HHS today released its first National Health Security Strategy to protect public health during large-scale emergencies, such as natural disasters, bioterrorism strikes, and pandemics. The strategy sets priorities for government and non-government activities over the next four years.
"As we've learned in the response to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, responsibility for improving our nation's ability to address existing and emerging health threats must be broadly shared by everyone—governments, communities, families, and individuals," HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a media release. "The National Health Security Strategy is a call to action for each of us so that every community becomes fully prepared and ready to recover quickly after an emergency."
The strategy provides a framework for actions that will build community resilience, strengthen, and sustain health emergency response systems, as well as fill current gaps, she said.
"Events which threaten the health of the people of this nation could very easily compromise our national security. Whether it's a pandemic or a premeditated chemical attack, our public health system must be prepared to respond to protect the interests of the American people," Sebelius said. "In order to be prepared to both respond to an incident and to recover, we need a strong national health system with individuals and families ready to handle the health effects of a disaster."
The National Health Security Strategy and an interim implementation guide outline 10 objectives:
Foster informed, empowered individuals and communities
Develop and maintain the workforce needed for national health security
Ensure that situational awareness so responders are aware of changes in an emergency situation
Foster integrated, healthcare delivery systems that can respond to a disaster of any size
Ensure timely and effective communications
Promote an effective countermeasures enterprise, which is a process to develop, buy, and distribute medical countermeasures
Ensure prevention or mitigation of environmental and other emerging threats to health
Incorporate post-incident health recovery into planning and response
Work with cross-border and global partners to enhance national, continental, and global health security
Ensure that all systems that support national health security are based upon the best available science, evaluation, and quality improvement methods
The National Health Security Strategy also highlights specific actions that the nation—including individuals, communities, non-government organizations, and government agencies—should take to address public health threats.
Priorities for the federal government include improving the system for developing and delivering countermeasures—medications, vaccines, supplies, and equipment for health emergencies; coordinating across government and with communities to identify and prioritize the capabilities, research, and investments needed to achieve national health security; and evaluating the impact of these investments.
Federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial government agencies, as well as medical, public health, and community-based organizations collaborated to develop the strategy and interim implementation guide. HHS also solicited direct input from non-federal participants during six regional workshops, and worked with the Institute of Medicine to engage the medical community.
The Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness Act directed HHS to develop the National Health Security Strategy with an accompanying implementation plan by 2009 and to revise the documents every four years. HHS said it will update the implementation plan every two years to reflect advances in public health and medicine.
Many of the Washington, DC, interest groups that are seeking to shape final healthcare legislation in the coming weeks operate with opaque financing, often receiving hidden support from insurers, drugmakers, or unions, the Washington Post reports. The groups, some newly formed and others reappearing with different sponsors, have spent months staging protests, organizing letter-writing campaigns and contributing to a record $200 million advertising blitz on healthcare reform, the Post reports.
The American College of Radiology today downplayed concerns that full body scanners at security checkpoints in U.S. airports would pose a health risk.
In the wake of a thwarted Christmas Day bombing attempt on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in the skies over Detroit, the Transportation Security Administration has announced that it is ramping up the deployment and use of the scanners, which produce anatomically accurate images of the body and can detect objects and substances concealed by clothing.
TSA has deployed two types of scanning systems: Millimeter wave technology uses low-level radio waves in the millimeter wave spectrum. Two rotating antennae cover the passenger from head to toe with low-level RF energy. Backscatter technology uses extremely weak X-rays delivering less than 10 microRem of radiation per scan—the radiation equivalent one receives inside an aircraft flying for two minutes at 30,000 feet.
"The ACR is not aware of any evidence that either of the scanning technologies that the TSA is considering would present significant biological effects for passengers screened," ACR said in a media release.
"An airline passenger flying cross-country is exposed to more radiation from the flight than from screening by one of these devices," ACR said. "The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement has reported that a traveler would need to experience 2,500 backscatter scans per year to reach what they classify as a negligible individual dose. The American College of Radiology agrees with this conclusion."
AdvancedMD Software, Inc., a software-as-a-service medical practice and revenue cycle management provider, announced today that it has acquired PracticeOne, a private, CCHIT-certified, electronic health records software provider for physician practices. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
AdvancedMD, based in Salt Lake City, said the acquisition of PracticeOne will allow it to expand its product line to include a SaaS-based electronic health records, integrating the clinical and financial functions of a practice to boost profitability, productivity, and improved claims processing, and patient safety and satisfaction.
The new product line also includes a patient portal, and mobile access to provide secure access to patient information and medical decisions via smartphones.
PracticeOne has headquartered in Richland, WA and Canoga Park, CA.
A new report released today shows that the growth of overall online job listings in most employment sectors ended 2009 on a positive note in December, with demand for healthcare practitioners, technicians, and support personnel leading the rally.
The Conference Board's Help Wanted Online Data Series, which tracks more than 1,000 online job boards across the United States, found that advertised vacancies for healthcare practitioners and technical occupations, the largest category by volume, also posted the largest December gain, with 45,100 new online listings, for a total of 541,400 online listings.
