Christina's Considerations

Faces of Hope: Celebrating Community Health Centers

Last week I spoke at the Northwest Regional Primary Care Association and Community Health Association of Mountain/Plains States Conference and received a copy of the book Faces of Hope:  Celebrating Community Health Centers (ebook).  While there and reading the book, I thought of my visits this summer to both urban and rural community health clinics in Utah.

The Community Health Center Model -- merging the fragmented disciplines of medical care, epidemiology and public health -- was first used in South Africa during the late 1940s and 50s.  Many found this "third world approach" relevant for addressing some community needs here in the US; beginning with Mississippi in the 1960s. 

The book includes a review of the history, great pictures and even a chapter on the impact of community health centers in New Orleans -- post Katrina.  I'm going to give my copy to my favorite local Community Health Center, the Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics and encourage you to visit and share the link to the Faces of Hope ebook.

Social Media Cuts Healthcare Costs -- Health Information Exchanges -- InformationWeek

I read the Healthcare Performance Management in the Era of "Twitter" paper on my flight to Denver this week and was still thinking about it when I saw this article Social Media Cuts Healthcare Costs -- Health Information Exchanges -- InformationWeek. The title is pretty catchy, don't you think? 

Dr. Drew Pinsky

In the early 1990's I worked at Las Encinas Hospital with an exceptional young addiction medicine specialist, Dr. Drew Pinsky.  When he wasn't at the hospital, he was creating quite a stir on KROQ's Loveline program.

A few years ago, while serving as Red Ribbon Week Coordinator at my local elementary school, I suggested that the Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse consider Dr. Pinsky as a speaker.  However, Loveline was creating much more of a national stir and I just don't think Santa Barbara was ready for him. 

Here we are, several years later, and the stars have aligned -- Dr. Drew is coming to Santa Barbara.  I'm buying my ticket and look forward to seeing him and hearing his message.  If you can't make it, then pick up a copy of his book Cracked: Putting Broken Lives Together Again.  He is a professional who truly cares for his patients and excels at treating this most challenging population.

HIMSS HIT Dashboard

Many moons ago the HIMSS RHIO Federation came out with an HIT dashboard . It seems like it has been re-released after being out of service for a while and I'm happy to see it back.  The dashboard displays major health information and technology initiatives in each state and has been updated with some new categories.

While it does include the regional extension centers, you can also find them on the HHS' HealthIT site.

The dashboard doesn't include the telehealth resource centers, but given the current interest and buzz, we could see them added soon.

One physician's journey with social media

My old blogger friend from acoss the pond, Rod, has a great link to a video on one physician's journey with social media.  And, she is from one of the Northwestern states and with one of the NRTRC consortium member organizations.

 

Marian Medical Center

One of the hospitals in our county is included in a paper by California Health Care Foundation, so I thought I'd share it here Hospitals Thrive Despite Challenging Payer Mix.  I've been working with Marian. and the other hospitals in the county, on county-wide disaster preparedness and know that they have a challenging payor mix in their service area.  So, it was nice to see this recognition of their accomplishments.

The Saints

I hate the fact that I can't watch all of the Saints games from home here in SB.  So, I'm in my office today keeping up with the score on my computer and am really happy to see the current one.  I came across a great picture and want to share it with my readers.

Absolutely beautiful....

 

Disaster Recovery and IT

Health IT Guy has a great post on planning for IT disaster recovery .  The most important thing is to ensure that your hospital's leadership has the conversation about what it's essential services are and which systems are the most important (to support those essential services).  Then they should rank the IT systems with multidisciplinary input and decide the order to bring each system back up.

The next most important thing in the planning process is to ensure that this plan is communicated to those that rely upon these systems for their work.  This often forgotten step will go a long way toward ensuring an orderly response that keeps essential services and quality in the forefront and limits the number of frantic calls to the IT department during a recovery period.

If you know what I mean, leave a comment!

Social Media in Healthcare Book Review

Ken at Collaborative Social Media has a wonderful review of my new book.  I really appreciate the opportunity to see what makes an impression on readers and hope you will consider leaving your own thoughts as a comment on this post, on your own blog or at Amazon.com. 

This is what social media is all about! Thanks, Ken, for helping get the conversation started!

