Providing basic healthcare outside of hospitals is a growing trend; I work for MissionPoint Health Partners, which is an "accountable care organization," or ACO. These organizations are responsible for the quality and cost of healthcare for a given group of patients.I go to people's homes, because there is a need for spiritual care outside the hospital. It is a huge gap that only recently has started to be filled. Spiritual needs affect our ability to heal – and also affects our healthcare costs.
Google is tiptoeing into the increasingly popular telemedicine space. The online search giant is indeed running a trial within its Helpouts service offering users a chance to discuss medical issues with live doctors via online video, as Engadget first reported. Google’s Helpouts service already offers live video guidance from experts on topics like parenting, photography, fitness and more. A truckload of venture capital has backed up into the telemedicine space in recent months, as a series of startups like American Well, Better, Doctor on Demand, HealthTap, Spruce and others explore new ways of allowing people to consult doctors via mobile apps.
A statement from the hospital Thursday did not address why he was not admitted on his first visit, but it explained some of his course of treatment. Presbyterian defended its initial treatment of Duncan, saying he'd been given "a four-hour evaluation and numerous tests." The hospital did not address earlier statements that Duncan had told an emergency room nurse he had recently been to Africa. Nor did it explain why that information from the patient did not trigger the response recommended by federal guidelines.
More cases of the Ebola virus could be found in the United States, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Sylvia Burwell warned Thursday. "We had one case and I think there may be other cases, and I think we have to recognize that as a nation," Burwell said at a news conference sponsored by the journal Health Affairs and the Kaiser Family Foundation. The first victim of the virus to be diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S. died on Wednesday. Thomas Duncan died at a Dallas hospital a little more than a week after being diagnosed with the virus.
Baylor University Medical Center, one of the largest hospitals in Dallas, will lose hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding if it doesn't quickly remedy deficiencies that put patients in "immediate jeopardy" of their health and safety. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services sent Baylor that warning this week after inspectors found several instances of psychiatric patients walking away from the hospital's emergency department before treatment concluded. "We didn't do a very good job of keeping them from leaving," hospital president John McWhorter said in an interview Thursday. The hospital sees about 100,000 patients a year in its emergency department.
Obamacare website HealthCare.gov got off to a rocky start last October, when a rush of would-be customers crashed the insurance portal, making it nearly impossible for anyone to sign up for coverage online during the first few months of open enrollment under the president's health care law. The experience was painful but instructive, and officials are hoping to avoid another mess this year during the second open enrollment period, which begins November 15 and lasts for three months. They've streamlined the application process, according to the Associated Press, by reducing the number of pages consumers have to click through from 76 to 16. They've also optimized the site for browsing on mobile devices.