This document discusses health policies and their impact on nursing practice, particularly during disasters and emergencies. It notes that health policies provide guidelines for patient care during normal times and can act as a "guiding light" during abnormal situations like disasters. Nurses must be trained on protocols and have a general understanding of what to do in emergencies in order to respond rapidly and effectively. The document also emphasizes that nurses should feel confident in their actions during emergencies and that their experiences can help inform future health policies.
The document discusses various topics related to physical therapy (PT) practice. It notes that in 2014, PTs can avoid PQRS penalties by reporting 3 quality measures for 50% of patients, and the number of measures required to receive bonuses will increase from 3 to 9. It also eliminates reporting via measures groups through claims. The document discusses focusing on developing quality measures for PT, payment models that promote value, and public policy initiatives to advance the role of PT in areas like disease management. It also discusses improving access, eliminating self-referral profits, and ensuring an adequate PT workforce.
This document outlines Dan Hausman's critique of economic evaluations of health that rely on eliciting and aggregating individual preferences. Hausman argues that preferences are an unreliable guide to the value of health states for several reasons. People's preferences can be distorted by cognitive flaws and irrelevant factors. They are also often uninformed since health states are unfamiliar alternatives. Rather than relying on preferences, Hausman believes health economists should directly evaluate health states based on their effects on well-being, opportunities, autonomy, and other considerations.
The document discusses the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) model and its potential benefits. It summarizes that the PCMH aims to provide patient-centered, coordinated care through a personal physician leading a team. Data from other countries shows primary care-focused systems have better outcomes and lower costs. The PCMH may benefit primary care physicians through payment reform recognizing care coordination work. It may benefit patients through improved access and chronic disease management support. Subspecialists may also benefit from opportunities to lead medical homes and fewer administrative hassles.
This document describes a study that assesses the effectiveness of a new Senior Emergency Department (ED) program at Summa Akron City Hospital. The study compares outcomes between a historical cohort of geriatric ED patients from 2012 and patients seen in the new Senior ED program from 2013. Key outcomes measured include length of stay, admission rates, observation rates, and discharge disposition. The results showed that the Senior ED program significantly reduced admissions, increased observations, and increased discharges home compared to usual ED care. This suggests the new program effectively managed elderly patients.
Current health workforce planning methods are inadequate for the complexity of the task. Most approaches treat the workforce supply of individual health professions in isolation and avoid quantifying the impact of changes in skills mix, either planned or unplanned. The causes and consequences of task delegation and task substitution between or within health professions is particularly important in handling workforce shortages in developing countries and understanding and planning possible responses to both rapid catastrophic health demands and slower background trends in their social and political environment. As well as the contextual environment, interactions and delays in supplying and balancing health resources and configuring clinical services are required to address the geographic, profession-specific and quality imbalances. These supply side resources include knowledge and research, skills and attitudes of clinicians, buildings and equipment, medications and medical technologies, information and communications technologies and any other methods and models to improve the provision of clinical services. The interaction between demand and supply could adjust for feedbacks of health services outcomes, policies and governance on population expectations, funding, political and social supports and explicitly link these to clinical workforce supply in a useful, rigorous and relevant tool. The challenge is capture the relevant essence of the dynamic complexity of health and healthcare for this purpose.
Recent advances in the evidence base for technology-based behavioral health applications have provided clinicians a better understanding and guidance on the integration of these tools into clinical care. Participants will learn about research findings on current technologies in use in clinical practice, such as audio conferencing, video conferencing, and virtual reality, in addition to tools available for use between patients, such as the use of websites and mobile applications and wearable sensors.