"Provides explanation of elements of USP Hazardous Drugs' Handling in Healthcare Settings and best practices to comply with the requirements and recommendations of the USP General Chapter"--Pref.
The Healthcare Answer Book provides detailed solutions to 323 of the top challenges faced by healthcare executives today.You''ll get recommended software and tools, staff ratios, program structures, ROI measurement and results for various programs, protecting patient privacy and security in a number of scenarios -- answered by some of the nation''s leading healthcare experts to help you plan, evaluate, manage and improve your organization?s healthcare initiatives.Compiled from a series of live audio conferences in which these industry experts answered questions from the field, this report delves into a variety of topics, including cost containment, disease management, e-Health initiatives, HIPAA security and privacy, healthcare industry trends and workplace wellness.Indexed by topic and by keyword, this guide will become your indispensable research assistant for questions that challenge you and your staff each day. You''ll get the answers you need to such questions as:Cost Containment * What type of software tools are you using for predictive modeling? * Which predictive modeling tools are best for the ROI calculation? * What level of payment or financial risk is needed to change provider behavior? * What is the range of pay-for-performance paybacks and how often are they calculated? * What is the best ROI methodology on P4P programs that you have evaluated and how does it work? * Are tiered networks feasible in smaller markets?Industry Trends * Do you have a recommended reading level for translated written materials for preventative services in either low socio-economic status populations or for children? Also, is there a web site or written reference indicating how to do that? * In this era of consumer-driven healthcare, what quality-related information helps consumers make informed choices about health plans or providers?eHealth Initiatives * What screening requirements do you use for telemedicine patients? Do you evaluate factors outside disease severity? * Can you describe the kind of investment needed to implement e-health tools, how quickly you can achieve an ROI, and what kind of ROIs you can expect? * What criteria are payors and physicians using to determine whether or not an e-visit is billable? Are there clear-cut guidelines? * What lessons have you learned through your personal health record rollout process? What advice can you share with other organizations as they implement their own PHRs?HIPAA Security and Privacy * What are the biggest challenges to offering single sign-on? * How do you secure e-health physician-patient communication?Disease Management * How do strategies for asthma disease management differ for community-based health programs that target the under-served? * What is your staff-to-patient ratio in your depression management program? * How effective are physician-specific report cards in getting physicians in practice with the guidelines? * Is there any other type of literature that would support the effectiveness as well? * What is an accurate assessment of a member?s readiness to change, and how do you create interventions that are applicable to each member?s stage of readiness? * How are the health coaches trained, and what kind of training gets them geared up to work with patients? * What is the average amount of time a health coach spends per call per participant?The Healthcare Answer Book is also available on CD-ROM with keyword searching capability.Table of Contents * About This Document * Cost Containment o Predictive Modeling o Pay for Performance o Predictive Modeling in Pay for Performance o Predictive Modeling for Asthma & Pre-Natal o Reducing Trend & Spend o Tiered Networks * Industry Trends o Cultural Competency o Physician Engagement o Health Plan Quality Improvement o URAC Standards for Consumer Education and Support o The Patient?s Home: The New Healthcare Hub * e-Health Initiatives o Web Technology in CDHC o e-Visits o Moving from High-Tech to High-Touch o The Role of e-Health Initiatives o Personal Health Records & Electronic Medical Records * Disease Management o Asthma o Obesity o Depression o Behavior Modification o Resistant Patients o Health Coaches o Health Coach Training o Pre- and Post-Natal Care o The Role of Primary Care Physicians o Healthcare Toolkits * Workplace Wellness o HRAs o Incentives for Healthy Lifestyles o A Team Approach to Wellness * HIPAA Security and Privacy o HIPAA Security Compliance o HIPAA Security Auditing, Audit Trails & Audit Logs o HIPAA Security Risk Assessment * About the Experts * Glossary * For More Information * Index
New York Times bestseller Business Book of the Year--Association of Business Journalists From the New York Times bestselling author comes an eye-opening, urgent look at America's broken health care system--and the people who are saving it--now with a new Afterword by the author. "A must-read for every American." --Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief, FORBES One in five Americans now has medical debt in collections and rising health care costs today threaten every small business in America. Dr. Makary, one of the nation's leading health care experts, travels across America and details why health care has become a bubble. Drawing from on-the-ground stories, his research, and his own experience, The Price We Pay paints a vivid picture of the business of medicine and its elusive money games in need of a serious shake-up. Dr. Makary shows how so much of health care spending goes to things that have nothing to do with health and what you can do about it. Dr. Makary challenges the medical establishment to remember medicine's noble heritage of caring for people when they are vulnerable. The Price We Pay offers a road map for everyday Americans and business leaders to get a better deal on their health care, and profiles the disruptors who are innovating medical care. The movement to restore medicine to its mission, Makary argues, is alive and well--a mission that can rebuild the public trust and save our country from the crushing cost of health care.
