A recent report by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) finds that over the last two decades, the number of U.S. hospital emergency departments (ED) in urban areas has declined by about 27 percent: In 1990, the nation had about 2,446 EDs in non-rural areas; today there are 1,779.

According to a March 2011 survey conducted by the American College of Emergency Physicians, many doctors believe emergency rooms will become busier places, despite healthcare reform.

Last Wednesday, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Partnership for Patients, a provision of the Affordable Care Act to help reduce medical errors and improve patient safety in hospitals.

In The Surgical Suite...

Recent statistics project that over 2600 wrong site surgeries occur each year in the US alone, with devastating results for patients and clinicians.  Could your hospital benefit from what Ximedica has learned about the surgical site identification process and how minor redesigns may  reduce the risk of such adverse events?

Efforts to make hospitals safer for patients are falling short, researchers report in the first large study in a decade to analyze harm from medical care and to track it over time.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/25/health/research/25patient.html?_r=2

Tiffany Hogan reviews PSFK's recent report, "The Future of Health."  Recently prepared for UNOCEF, it looks at 15 different ways that technology is changing the way that health care is delivered, around the world. 

Francis Diaz continues his review of the new proposed Device Tax, Part 2: Medical Device Tax and Its Exemptions

Research and Product Strategist Francis Diaz reviews the new proposed Device Tax. 

The American Academy of Family Physicians’ Future of Family Medicine Project last month identified group appointments as a trend to watch.  (see Washington Post Article from 3.9.10: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/08/AR2010030802945_pf.html)

For another interesting resource on the latest innovations in health care delivery, check out Harvard Business Review’s web page: “Insight Center”: it’s a growing collection of new articles and opinions that reflect the informed thinking on how to redesign and deliver top-quality health care.  Also included on this site are a few “classics” that provide an excellent foundation for anyone interested in how some top business thinkers understand the American Health Care delivery system.

This graphic by National Geographic provides a thought-provoking look at various countries' per capita health care spending, average annual visits to a doctor, and average life expectancy.

Enough said.

In his latest article on health care reform,http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/12/14/091214fa_fact_gawande,Atul Gawande likens health care to agriculture, which in the 1900’s was also strangling our country’s economy:

In 1900, more than 40% of a family’s income went to paying for food. At the same time, farming was hugely labor-intensive, tying up almost half the American workforce. We were, partly as a result, still a poor nation. Only by improving the productivity of farming could we raise our standard of living and emerge as an industrial power.
Gawande takes us through our government’s history of pulling our country out of the grips of the agricultural crisis, which did not entail sweeping, radical change, but rather, fostering pockets of innovation and staging pilots of trial and error.

Amidst the health care reform media frenzy, I am surprised by how little press is devoted to comparative effectiveness (CE) research. CE is, quite simply, the comparison of different management options for a given medical condition, such as surgery and drug therapy for the same condition. More than $1 billion of stimulus funding was recently allocated to CE, which is sure to usher a sea-change in the way that physicians on the front lines practice medicine as well as the way that medical devices and other health care products are developed.