Patients Are Powerful

Posts Tagged ‘patient advocacy’

Patients are powerful, especially when they have resources available to them. As a chiropractor who has a “live chat” feature on my website, I was impressed to learn that the Patient Advocate Foundation (PAF) also has such a feature. There is a plethora of information and a complete section on patient education on the website. Plus, it offers a number of patient services such as assistance with arbitration, mediation and negotiation to settle issues with access to care, medical debt, and job retention related to patient illness. But, the best thing that this particular website offers is a “live chat” function. I have found that many seniors find talking to a “real” person not only more helping than trying to negotiate website directions, but also comforting. And, isn’t that what we, health care providers and patient advocates, want for our patients? A one-on-one conversation can ease frustration and clear confusion in all patients who need help, but in my opinion, it is our senior population who desires this feature most.

Technorati Tags: patient advocacy, Patient Advocate Foundation, patient education, patient resources

As a Chicago chiropractor, I wait anxiously along with my patients and the rest of the country for the passing of a new comprehensive and compassionate Health Care Bill. And, along with the questions of cost and inclusiveness that everyone is asking, I believe that we should also be asking if an overhaul of the U.S. heathcare system will include simplification? Let’s face it, our current system is not only horribly expensive and amazingly ineffective, it is inherently complicated. When a person is ill, and may be in need of surgery or recovering from it, the last thing that they should have to worry about are complex insurance issues, sorting through mountains of bills, making certain that the proper medications are given, and that appropriate arrangements for follow-up treatment are made. Thanks to the dedicated patient advocate, these questions often do get answered.

However, if the new Health Bill falls short of simplification, as most Congressional Bills tend to do, through patient advocacy, patients will still have the “extra strength” they’ll need in order to stay informed when talking to the doctors, in getting to see a desired specialist, in ensuring that the pills that they are given are the ones meant for them, and, if necessary, in negotiating for any additional help that they may require and the fees charged for the services.

This is just part of the great service that patient advocates provide today. And, I suspect that no matter what happens to the healthcare system in the future, with the scores of aging baby boomers demanding, as they should, to receive the proper and affordable health care they require, the patient advocate will still be a vital part of any health environment.

Technorati Tags: healthcare system, patient advocacy, patient advocate, patient advocates

I have to say that as a patient advocate,  I’ve done a lot of thinking about chiropractic marketing.  Why? Well, maybe my view is skewed a bit, but I don’t like to think of doctors, especially alternative doctors like doctors of chiropractic, as “business people,” anymore than I like to think of my minister that way. And, of course, altruistically, we as patients want to believe that those who’ve studied chiropractic medicine didn’t do it  “for the money.” But, these days there seems to be a whole lot of chiropractic marketing going on, especially on the internet.

However, realistically, I know that chiropractors, like any other professional, can’t do what they love to do, i.e., help people to feel better, get out of pain, and get their life back again, without the money necessary to keep their offices open.

So, I’m going to “lighten up” my attitude towards the business needs of all chiropractors, including my own. What helped me to be more open, and less judgmental, was an article I read recently indicating that medical doctors (who, let’s face it, we’ve all sort of viewed as being influenced by the financial gains of mainstream medicine) are finding themselves “business-challenged.” That’s right! Physicians who are going to business school to get their MBA. Apparently, nationwide more doctors are finding it both useful and necessary to add business fundamentals to their core of medical know-how, according to health care organizations and observers.

The effort encompasses more than just learning tools for helping doctors run their offices; it is about reclaiming their voice in a sector that has become dominated by nonmedical professionals, such as managed care firms, professional administrators and accountants. “Physicians nowadays need to appreciate and understand business concepts and thinking,” said Dr. James Anderson, a Cornerstone Health Care pediatrician and member of the practice’s board who is working toward a business degree. “The way we train in medicine and the way we approach problems in medicine is different than in the business world.”

The conviction that physicians can no longer be blind to the ways of business is at the center of Dr. Bill Applegate’s efforts to retool the curriculum at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Applegate, dean of the medical school, said he intends to take “a slice” of Wake’s Babcock Graduate School of Management content and implement it for the medical campus’ doctors in training. He figures it may take another two years for it to happen.