The sector had 497,400 online job vacancy listings in November, and 533,300 in October. Job demand was up in a wide variety of these healthcare occupations, including registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Demand for lower-paying healthcare support occupations rose by 9,200 listings in December—to 111,900, the report showed.
Because healthcare is such a broad field, the report noted that the demand for labor varies substantially from the highly specialized, highly skilled, and higher-paying practitioner and technical jobs to the lower-paying support occupations.
"In November, the last month for which unemployment data are available, advertised vacancies for healthcare practitioners or technical occupations outnumbered the unemployed looking for work in this field by almost three to one, and the average wage in these occupations is $32.64/hour. In sharp contrast, the average wage for healthcare support occupations is $12.66/hour and there were almost three unemployed looking for work in the field for every advertised vacancy," the report noted.
For all industries, online job demand grew by 255,000 advertised vacancies in December, the report added.
"Employers' modest increase in demand for labor in the second half of 2009 is a nice way to end what has been a very challenging year," said Gad Levanon, senior economist at The Conference Board. "The gap between the number of unemployed and the number of advertised vacancies is still very high, but the recent six months indicate that things are slowly moving in the right direction. The gap between the number of unemployed and the number of advertised vacancies is about 12 million, with 4.5 unemployed for every online advertised vacancy."
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which will release its employment statistics for December and all of 2009 on Friday, has shown that the healthcare sector is one of the few areas in the economy that has seen monthly job growth throughout the recession, although that growth has slowed considerably in 2009.
University HealthSystem Consortium has formed a strategic partnership with Executive Health Resources, Inc., that will make the medical management company's Physician Advisor compliance, consulting, and auditing programs available to all UHC members.
"This strategic partnership with EHR will offer UHC members not only specialized pricing, but also services that include customized improvement insights," said Tom Robertson, vice president, business strategies and tactics, UHC. "In essence, members will receive the added benefit of a specific plan for concurrent medical necessity compliance and denials management."
Under the agreement announced today, Oak Brook, IL-based UHC's 107 academic medical centers and 220 affiliate hospitals can use EHR's programs, which include Concurrent Medicare Medical Necessity Compliance, Medicaid Medical Necessity Compliance, Retrospective Governmental Payor Appeals Solutions (including Comprehensive RAC, MAC, MIC, and QIO denial management), Managed Care/Commercial Payor Appeals, and Expert Advisory Services.
UHC and EHR will also analyze hospitals' member-level data to identify areas for improvement and customize plans for medical necessity compliance and denials management services. EHR will provide on-site implementation programs to educate case management staff on using EHR services.
Newtown Square, PA-based EHR, which works with more than 900 hospitals and health systems across the nation, said its Physician Advisors have successfully performed more than 1.2 million medical necessity reviews, conducted hundreds of audits at hospitals, and identified and reversed thousands of RAC medical necessity denials at all levels of appeal.
Healthcare spending in the United States grew 4.4% in 2008, to $2.3 trillion or $7,681 per person, the slowest rate of growth since the federal government started officially tracking expenditures in 1960, CMS reported this week.
Even with the slower growth, however, healthcare spending continued to outpace overall economic growth, which grew by 2.6% in 2008 as measured by the Gross Domestic Product. The findings are included in a report by CMS' Office of the Actuary.
"This report contains some welcome news and yet another warning sign," said Jonathan Blum, director of CMS' Center for Medicare Management. "Healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP is rising at an unsustainable rate. It is clear that we need health insurance reform now."
The 4.4% growth in 2008 was down from 6% in 2007 as spending slowed for nearly all healthcare goods and services, particularly for hospitals, CMS said.
Healthcare spending as a share of the nation's GDP continued to climb, reaching 16.2% in 2008, up 0.3% from 2007. Larger increases in the health spending share of GDP generally occur during or just after recessions, CMS said.
The recession significantly impacted health spending as more broke or jobless Americans went without care. This led to slower growth in personal healthcare paid by private sources, which increased only 2.8% in 2008. The recession also made it difficult for many Americans to afford private health insurance, so the growth in private health insurance benefit spending slowed to 3.9% in 2008, CMS said.
Health spending was also impacted by the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which provided a temporary 27-month increase in Federal Medical Assistance Percentages used to determine the federal Medicaid payments to states. The legislation shifted about $7 billion of Medicaid spending from states to the federal government for the last quarter of 2008, CMS said.
Other statistics on the growth of healthcare spending in the new report include:
Hospital spending in 2008 grew 4.5% to $718.4 billion, compared to 5.9% in 2007, the slowest rate of increase since 1998.
Physician and clinical services' spending increased 5% in 2008, a deceleration from 5.8% in 2007.
Retail prescription drug spending growth also decelerated to 3.2% in 2008 as per capita use of prescription medications declined slightly, mainly due to impacts of the recession, a low number of new product introductions, and safety and efficacy concerns.
Spending growth for both nursing home and home health services decelerated in 2008. For nursing homes, spending grew 4.6% in 2008 compared to 5.8% in 2007.
