"In chronic conditions like diabetes… it’s a lifetime commitment to taking care of that illness, and it’s a commitment not only by the patient, but by the physician as well, to work together to improve their health."
‒ Dr. E. Harry WalkerMetroHealth Center for Community Health
Pumpkin seeds are a great source of unsaturated or "healthy" fats. So enjoy roasting them after you carve the pumpkin and throw a tablespoon onto a salad for extra flavor and nutrients.
Better Health Greater Cleveland this week joined the Cuyahoga County Health Alliance, a coalition created by County Executive Ed FitzGerald to address improved health for the region, a critical component in the county’s plans for economic development, quality of life and neighborhood revitalization. Mr. Fitzgerald announced the Alliance's new partners April 30, 2012, at a media event in county offices.
Opportunities to improve health in the region are plentiful:
· The county ranked 65th out of Ohio’s 88 counties in health status, in the 2012 County Health Rankings.
· One in five adults in Cuyahoga County smoke, the leading preventable cause of death in Ohio.
· More than one in three adults in the county have high cholesterol
· One of four adults is obese – a trigger for a long list of serious chronic disease.
Better Health is one of 18 organizations and 21 municipalities that do date have responded to Mr. FitzGerald’s “Call to Action” to work together to bring measurable improvement to the health and well-being of Cuyahoga County residents. The Alliance targets public and private policies, education, work-site and community programs and resources to prevent and reduce the burden of chronic disease.
In its role as a partner, Better Health committed to providing community presentations, sharing its clinical expertise and supporting evidence-based programs, policies and benchmarks.
What if health insurers, employers and health care providers banded together to help consumers buy smarter medicine? Don't rule it out. The idea -- the "patient-centered medical homes" model of care -- is beginning to take hold. The next step is to get it off the drawing board and into examining rooms, human resource departments and benefits managers' offices in a much bigger way. In Northeast Ohio, a group called Better Health Greater Cleveland has been at the task for several years now, advocating among the various stakeholders in both medical care and payment for a shift to medical homes supported by electronic health records. Read more.
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine is among the first to put hard numbers on the benefits of electronic health records.Researchers looked at four national quality standards, including: 1) Eye exams, 2) pneumonia vaccinations, 3) outcome measures such as blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol control, and 4) patient-driven issues such as obesity and smoking Nearly 51% of patients in EHR practices received care that met all four quality standards, compared to just 7% of patients at paper-based practices. Nearly 44% of patients in EHR practices met at least four of five outcome standards, compared to about 16% of patients at paper-based practices.
The study is among the first to put hard numbers on the benefits of electronic health records. But as the study's lead author, Randall Cebul, MD, said in an interview this week, "51% is 49% short of ideal."
So what are the next steps? And how can health information technology get us there? Read more.
There have been a number of research studies published that question the value of Electronic Health Records (EHRs), particularly as it pertains to improving quality of care and ultimately outcomes. Chilmark has always viewed these reports with a certain amount of skepticism. Simple logic leads us to conclude that a properly installed (including attention to workflow and thorough training) of an enterprise software system such as an EHR will lead to a certain level of standardization in overall process flow, contribute to efficiencies and quality in care delivery and ultimately lead to better outcomes. But to date, there has been a dearth of evidence to support this logic, that is until this week. Read more.
Research published August 31 in the New England Journal of Medicine gives cause for optimism that federal investments in electronic health records (EHRs) could reap major benefits in better patient care and health outcomes. Read more.
Yesterday the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published a study, which looks at care delivered to diabetic patients in physician practices that use electronic health records compared to physician practices that do not. The results should not come as a surprise to those of us who are working to speed the adoption and meaningful use of health IT: Practices that use EHRs -- especially in conjunction with collaborative efforts to improve quality -- delivered measurably better care than practices which rely on paper records. Read more.
Distinguishing itself from previous efforts to prove the viability of EHRs and meaningful use, a study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine shed light on just what can be accomplished by using electronic medical records rather than paper records.
The finding: A survey of 27,000 adult diabetics spanning 500 primary care physicians across 46 practices in the Cleveland area found that those practices employing EHRs earned “annual improvements in healthcare that were 10 percent greater than their paper-based counterparts,” and their patients were “significantly more likely to have healthcare and outcomes that align with accepted standards than those where doctors rely on paper records.” Read more.
August 31, 2011 — Patients with diabetes were more likely to meet care standards, such as annual eye exams, and outcome standards, such as blood glucose control, if their physician used an electronic health record (EHR) instead of a paper chart, according to a study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Such good news about EHR usage has been scarce, comments lead author Randall Cebul, MD, a professor of medicine, epidemiology and biostatistics at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, and coauthors. Read more.