Patients are powerful. If we support the efforts of chiropractors, and medical doctors, too, for that matter, to take care of business. Then, when it comes to health care costs, we will be dealing with the very professionals who offer the care, rather than big insurance companies who are definitely “in it for the money.”  In fact, I’m looking at my chiropractor in a whole, new way: He maintains the “heart of a doctor,” but he also has the mind of a business professional.

Technorati Tags: chiropractic marketing, patient advocacy, patient issues

As a Colorado Spring chiropractor I am very familiar with the issue of patient privacy. This is a summary of a news story out today.

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View Original Article

WASHINGTON — The push for universal electronic health records, a long-simmering issue in the healthcare debate, is gaining fresh momentum with the new administration and Congress, but privacy concerns continue to confound policymakers.

President Obama has set a goal of digitizing every American’s health record by 2014, and he included $19 billion to that end in the economic stimulus package.

But the question remains, how do health IT providers ensure that patients remain in control of their most sensitive personal data in a digital healthcare regime?

At the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference today, a panel of experts took up that question, acknowledging that it doesn’t really have an answer at this point.

“This is one of those issues that has been going round and round and round for years,” said Joel Slackman, managing director at the BlueCross BlueShield Association.

But in the case of the stimulus money, that debate is going to be cut short.

“The time in which things have to be done is incredibly compressed,” Slackman said.

The IT provisions in the stimulus bill amended the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, broadening its scope to cover tech firms offering personal health portals.

“I don’t know if we’ve gotten there yet,” Torres said.

The advent of the Web-based personal healthcare portal was greeted with significant privacy concerns.

“At Microsoft we decided very early on with our HealthVault product that consumers should control what goes in, who sees it going out,” Torres said.

Torres said that patients can control the information that is entered into their files, as well as which doctor gets to see it.

The appropriate granularity of these controls is one of the thorniest issues facing policy-makers as they set privacy rules for e-health records.

“Consent is the 800-pound gorilla for medical privacy,” said Ashley Katz, executive director of the advocacy group Patient Privacy Rights.

The prospect of bringing IT firms into the business of managing medical records can also introduce a significant challenge in ensuring compliance with a bewildering complex of state laws.

“You don’t even know that a law’s conflicting until it smacks you in the face, sometimes,” Slackman said.

Technorati Tags: patient advocacy, patient privacy, patient rights

Great article with tips for patients below. As a San Diego Chiropractor I feel it is important for patients to learn how to navigate the current healthcare system as it leaves much to be deisred. Good luck Ms. Boden and Dr. Hallisy.

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by Victoria Colliver, Chronicle Staff Writer

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Adriana Boden was a healthy 33-year-old woman until one day in March 2007 when she felt like an explosion went off in her head. Although she went to her doctor immediately, it would take nearly a year of doctor visits, diagnoses of everything from migraine headaches to encephalitis, unnecessary drugs and treatments before a physician finally figured out what was wrong with her.

It was a relatively simple test – one that Boden, through her own research, suggested and was eventually ordered by a physician who listened to her – that led to her diagnosis of epilepsy.

Boden, a sales manager at Google Inc. in Mountain View, wants to take what she’s learned and use her technological know-how to help other patients better navigate the fragmented health care system.

Along with San Francisco dentist and author Julia Hallisy, she founded a nonprofit organization and Web site called the Empowered Healthcare Community, which will officially premiere at a conference in San Francisco on May 16.

Many Americans – even those with insurance and access to care – are frustrated by the U.S. health care delivery system.

Boden said there were many things she wished she had known at the onset of her illness that could have helped or shortened her search for a diagnosis and cure.

She formed the organization in part because most of the patient advocacy and networking groups she found were specific to certain diseases or didn’t offer her the kind of help she needed.

“I want to give people confidence and help them find the courage to help themselves,” she said.

Hallisy, the group’s co-founder, spent virtually her daughter’s entire life – from the time she was diagnosed with cancer at five months until her death in 2000 at age 10 – pursuing the treatment her daughter needed.

