healthcare
kkrisberg | November 11, 2013Larger investments in public health equal better health, fewer deaths and reduced medical spending — and the effect is especially pronounced in the communities that need it most, according to new research.
The findings are the latest in a series of studies that researcher Glen Mays and his colleagues at the National Coordinating Center for Public Health Services and Systems Research (PHSSR) are conducting on the health and economic value of public health spending. While Mays has authored previous research on the topic — such as this 2011 study that found public health spending is associated…
cmonforton | October 22, 2013First it was the balloon at the grocery store in the shape of a pink ribbon, and the front page of the newspaper printed on pink paper. Then it was the specially-designed package of pink lipstick, and the NFL players decked out with shocking pink shoes, socks, and sweat towel. It's "Breast Cancer Awareness Month," and it’s pink, pink everywhere.
Others have been writing this month about pink-washing. That’s the phrase describing firms and organizations which sell products and host events to make the public think they are contributing in a meaningful way to the breast-cancer cause. (This week’…
kkrisberg | October 18, 2013A new study finds that dropping out of high school greatly increases the risk of illness and disability in young adulthood. It's another example of why education is one of the greatest social determinants of health and a key leverage point in improving health across the lifespan.
Published earlier this month in the journal BMC Public Health, researchers found that dropping out of high school was associated with later illness and disability even after adjusting for other factors, such as family socioeconomic status, health-related risk behaviors, psychosocial risk factors and school problems.…
kkrisberg | October 11, 2013Strategies to reduce the deathly toll of prescription drug abuse are reaping positive outcomes, though not every state is taking full advantage, according to a new report from Trust for America's Health.
Released earlier this week, "Prescription Drug Abuse: Strategies to Stop the Epidemic" found that 28 states and Washington, D.C., scored six or less out of 10 possible indicators of "promising strategies" to address prescription drug abuse, which has contributed to a startling rise in overdose deaths. Since 1999, such deaths have doubled in 29 states, four of which experienced a quadrupling…
lborkowski | October 1, 2013Today is an exciting day in US healthcare history: For the first time, uninsured US residents can go online to shop for individual health insurance policies and feel confident of a few things: they can easily see information to make meaningful comparisons between plan options; they won’t be rejected or charged an astronomical rate based on their health history; and once they have a policy, they won’t be unpleasantly surprised by an omission of an essential benefit like hospital or maternity care.
In addition, insurance shoppers with incomes between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level…
lborkowski | September 26, 2013A new Health Wonk Review compiled by Peggy Salvatore is now up at the Healthcare Talent Transformation blog. It's got links and descriptions for a great collection of posts on several healthcare topics, from health information technology and patient-experience reviews to the impact a government shutdown would have on Affordable Care Act implementation. (My post from last week, "Expanding Medicaid can improve birth outcomes," is included.)
One of the posts I found especially thought-provoking (and probably wouldn't have seen if not for the HWR link) is Vince Kuraitis's post "Healthcare…
cmonforton | September 23, 2013Reducing the risk of skin cancer and higher penalties for violence against emergency room personnel were addressed this year in Texas' legislative session. These public health topics not only received attention from lawmakers, they resulted in two new state laws which take effect this month.
Assaults and fatal injuries suffered by healthcare workers is a nationwide and global problem. The Emergency Nurses Association notes that the healthcare industry leads all others in the incidence of nonfatal occupational assaults. One recent study published in the Journal of Nursing Administration…
lborkowski | September 18, 2013Earlier this week, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder signed legislation that accepts the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion for his state, and Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has signaled his intention to do so if the federal government approves his proposed program changes. Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff notes that if Pennsylvania does expand its Medicaid program, that will mean the majority of the states have adopted one of the main aspects of the Affordable Care Act. This is good news for the millions of low-income uninsured US residents who will gain health coverage from Medicaid.
Another…
lborkowski | September 17, 2013Earlier today, Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez announced that the Department of Labor has finalized a rule extending minimum-wage and overtime protections to home care workers. Starting on January 1, 2015, the wage and overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act will apply to home health aides, personal care aides, and other direct care workers employed by agencies. The agencies will have to pay workers minimum wage ($7.25/hour in those states that haven't adopted higher minimum wages) and 1.5 times their regular wage for hours worked above 40 per week. In addition, workers who travel…
cmonforton | September 5, 2013This week, Liz and I have been highlighting parts of our second annual review of U.S. occupational health and safety. The first two sections of the report summarize key studies in the peer-reviewed literature, and an assessment of activities at the federal level. In section three of the report we present high points---and a few low points---from state and local governments on workers’ rights and safety protections. These include:
New laws in Portland, Oregon and New York City requiring many employers to offer paid sick leave to their employees. With 22 percent of the U.S. workforce in…
lborkowski | September 4, 2013A regular contributor to The Pump Handle, Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA, and his co-editor Phyllis Freeman wrote the following editorial which is available at the Journal of Public Health Policy.