Total healthcare spending by public programs, such as Medicare/Medicaid, grew 6.5% in 2008, the same rate as in 2007.
Healthcare spending by private sources of funds grew only 2.6% in 2008 compared to 5.6% in 2007.
Private health insurance premiums grew 3.1% in 2008, a deceleration from 4.4% in 2007.
CMS has launched its fifth annual healthcare provider satisfaction survey of the Medicare fee-for-service contractors that process and pay more than $370 billion in Medicare claims each year.
The Medicare Contractor Provider Satisfaction Survey offers Medicare FFS providers an opportunity to give CMS feedback on their satisfaction, attitudes, perceptions, and opinions about the services provided by their respective contractor. Survey questions focus on seven business functions of the provider-contractor relationship:
Provider inquiries
Provider outreach and education
Claims processing
Appeals
Provider enrollment
Medical review
Provider audit and reimbursement
CMS is sending the 2010 survey to approximately 30,000 randomly selected providers, including physicians and other healthcare practitioners, suppliers, and institutional facilities that serve Medicare beneficiaries across the country. Those healthcare providers selected to participate in this year's confidential survey will be notified starting this month. Selected providers can access and complete the survey on the Internet via a secure Web site, or via snail mail, fax, and over the telephone.
CMS will analyze the 2010 MCPSS data and release a summary report on the CMS Web site this summer.
The MCPSS was created under the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, which mandated CMS to develop contract performance requirements, including measuring healthcare provider satisfaction with Medicare contractors.
The $403 million All Children's Hospital complex in St. Petersburg, FL, will open on Saturday morning, the culmination of a major construction project that began in May 2005.
The 10-story, pediatric specialty hospital, located two blocks from the old hospital, is the central focus of the complex, which also includes a seven-story outpatient care center, a 700-space parking garage, and a central energy plant designed to keep the hospital fully functional for up to three weeks during a disaster or power interruption.
The move to the new hospital will start at about 6 a.m. on Saturday, when All Children's care teams will transport the hospitalized youngsters and their parents to the new facility.
The new hospital and outpatient care center will provide nearly one million square feet of space devoted to pediatric healthcare. Virtually all of the hospital's 259 licensed beds will be in individual rooms.
The third floor of the new All Children's has been leased to Bayfront Medical Center, which will operate its labor & delivery suites and a well-baby nursery under the name Bayfront Baby Place.
Other key features of the new hospital include the 97-bed All Children's Hospital Guild Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Occupying an entire floor of the new hospital, the NICU is one of the largest in the southeastern United States. It was made possible by a $4-million gift from the hospital's nine Guild branches across Florida's Suncoast.
The Walmart & Sam's Club Emergency Center, which is on the hospital's first floor, more than triples the size of All Children's existing pediatric emergency center. It was made possible by a $5 million pledge from 10,000 Walmart, Sam's Club, Super Center, and Distribution Center employees in west central Florida.
The Vinny Lecavalier Pediatric Cancer & Blood Disorders Center will occupy half of the hospital's seventh floor. Designed with a positive pressure environmental system, the center will allow patients whose immune systems are compromised by disease, treatment or transplant to avoid isolation in their rooms. A dedicated playroom for these patients—one of four in the hospital overall—is located within the Center. The center was made possible through a $3 million pledge from Lecavalier, who is captain of the NHL's Tampa Bay Lightning.
The new hospital will also feature a rooftop helistop for med-evac helicopters transporting critically ill children. The helipad is designed to bear the weight and rotor span of most military helicopters, which are capable of carrying multiple patients.
Wheaton Community Hospital, the City of Wheaton, MN, and a physician at the hospital will pay $846,461 to settle whistleblower allegations that the hospital's admission practices violated the False Claims Act, the U.S. Justice Department said.
The government charged that from 1998 to 2004, WCH admitted some patients and kept others admitted to acute care when doing so was not medically necessary. The defendants then billed Medicare for the cost of these admissions, according to the DOJ.
The allegations against WCH arose from a whistleblower lawsuit filed in federal court in Minnesota. Whistleblower Steven Radjenovich, MD, formerly practiced at Wheaton Community Hospital with Stanley Gallagher, MD, a codefendant named in the settlement. Radjenovich will receive $203,150 as his share of the settlement.
Jesse G. Tisher, administrator/CEO at WCH, issued a statement Wednesday that said the tiny hospital with an active staff of four physicians, and 11 RNs, and an average daily census of five patients, was "pleased to have settled a lawsuit with the federal government without an admission of liability."
"The federal government's own reimbursement rules for hospitals like Wheaton Community Hospital are different to help ensure critical access hospital expenses are covered no matter what the number of patients served. The reimbursement rules do not encourage us to allow unnecessary admissions. Our expenses are subject to regular audit," Tisher said.
"In the end, the continued costs of litigation would have been more expensive than settlement. Wheaton Community Hospital determined that our time and effort was best spent providing quality healthcare to our patients and the medically underserved population surrounding us. We are committed to keeping our doors open to serve patients in need," Tisher said.