Hallisy last year published “The Empowered Patient” to give patients practical tips about their rights and safety issues.

“Our goal for the organization is to give patients an unprecedented level of information they don’t have access to,” she said.

Boden’s physician, Palo Alto internist Darren Phelan, said patients and doctors need to work together now more than ever due to the information age.

Doctors, he said, have a tendency to get stuck in the patterns they know.

“You can search on the Internet and find a study that will support or refute a lot of things,” he said.

The conference is open to the public and registration is $80.

Have a health advocate.

No news is not necessarily good news.

A second – or third or fourth – opinion is appropriate at any time during your treatment, not just in the early stages of diagnosis.

Be aware that federal law guarantees patients access to their medical records.

Always check your medications for drug interactions.

If you need surgery, find out information about your hospital at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services site at hospitalcompare.hhs.gov.

If you are having surgery, ask your hospital to use the World Health Organization surgical checklist.

Technorati Tags: health, health care, patient advocacy, patient rights

Post from Healthcare300.wordpress.com

As health care providers we are always taught to not let our emotions regarding any particular subject interfere with our ability to treat a patient.  Easy enough concept perhaps, but actually following through with that thought is sometime difficult.  What happens when a health care provider, a nurse or a doctor lets their feelings about a patient or patient’s actions drive their care decisions?  Well, typically it plays out against the patient’s best interest.

Patients that present to local emergency departments that are suspected of drug seeking are often ignored by providers in hopes that they will become so frustrated with waiting that they will just leave the ER. Other times care will be purposely delayed for patients that are rude, “whiny”, or in some other way annoying.  Providers will often minimize a patient’s level of pain and health and not offer analgesics even though they are told by the patient that they hurt.  This is often seen when patients come in to an ER setting in a histrionic state.

Letting value judgments about patients or patient’s actions drive care decisions in most cases would be considered counterproductive.  Health care providers must continually evaluate their own biases and look beyond the realm of their own perspectives and focus on treating the patient appropriately.  Frequently the only way to combat this prejudice is to have a patient advocate.  Family members are often advocating for their loved ones with health care providers. In several other instances nurses play a huge part in patient advocacy. The issue here is that providers are not always in tune with the needs of their patients.  Call it being human, call it something else. The fact remains that whether or not providers have biases toward patients should be irrelevant when it comes to making care decisions.

Technorati Tags: ER, health, health care, patient advocacy

As a former Michigan resident and current California resident, this Santa Barbara Chiropractor, while I’m happy with the decision to allow medical marijuana, I am concerned that patients will not be able to get access to marijuana when needed. This is the current situation.

State health officials are finalizing rules and regulations for the Michigan Medical Marijuana Program.

Step one: issuing picture ID cards for those on the marijuana registry; they should begin arriving by the end of April.

Caregivers, who can supply marijuana to a maximum of five patients, will also have to pay $100 for ID cards under a program the state hopes will be self-supporting and require no taxpayer dollars.

One thing the state won’t do is provide the marijuana or even tell patients how to acquire it on their own.

And possession of marijuana remains a federal crime, although the Obama administration has said that it likely won’t prosecute users in states where the drug’s use for medicinal purposes has been approved by voters.

To get on the confidential marijuana registry, patients must get a letter – not a prescription – from a Michigan-licensed physician certifying that pot could benefit their medical condition.

The law covers people with “debilitating” medical conditions, including cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and chronic diseases, or their treatments that produce wasting syndrome, severe pain, severe nausea, seizures or severe muscle spasms, such as those caused by multiple sclerosis.

Greg Francisco, executive director of the nonprofit patient advocacy group Michigan Medical Marijuana Association, said some doctors are refusing to go along with the new law.

“Many doctors are skeptical and reluctant to get involved in this,” said Francisco, whose wife mixes marijuana into brownies that she bakes to ease his back pain from atrophied muscles, the result of childhood polio.