In early July 2013, James R. Clapper, Jr, United States Director of National Intelligence apologized to the Chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for ‘clearly erroneous’ statements made during public testimony before the committee in March.1 In his testimony, he denied that the National Security Agency collected private data on millions of American citizens. In a television interview,…
cmonforton | September 3, 2013As Liz Borkowski noted yesterday, we are following up on a tradition that we started last year to mark Labor Day. We released our second annual review of U.S. occupational health and safety for Labor Day 2013.
Liz explained in her post our objectives in preparing the report. She also highlighted its first section which profiles some of the best research from the year published in both peer-reviewed journals and by non-profit organizations. Here’s a peek at section two of the report on activities at the federal level:
Sequestration and other budget cuts have affected our worker protection…
lborkowski | August 12, 2013The Washington Post’s Lena H. Sun writes about Obamacare implementation, and finds that it differs greatly between Maryland and Virginia, which share a border but have very different attitudes toward the Affordable Care Act. Both have large uninsured populations (around 800,000 in Maryland and 844,000 in Virginia), but Virginia’s opposition to the law means it’s getting far less federal money and leaving its poorest residents with fewer options for affordable insurance coverage.
The lawmakers who wrote the ACA included two main ways to help those without employer-sponsored health insurance…
kkrisberg | July 26, 2013With immigration at the forefront of national debate, Jim Stimpson decided it was time to do a little more digging.
"There's a lot of rhetoric around immigrants' use of public services in general and health care specifically, and I thought with impending federal immigration reform it would be useful to have some sort of contribution about the facts of unauthorized immigrants' use of health services in the United States," said Stimpson, a professor within the University of Nebraska's School of Public Health and director of the university's Center for Health Policy.
So together with colleagues…
cmonforton | July 23, 2013My mailbox today contained an example that Obamacare is working for healthcare consumers. In an envelope from my health insurance provider was a check for $124.08. The cover letter from Humana explained it was a rebate of a portion of my premium, as required by the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) Medical Loss Ratio standard.
Under the law, health insurers are required to report to HHS's Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) how income from premium dollars are spent. (The first year of reporting was 2011 with the previous year's spending data.) For individual and small group plans…
kkrisberg | July 19, 2013When I asked Teresa Schnorr why we should be worried about the loss of a little-known occupational health data gathering program, she quoted a popular saying in the field of surveillance: "What gets counted, gets done."
Schnorr, who serves as director of the Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations and Field Studies at CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), was referring to the Adult Blood Lead Epidemiology and Surveillance program (ABLES), a state-based effort that collects and analyzes data on adult lead exposure. For more than two decades, NIOSH has been…
kkrisberg | July 12, 2013In a recent study comparing workers at industrial livestock operations and those employed at antibiotic-free livestock operations, researchers found that industrial workers were much more likely to carry livestock-associated strains of drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, more commonly and scarily known as MRSA.
First, it's important to note that both groups of workers had a similar prevalence of S. aureus and methicillin-resistant S. Aureus (MRSA); however, it was overwhelmingly workers at industrial livestock operations, sometimes known as concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs,…
lborkowski | June 27, 2013When the Supreme Court released its United States v. Windsor decision striking the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act yesterday, supporters of marriage equality felt joy akin to what Affordable Care Act supporters felt a year ago when the Court released its decision upholding the healthcare law. Because the Justices dismissed Hollingsworth v. Perry, the case regarding California's Proposition 8, based on lack of standing rather than ruling on the constiutionality of state bans of same-sex marriage, the Court has effectively decided that states get to decide for themselves whether to allow same-sex…
lborkowski | May 31, 2013by Kim Krisberg
In the United States, getting better often comes with an unfortunate and devastating side effect: financial bankruptcy. In fact, a 2009 study in five states found that between 2001 and 2007, medical-related bankruptcies rose by nearly 50 percent. And for those diagnosed with cancer, the risk is even worse.
As if a cancer diagnosis wasn't scary enough, a group of researchers recently calculated that cancer patients are more than two-and-a-half times more likely to go bankrupt than people without cancer. And younger cancer patients faced bankruptcy rates of two to five times…
cmonforton | May 29, 2013Nearly 40 percent of work-related injuries and illnesses seen in U.S. emergency rooms are not billed to workers’ compensation---the insurance program that’s designed to cover them. An increasing number of patients suffering from injuries or illnesses caused by exposures at work are using their private insurance, paying out of pocket or billing Medicaid or Medicare, instead of filing the appropriate claim to their employers’ workers’ compensation insurer. Those are the findings of a new study published in the journal Health Services Research by researchers with CDC’s National Institute for…