Archive for ‘Health Care’

August 28th, 2011

Health plan for current era

by admin

You Should Click here to take survey

“We’re busy all our life, then we die.”- Unknown

Smart Health Plan for Individuals and Business

With the growth of Internet and also with rapid globalization,the world is shrinking down at a much faster pace than we can imagine.Healthcare expenditure has grown exponentially for individuals and also for business with large health insured employers base.In the current era of recession, healthcare industry in every country has  many issues.Today the modern consumer is always battling with a sense of urgency, with debts of car payments, house mortgages, Credit card defaults, and other billing worries. The endless turmoil of responsibilities and struggles keeps you absorbed during most of our waking hours, at work, at home, and even in dream. We have been completely absorbed in our current world that we seem to have forgotten how to lead a minimalist life.

 

Now, more than ever before – life keeps getting more complicated. And for the most part, all of us certainly agree it’s worthwhile! Regardless of the challenges and tribulations involved in our modern lifestyles, this is a glorious time for being alive… and we’re fortunate to keep witnessing astonishing developments in science and technology and be a part of it.It’s the heyday of consumerism, and we love just about everything of it: we make investments, we take expensive hobbies, and we treat ourselves with all the gadgets and tools that strike our fancy.

 

After all, that’s why we keep working hard, right? To get access to the things we want; to spend our free time as we please, and to get as close as possible to enjoying life to the fullest with our loved ones.Whether you love it or hate it… that’s pretty much the spirit of our time, the way things work in this day and age. The real problem though, is that generally – amidst the ongoing rush of earning money and the thrill of spending money, we’re prone to losing perspective and forgetting that which is in fact our single most valuable asset.

 

Most of us do not even spare a thought to our single valuable treasure, as we feel it is not important at present. We prod along with our daily routine, until one fine day…we realize when it is too late.

Why We Need a Health Plan?

Few of us realize that the complications of majority of diseases can be avoided by early screening tests and regular checkups with a health care professional.But,we have many reasons to procrastinate about visiting our doctor—it is expensive to do screening tests, we don’t want to wait in a physician’s office with sick people, we have more worthwhile and entertaining activities to pursue. When we are still healthy, we don’t give much thought to our health. Then, one fine day we end up in the emergency room, the place we dread.Breaking out of this vicious cycle is not easy and there are no miracle cures for any disease and its complications. But, thanks to the rapid growth of technologies, today it is possible to have a screening test in the comfort of our home, and home health care is now affordable.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in their publication Consumer Expenditures in 2005 the average consumer unit (household – a family consisting of an average of 2.5 people) spent $2,664 on health care in 2005.

And by now, most households could have successfully cut back on their health care expenses, if by then they would have started thinking proactively about their well being.Sometimes, changing the future can be achieved most effortlessly by shifting perspectives in the present.Just like how personal financial management is essential to maintain a healthy finances in life, similarly a good health management plan will help you to get your health aligned in the present, so you can have a better chance of living a happier, healthier future.In order to do such a thing, you need to approach health in a different way.

 

Do you have a Smart Health plan for Your Life?

View Results

Loading ... Loading …

Popularity: 1% [?]

December 14th, 2007

Personal Health Record-Documents that make difference in life and death

by admin

Which type of Personal Health Record Application do you prefer?

View Results

Loading ... Loading …


In a recent article in Chicago tribune about Personal Health record

Last week there were about 5 such articles in major news papers online and offline discussing about benefits of Personal health record.Does this mean that we have reached the tipping point in Personal health record implementation?  More about the article…

Popularity: 24% [?]

December 12th, 2007

Personal Health Record and Challenges

by admin

Which type of Personal Health Record Application do you prefer?

View Results

Loading ... Loading …

Early Experiences with Personal Health Records

Challenges in PHR


John Hamalka and his group write about their experience with three case studies—MyChart at Palo Alto Medical Foundation, PatientSite at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Indivo at Children’s Hospital Boston.They present the challenges they faced in implementation of Personal health record from 1998-2007 and the challenges that they foresee in 2008 and beyond.

As consumer awareness in Personal Health record increases.There are bound to be some challenges in deployment of personal health record.



Abstract of the paper:

Over the past year, several payers, employers, and commercial vendors have announced personal health record projects. Few of these are widely deployed and few are fully integrated into ambulatory or hospital-based electronic record systems. The earliest adopters of personal health records have many lessons learned that can inform these new initiatives. We present three case studies—MyChart at Palo Alto Medical Foundation, PatientSite at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Indivo at Children’s Hospital Boston. We describe our implementation challenges from 1999 to 2007 and postulate the evolving challenges we will face over the next five years.

Introduction

The definition of Personal Health Records (PHRs) is still evolving. Implementations to date have ranged from web pages for patients to enter their own data manually, to physician-hosted patient portals giving patients access to their electronic health records (EHRs), to employer/payer portals which give patients access to claims data. The intent of all of these systems is clear—to give patients better access to their own healthcare data and enable them to be stewards of their own information.

Traditionally, clinical records have been sequestered in hospitals and provider’s offices. Although HIPAA mandates that patients can access their medical records, it does not specify the manner in which this access is given, so most patients must visit the medical records departments of caregivers to obtain paper copies of their charts. As more clinicians adopt EHRs and a nationwide health information network (NHIN) is implemented, more and more patients will demand access to records online. Such access raises many questions. What information should be shared? How should patients be authenticated? How should privacy be protected?

At the height of the “dot.com” era, health information websites became very popular and attracted significant venture-capital funding. Although the number of visits to healthcare information websites grew substantially in the early 2000s, public opinion surveys demonstrated that consumers were interested in receiving more than just health information from unknown sites; they were interested in receiving information that was endorsed by their own physicians and getting in touch with their own physician offices.

This led EHR developers (both commercial and institutional) to develop products linking clinician and patient, such as web-based patient interfaces to their information residing in the EHR. In this paper, the authors share their collective experiences from operating PHRs in their respective institutions: a university hospital, a community-based multi-specialty group practice, and a children’s hospital.


Conclusion

The increasing prevalence of personal health records over the next five years will create many policy and technical challenges for healthcare institutions, payers, and employers, However, it may also provide a great opportunity. Providing patient control of healthcare information exchange is appealing, since it solves many of the privacy and consent issues faced by organizations desiring to exchange data today. By placing the patient at the center of healthcare data exchange and empowering the patient to become the steward of their own data, protecting patient confidentiality becomes the personal responsibility of every participating patient. This may accelerate healthcare information exchange as it simplifies consent models among producers and consumers of healthcare data. Our experience to date at three institutions demonstrates that personal health records which share data among patients and providers can successfully be deployed, but require careful attention to policy around privacy, security, data stewardship, and personal control.

Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association
Volume 15, Issue 1, January-February 2008, Pages 1-7

Popularity: 62% [?]