 30 and pre-test their electronic reporting from July 1, 2009 through May 30, 2010.

Source: Health Care Finance News

Title: Analysis: home health care for chronic patients saves medicare $1.71B

Date: 5/14/09

URL: www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/analysis-home-healthcare-chronic-patients-saves-medicare-171b

• Patients with diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or congestive heart failure who used home health care within three months of discharge from a hospital cost the program 1.71B less than those who used other forms of post acute care over a two years period.
• About 8.9% of Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries currently used home health services.
• Approximately 86% of the Medicare population has one chronic condition, 66% have two or more and 40% have three or more.
• Avalere estimated that if all chronic care patients in the study used home health care rather than post acute care, Medicare could have spent 1.77B less over the 05-06 period.

Source: Health Care Finance News

Title: Congress promises obama health reform legislation by july 31

Date: 5/14/09

URL: www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/congress-promises-obama-health-reform-legislation-july-31

• Last night Obama said Congress has promised to have comprehensive health care reform legislation passed by July 31.
• SFC leaders said Congress has not yet begun to tackle the most difficult parts of the health care debate, including how to fund the reform, the destiny of the employer health care tax exclusion and a potential national health plan to compete with private market.

Sebelius and DeParle said they are spending much of their time negotiating with Congress to promote the president’s reform plans

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