Expecting mothers in Burke County have two options for the delivery of their baby: They can drive more than a half-hour to Augusta or Statesboro. To the west, there's no labor and delivery unit until Milledgeville, some 80 miles away. It's a change from less than three years ago, when Burke Medical Center in Waynesboro had its own labor and delivery unit. Since then, two other hospitals in this area of the state, in Washington and Emanuel counties, have also lost theirs. "They have choices," said Dr. Frank Carter, who delivered babies in Burke County for nearly 20 years. "They just have to drive at least 40 minutes to get to any of those choices."
Dr. Shane Stidham never thought he would make a good businessman — that's why he went into medicine. But what he lacked in business savvy, the Norman anesthesiologist and pain management doctor made up for in bedside manner. Through conversations with his patients, he felt more compelled to help them afford the health care they needed. "I was seeing a lot of patients in my pain management practice and just hearing a lot of complaints that they have insurance but that they're paying a large amount per month for premiums, and when they come in and see their doctor, they have a huge deductible — a five, six, seven thousand dollar deductible. That doesn't give them any benefit."
I participated in a conference call last week related to a new, national child-health research program. On a website shared among the call participants, I am quite sure I witnessed the future of pediatric research. It's called PEDSnet, and it is a common data platform that eight leading children's hospitals, including Nationwide Children's, contribute to. The platform houses detailed information from electronic health records and other data sources to address research questions that cannot be answered any other way. Currently, millions of health-care visits for hundreds of diseases are kept in a confidential, anonymous manner in the PEDSnet database.
In an only-in-America star-studded concert-as-prayer revival that shut down the iconic Benjamin Franklin Parkway Saturday evening, Sept. 26, Pope Francis asked families to give special care to children and grandparents. Children, the pontiff told a crowd on at least tens of thousands, are the future. Grandparents, he said, carry the "memory of the past." At the conclusion of an event that saw performances by Aretha Franklin, rock band The Fray and others, Francis spoke impassionately off the cuff for about 20-minutes. He repeated themes he has often addressed about family life.
The government stored sensitive personal information on millions of health insurance customers in a computer system with basic security flaws, according to an official audit that uncovered slipshod practices. The Obama administration said it acted quickly to fix all the problems identified by the Health and Human Services inspector general's office. But the episode raises questions about the government's ability to protect a vast new database at a time when cyberattacks are becoming bolder. Known as MIDAS, the $110-million system is the central electronic storehouse for information collected under President Barack Obama's health care law.
Blue Cross Blue Shield is looking to accelerate its Big Data initiatives in a big way. All 36 of the independent Blue Cross and Blue Shield (BCBS) companies within the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) have agreed to contribute extensive data on healthcare quality and costs to Blue Cross Blue Shield Axis, the association’s data management capability. The new commitment will exponentially increase the volume of data entered into the system, which currently encompasses $350 billion in annual claims, including 36 million provider records and more than 700,000 BCBS patient reviews. With all BCBS companies contributing information to the system, BCBS Axis will become the largest aggregated data resource for the healthcare industry and the only resource with healthcare data from every U.S. zip code.