New ATA Issue Briefs on Immediate Actions for Telehealth

The ATA has released Six Immediate Actions for President Obama’s Administration for Telehealth (Fall 2010) that were prepared for discussioins with the Administration:

• Mandating Telemedicine as a Covered Service under Federal Health Benefit Plan
• Medicare Coverage for Technology-Aided “Physician Services”
• Improve Process for Adding Medicare Telemedicine Services
• Telemedicine Priorities for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation
• Administration’s FY2012 Legislative Proposals
• Joint Federal Agency Coordination on Telemedicine

These documents are absolutely beautiful and do speak directly to some actionable solutions to that will help move us forward as we transition to a new healthcare delivery system. 

My only suggestion is that we also keep the important role of community health centers and rural clinics in mind when we talk about priorities and improving rural coverage.

Physicians, Revenue and Income

Mark Frisse has some interesting stats on a recent post about physicians, revenue and income from Deloitte's Center for Health Solutions.  I also appreciate learning about Center and their research.

Forming, Storming and Norming

I visited Life as a Healthcare CIO  and immediatly was attracted to the home teleconferencing equipment post. 

Then, I saw Forming, Storming and Norming.  Well, with a really healthy dose of management and social science classes under my belt I've learned about Alexis de Tocqueville, read  Democracy in America and studied Tuckman's Stages of Group Development.  It was nice to see this post and get the reminder.

Health Reform ... made simple

Thanks to Hospital Life for helping me find the Kaiser video that will help us all understand Health Reform just a little bit better.  We can alll expect to see many changes to our healthcare delivery system and I think this is a great starting point.  View the video and then stay tuned because there is much more to come as health reform evolves. 

 

Many thanks to the Kaiser Family Foundation!

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010: Impacts on Rural People, Places and Providers

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has released a paper that looks at the Affordable Care Act impact on rural people, places and providers.  It highlights some of the significant provisions, but also goes some of the key sections.  The two things that really caught my attention are:

• the importance of outreach to inform the rural uninsured of their options and to help them to enroll in health plans
• the importance of recognizing the important role of non-Community Health Clinic rural practices and clinics, as well as, Critical Access Hospitals

This is a first look, but worth a look especially for those who can influence some of the needed changes.

Preventing Workplace Violence in Healthcare: Podcast

A post at Nuesoft News Blog includes an informative podcast on workplace violence in heatlhcare environments.  As a former Safety Officer and Chair of the Environment of Care/Safety Committee in hospitals, I can see this podcast being useful for employee orientation, annual updates, or other training and education.  

Leave a comment if you use this with your employees to share their feedback.  I'd be interested in hearing what they have to say.

 

HIMSS Book of the Year

I just nominated Social Media in Healthcare: Connect, Communicate, Collaborate for the HIMSS Book of the Year Award.  I've been invited to speak on a social media panel at HIMSS 2011 and participate in the social media pavilion, so it would be great to also have the book recognized at my first HIMSS conference.

A few years ago the healthcare bloggers (mostly IT types and I) started organizing and promoting some get-togethers at HIMSS, but I couldn't make it to the conferences to participate in person because I had gone back into hospital operations.  Obviously ,these blogger gatherings have matured.  I finally met Neil Versel  last month and look forward to meeting some of those other early bloggers at HIMSS.  And, maybe I'll even meet a few readers of Christina's Considerations or the book!

FCC Spectrum Dashboard

The Federal Communications Commission's Spectrum Dashboard provides a public means of reviewing how spectrum bands are allocated and for what uses, who holds licenses and in what areas.  The beta version provides basic, plain language information about frequencies generally deemed appropriate for mobile broadband (225 MHz to 3700 MHz.) In addition, the beta version of the Spectrum Dashboard contains more detailed information, mapping, and research capabilities for the bands where broadband service is either already available, or potentially could be provided. 

This is a good resource for people and communities who would like to identify broadband providers and access in their area.

 

 

Social Media for Good

Talk about transparency...Seattle Children's has a real example of using social media for good!  Their followers say it all.

HealthcareITNews Survey on Telehealth and Distant Care

Healthcare IT News is conducting a short survey to learn more about the interest of CIOs and other medical executives in the field of telehealth and distance care.  Your insight and opinions can help shape their coverage decisions in this fast-growing segment of healthcare technology and results will be shared with everyone who completes the survey.

So, take the survey now!