In this long-awaited updated edition of his groundbreaking work Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis, renowned healthcare economist John Goodman ("father" of Health Savings Accounts) analyzes America's ongoing healthcare fiasco—including, for this edition, the failed promises of Obamacare. Goodman then provides what many critics of our healthcare system neglect: solutions. And not a moment too soon. Americans are entangled in a system with perverse incentives that raise costs, reduce quality, and make care less accessible. It's not just patients that need liberation from this labyrinth of confusion—it's doctors, businessmen, and institutions as well. Read this new work and discover: why no one sees a real price for anything: no patient, no doctor, no employer, no employee; how Obamacare's perverse incentives cause insurance companies to seek to attract the healthy and avoid the sick; why having a preexisting condition is actually WORSE under Obamacare than it was before—despite rosy political promises to the contrary; why emergency-room traffic and long waits for care have actually increased under Obamacare; how Medicaid expansion spends new money insuring healthy, single adults, while doing nothing for the developmentally disabled who languish on waiting lists and children who aren't getting the pediatric care they need; how the market for medical care COULD be as efficient and consumer-friendly as the market for cell phone repair... and what it would take to make that happen; how to create centers of medical excellence, which compete to meet the needs of the chronically ill; and much, much more... Thoroughly researched, clearly written, and decidedly humane in its concern for the health of all Americans, John Goodman has written the healthcare book to read to understand today's healthcare crisis. His proposed solutions are bold, crucial, and most importantly, caring. Healthcare is complex. But this book isn't. It's clear, it's satisfying, and it's refreshingly human. If you read even one book about healthcare policy in America, this is the one to read.
For comprehensive guidance on creating quality structures that support patient/provider collaboration, cost-effective solutions, and safe, efficient care, get the fully updated HQ Solutions, an official publication of the National Association for Healthcare Quality (NAHQ). Written by HQ experts and applicable to all practice settings, this essential resource offers healthcare quality professionals the theoretical and practical basis for safe, reliable, cost-effective care, including the use of state-of-the-art tools for measuring, monitoring, selecting, and managing data. Invaluable for preparing for the Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality® (CPHQ) certification exam, this is an optimal healthcare quality professional’s resource. Create a safer, more efficient care environment, with proven quality improvement practices ... NEW quality and safety tools and techniques adaptable to any care setting NEW and updated content on recent changes in U.S. healthcare quality requirements, legislation, and reform NEW content on core skills and methods of organizational leadership, patient safety, performance and process improvement, and health data analytics Key resource for HQ principles and practices—vital for healthcare quality professionals including nurses, instructors, researchers, consultants, and clinicians in all practice settings, including home care, hospices, skilled nursing facilities, rehab, and ambulatory care, as well as healthcare organizations, healthcare boards, and government agencies Organizational Leadership Leadership fundamentals and principles, quality and safety infrastructure, strategic planning, and change management Real-life scenarios solved with proven leadership formulas and evidence-based solutions Performance measures, key performance and quality indicators, and performance improvement models Accreditation, Regulation, and Continuous Readiness Impact of regulations on healthcare quality and safety Continuous readiness activities Organizational assessment, survey procedures, and more Health Data Analytics Foundations of a solid data management system Tools, approaches, and application of data management systems, data collection, interpretation, and reporting Analysis tools and basic statistical techniques and methods Patient Safety Practical tools for safety assessment, planning, implementation, and evaluation Components of a safety culture Effective risk management strategies Performance, Safety, and Process Improvement Key principles and practices Critical pathways, effective team building, decision support, benchmarking IOM imperatives, analysis and interpretation of data, decision-support tools, and more
Despite having surmounted numerous obstacles, the Affordable Care Act--also commonly known as "Obamacare"--remains highly controversial and faces ongoing legal and political challenges. The law's staunchest critics want to repeal and replace the entire law, while even its supporters acknowledge that serious changes are needed. The question is: replace it with what? In A Better Choice: Healthcare Solutions for America, economist and John C. Goodman answers the question clearly and concisely. For anyone who wants to better understand Obamacare's most serious problems and learn about some of the boldest prescriptions designed to remedy them, Goodman's book is a must-read.