“The larger, mega corporation health clinics associated with hospitals are refusing, based on corporate policy,” said Francisco, whose group is based in Paw Paw, in southwest Michigan.

The Michigan State Medical Society, which opposed the ballot proposal, has sent out a “legal alert” to its 16,000 physician members advising them that “a physician should use his or her best judgment whether they want to recommend that a patient get a registry card,” said David Fox, spokesman for the group.

The new law shelters participating doctors from arrest, prosecution or any professional penalties for recommending marijuana use.

Doctors cannot write prescriptions for marijuana since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration classifies it as an illegal, controlled substance like heroin and LSD, with no medical use and a high potential for abuse.

The Michigan doctors’ group does favor more research to establish what, if any, medical use marijuana may hold.

More problematic is the question of legality.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration regards marijuana users, even in states that have medical marijuana statutes, as lawbreakers.

But as a practical matter, the feds have not gone after medical marijuana users in states with those laws.

Francisco said that when he was a federal law enforcement officer with the U.S. Coast Guard, “we didn’t bother with nickel-and-dime drug use by recreational boaters.

“Sheriffs and prosecutors are telling us that like it or not, they will go along with the new law,” he said. “It’s like the speed limit.

Shanon Akans, spokeswoman for the Michigan State Police, agreed.

“It’s not going to have a huge effect on us,” she said. “As long as medical marijuana patients comply with the law (limits on amounts and not giving or selling marijuana to people not on the state registry), they won’t have an issue with law enforcement.”

Despite the law, it’s up to employers to decide whether to prohibit medical marijuana users from smoking in the workplace.

The new law bans pot use in public places. And it will remain illegal for patients to use marijuana while operating a motor vehicle, aircraft or motorboat.

Unlike a constitutional amendment that can only be undone by a vote of the people, the medical marijuana law is a citizen initiative.

That means the Legislature is free to modify or outright repeal the law after two years.

Meanwhile, Francisco said his group is planning an application rally at the Michigan Department of Community Health on Monday.

“We’re asking patients to come to Lansing and caravan to hand-deliver the applications,” he said. “We’re planning on a mass turnout so we can turn this into a media event.”

For the full article, see Charlie Cain, “Michigan readies for medical pot use: Up to 50,000 may qualify for legal smoking”, Detroit News, April 1, 2009.

Technorati Tags: medical marijuana, Michigan, patient advocacy

As a Fort Worth Chiropractor I am concerned that this budget situation in Washington State will soon be affecting us here in our state.

Washington State Budget Cuts Endanger Registry for Living Wills.

What good is your living will if your doctor can’t get to it in an emergency?

That dilemma spurred Washington in 2007 to create a free electronic registry of health-care directives, legal documents containing a person’s end-of-life wishes. In little more than a year, nearly 600 state residents have registered at the site so that physicians can quickly look up whether a patient has opted to refuse respirators, feeding tubes and other life-prolonging treatments.

Gov. Chris Gregoire has proposed slashing the registry’s $180,000 annual budget by 80 percent. That won’t leave enough money, patient advocates fear, to keep the registry viable. In fact, registry supporters argue the proposed cuts could well cost the state more money in the long run if patients are given expensive treatments they did not want. Miller said registry sign-ups have accelerated since the passage of Initiative 1000, which legalized physicians prescribing lethal doses of drugs to people with less than six months to live.

In the five months since Washington voters approved the so-called Death with Dignity Act, the pace of enrollment in the registry rose by 18 percent compared to the previous five months. In case of accidents or a coma, patients may be unable to alert medical professionals that they do not want CPR, artificial ventilation or other treatments, Miller said. “Doctors are reluctant to make a decision that’s going to result in the death of a patient.”

People who enroll in the living-will registry carry wallet cards with an identification number that allows qualified medical professionals to look up their directives on a secure Web site. Miller said even one critically ill patient who is revived against her wishes and ends up in intensive care could rack up more needless treatment costs in a few days than the registry’s annual budget. Kate White Tudor, a lobbyist for Compassion & Choice, said $70,000 a year would enable the registry to continue accepting new registrants, although customer support would have to be cut back.

