According to American Medical News, the U.S. health system is demonstrating better performance on most measures of health care quality, but it's failing to improve access to care or cut racial and ethnic health disparities, according to two reports released in February by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. "Quality of care continues to improve, but at a slow rate," said Ernest Moy, MD, leader of the team at AHRQ that produced the reports. "In contrast to that, focusing on issues of access to care, not much has changed. Focusing on disparities in care, not much changed. ... Those are bigger problem areas than overall quality of care." Measures related to hospital quality are showing the most improvement. For example, in 2005, just 42% of patients with heart attacks received angioplasties within the recommended 90 minutes of arriving at the hospital. That figure improved to 81% by 2008.
While the quality improvement indicators are encouraging, the disappointing access and disparities numbers are not very surprising. The US healthcare system is still largely focused on acute hospital based care. It says we are doing better at what we are doing. But an unbalance focus on acute disease treatment is also a major part of the problem. The major causes of sickness, lost productivity at work and missed days at school are not acute illnesses but chronic diseases. In fact, according to Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, Chronic disease causes 6 out of every 10 deaths worldwide. It is what happens outside the hospital, that is the largest determinant of what needs to happen when someone is a patient inside a hospital. If we do little to nothing about this problem, we fail, as a nation and a world, to achieve the health goals we have set and believe possible. This is why global business leaders meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos, recently made addressing the problem of chronic diseases a priority. In fact, Paul E. Jacobs, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Qualcomm suggests that one exciting development is in the field of telehealth and mobile medicine, where high mobile telephone penetration, particularly in the developing world, can be used for prevention and health promotion. Indeed, this is already happening for treatment of diabetes and detecting cardiac arrhythmia – it is not a pipe dream. Those who in America would continue to resist reforming our healthcare system, do so to their own peril and that of their children and grandchildren. Rather the US should lead the world in global health and healthcare innovation to address challenging chronic disease concerns and disparities. If we can put a man on the moon and eradicate small pox from the face of the earth, there is no doubt we could overcome chronic disease disparities, should we decide…we simply must.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Recently, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, was in Nigeria speaking about young women and expected mothers suffering [even dying] from the effects of polio. At the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, he talked about chronic diseases startling statistics, in developing countries, six out of ten die of such diseases. However, the Davos forum was a meeting directed primarily at developing countries. In America, we are already developed. All that was needed was a way to manage chronic diseases more effectively. And then, we find the Dirigo system instituted, in Maine, in 2003, by Governor John Baldacci, does what is necessary for management of such (chronic) disease(s). Note: The Dirigo system is for such a country like the United States. This system delivers and saves money! In the summary, on page 45, of eHealth Solutions for Healthcare Disparites, by Michael C. Gibbons, MD, we learn that our health system, in America, is moving quickly toward a patient-centered, community-based, chronic disease care system. The U.S. is able to do this beacuse we already have an advanced health and technological system in place. I agree the U.S. should lead the world in global health and health innovations. This is what Dirigo means "I lead". And, the U.S. is leading, but it can't stop what it's doing for the rest of the world to catch up. Last month was immunization week. Are we getting what we paid for? What comes from the Davos forum should be inspected closely by policy makers, especially if we are going to help foot the bill. Bill Gates spoke these words at the fifty-eighth World Health Assembly, in Geneva: "Governments in developed countries should match their financial commitments to the scale of the crisis – and make sure their efforts get results." We in the U.S. are centralizing a more patient-focused agenda. Third world people need to be empowered with some form of an agenda. When it comes to the Davos forum, we should trust but verify. Yet, still lead. That's just one man's opinion.
ReplyDeleteExcellent stuff with wonderful information! I'm new here and loving the
ReplyDeletepost! Thanks for sharing this great info!