Millions of low-income African Americans in the United States lack access to health care. How do they treat their health care problems? In Health Care Off the Books, Danielle T. Raudenbush provides an answer that challenges public perceptions and prior scholarly work. Informed by three and a half years of fieldwork in a public housing development, Raudenbush shows how residents who face obstacles to health care gain access to pharmaceutical drugs, medical equipment, physician reference manuals, and insurance cards by mobilizing social networks that include not only their neighbors but also local physicians. However, membership in these social networks is not universal, and some residents are forced to turn to a robust street market to obtain medicine. For others, health problems simply go untreated. Raudenbush reconceptualizes U.S. health care as a formal-informal hybrid system and explains why many residents who do have access to health services also turn to informal strategies to treat their health problems. While the practices described in the book may at times be beneficial to people’s health, they also have the potential to do serious harm. By understanding this hybrid system, we can evaluate its effects and gain new insight into the sources of social and racial disparities in health outcomes.
Considers why U.S. society is believed to be less healthy in spite of disproportionate spending on health care, identifying a lack of social services, outdated care allocations, and a resistance to government programs as the problem.
The evidence is undeniable. By any measure, the US spends more on healthcare than any other country in the world, yet its health outcomes as measure by longevity are in the bottom half among developed countries, and its health-related quality of life has remained constant or declined since 1998. In addition to high costs and lower than expected outcomes, the healthcare delivery system is plagues by treatment delays as it can take weeks to see a specialist, and many people have limited or no access to care. Part of the challenge is that the healthcare delivery system is a large, complex, and sophisticated value creation chain. Successfully changing this highly interconnected system is difficult and time consuming because the underlying problems are hard to comprehend, the root causes are many, the solution is unclear, and the relationships among problems, causes, and solution are multifaceted. To address these issues, the book carefully explains the underlying problems, examines their root causes using information, data, and logic, and presents a comprehensive and integrated solution that addresses these causes. These three steps are the methodological backbone of this book. A solution depends on understanding and applying the principles of patient-centered care (PCC) and resource management. PCC puts patients, supported by their primary care physicians, back in the role as decision makers and depends on patients being responsible for their health including making good life-style choices. After all, the best way to reduce healthcare costs and increase quality of life is to improve our health and wellness and as a result need less care. In addition, health insurance must be rethought and redesigned so it is less likely to lead to overuse. For many people with health insurance, the out-of-pocket cost of healthcare are small, so healthcare decision making is often biased toward consumption. Effective resource management means that healthcare providers must do a better job of acquiring and using resources in order to provide care quickly, productively, and correctly. This means improving healthcare strategy and management, accelerating the use of information technology, making drug costs affordable and fair, reducing the incidence of malpractice, and rebuilding the provider network. In addition, implementation is difficult because there are many participants in the healthcare delivery value chain, such as physicians, nurses, and medical technicians, as well as many provider organizations, such as hospitals, clinics, physician offices, and labs. Further up the value chain there are pharmaceutical companies, equipment providers, and other suppliers. These participants have diverse and sometimes conflicting goals, but each must be willing to accept change and work in a coordinated manner to improve healthcare. To overcome these problems, strong national leadership is needed to get the attention and support from the people and organizations involved in healthcare and to make the comprehensive changes that will lower healthcare costs, improve healthcare quality, eliminate delays, increase access, and enhance patient satisfaction.