Source: Seattle Times

Kyung Song: 206-464-2423 or ksong@seattletimes.com

Technorati Tags: fort worth chiropractor, patient advocacy, Washington State budget cuts

Technorati Tags: medical billing, medicard, patient advocacy, patient rights

When you get sick, you go to the doctor. And the doctor will, of course, prescribe medicines. You will go and buy medicines. You take them, and hopefully, you get well. This is how the health profession goes on nowadays a cycle of diagnosis and prescription.If anyone were to give you herbs for medicine, you would probably say that that person was a quack but a few natural herbs can help relieve stress

But nowadays, studies are being conducted to see if there are really is any merit to what is called natural medicine.

Natural medicine is the use of natural methods, herbal medicines, and traditional practices to heal ailments. Every culture has a form of natural medicine. In ancient cultures, village medicine men served as the doctors of the community, passing on medical knowledge to the apprentices that followed them.

Many categories of the healing methods fall under natural medicine. Among these are traditional medicine, complementary medicine, and alternative medicine.

Usually, natural medicine refers to medical practices that were in place before the advent of modern medicine.

This includes herbal medicine, or phytotherapy, which is prevalent in Chinese, Ayurvedic(or Indian), and Greek medicine.

Upon the advent of modern medicine, many professionals discarded the use of herbs in favor of man-made medicine. The fact that these treatments are based on the healing properties of some herbs was forgotten.

For example, opium, digitalis, quinine, and aspirin all have their roots in traditional medicine.

Natural medicine can be considered as a lost art. This does not mean that it has lost efficacy over time. In some cases, natural therapy is actually better than modern medicine. This has lead me, a Ventura chiropractor to seriously consider and study the possible uses of natural medicine

Before we continue, it is important to stress that not all the natural remedies are legitimate. It would help to only try those remedies which have been thoroughly studied and are relatively risk free.

Take herbal medicine for example. There are many well-documented and studied herbal remedies available. However, only those that deal with minor ailments such as cough, colds, fever, skin rashes, and its ilk are likely to be recommended by health professionals. These remedies are sometimes superior to synthetic medicine. This is because herbal medicines are less likely to cause negative side effects.

Currently there are numerous organizations that study the effects and advocacy of natural medicine among which is herbal medicine. Some governments and health agencies openly advocate the use of natural methods since they are inexpensive and relatively risk-free.

As their studies compile, more herbs and treatments are added to the list of accepted medicines. However, many herbs and treatments have been proven to be bogus medicine. This represents a challenge for both the user and the agencies because they have to ascertain that the treatments they either use or advocate are legitimate.

There exist today many alternative medical treatments that fall under natural medicine. However, not all of them have been proven to be effective. You could mention homeopathy, aromatherapy, acupuncture, and other alternative medical treatments. It would pay to consult the experts as to the legitimacy of these treatments.

Natural medicine should also be thought of as an accompanying medicine, and the rights of patients needs to be taken into concideration. Right now, the current collective medical thought suggests that natural medicine be used only to supplement accepted modern medical practices. In that case of minor ailments your expert we actually advise you to take natural therapies instead.

The practice of modern medicine revolves around diagnosing an illness and prescribing treatments for such. Natural medicine is helpful because it suggests that treatment be not necessarily given only when sick. Natural medicine strives to make each patient practice good health habits. These habits include good diet, healthy living, and the regular natural treatment.

It is this same line of thought that leads our parents to tell us to eat our vegetables. Yes, a healthy lifestyle and will do no harm to our well-being. And this is the foundation of natural medicine,may it be massage, herbal medicine, aromatherapy or others.

It is funny but true that science, in its quest for excellence, is studying the knowledge of sages past. This, surprisingly, leads us back to the remedies nature offers. The possibilities of finding remedies to everyday illnesses in natural medicine are encouraging. So staying tuned to studying these remedies is worthwhile until we can verify that these therapies are truly helpful to our health and our society.

Technorati Tags: acupuncture, alternative medicine, chiropractic, massage, natural medicine, patient advocacy, rights of patients