The Weight of the Nation - The Obesity Epidemic
Top of my list this week is the films "The Weight of the Nation" from HBO over the last few nights. You can watch the films (without a subscription) and really should make a point of doing so. There are 4 episodes, 1 hour each and offer insights into the various challenges for people in dealing wiht obesity, what's worked, what hasn't. If there was one takeaway I got it was"Take small steps you can be successful at"
So for example - instead of I want to loose 10 pounds, I want to loose 2.
Healthcare Challenges
The Health Care Innovation Awards that CMS is awarding to organizations for projects that:
- deliver better health,
- improved care and
- lower costs
Focused mainly on patients that have the highest health care needs: HHS announces first 26 Health Care Innovation awards
It is a similar concept to the X-Prize that was so successful in Space and Exploration has now expanded to include Health and the Tri-Corder Prize
Projects include:
• Emory University’s collaboration with area health systems to train health professionals and use tele-health technologies to link critical care units in rural Georgia to critical care doctors in Atlanta hospitals. This project aims to save money and improve the quality of care by reducing the need to transfer patients from rural hospitals to critical care units in Atlanta;
• Courage Center, which is a program in Minneapolis-St. Paul serving adults with disabilities and complex medical conditions. The grant will enable Courage Center to save money and improve the quality of care by creating a patient-centered medical home focused on highest-cost Medicaid patients;
• A University Hospitals of Cleveland initiative to increase access and care coordination for children beyond the walls of the doctor’s office. This initiative aims to save money and improve the quality of care by extending the expertise of an elite children’s hospital to local pediatric practices treating children with complex chronic conditions and behavioral health problems with physician extension teams and tele-health.
The HHS Challenge Site includes everything from sharing of imaging data to patient engagement techniques adn tools
- Ocular Imaging Challenge
- A multidisciplinary call to create an application that improves interoperability among office-based ophthalmic imaging devices, measurement devices, and EHRs.
- ONC is challenging multi-disciplinary teams to develop an application that facilitates the reporting of patient safety events.
- Share how you use technology to help “know your numbers” and achieve blood pressure control.
NwHIN
Government requesting input - Request for Infomration (RFI) on the Governance of the Nationwide Health Information Network
A common set of “rules of the road” for privacy, security, business and technical requirements will help lay the necessary foundation to enable our nation’s electronic health information exchange capacity to grow.
My daughter Serena will graduate from Oregon Health & Science University School of Nursing in September and I wonder if things will be different for her than for the nurses I worked with more than thirty years ago when I entered the healthcare industry.
