As the nation celebrates Nurses Week (today-Sunday), we recognize the contributions of all nurses as compassionate caregivers, clinicians and leaders whom Tennesseans historically have relied on for high-quality health management and prevention. We also celebrate the opportunities for nurses to contribute even more significantly to the transformation of health management by improving access to affordable care. We have an access to care problem in Tennessee, and nurses can help. The Update to the Health Care Safety Net Report, prepared by the Tennessee Department of Health, provides an assessment of health care resources including "the array of services, adequacy of services and access to care."
Peter Nguyen was a promising medical student when his school learned that he had tested positive for the hepatitis B virus. He said he was blackballed by school administrators and forced to halt his studies. "I knew the stigma" that came with a hepatitis diagnosis, Nguyen said. But he thought that a medical school, of all places, would understand. "I came there expecting help. Instead, I was greeted with discrimination." Nguyen's prospects of becoming a physician are a lot brighter today. The Department of Justice recently declared in a legal settlement that hepatitis B patients are protected by federal disability law.
"This is an incredible time for healthcare, and we need to look at it from within a specific framework in terms of the dollars and cents of it." Those words, from American Telemedicine Association CEO Jonathan Linkous, form the backdrop for the 2013 ATA International Meeting & Trade Show's Finance and Operations track, which spans nearly 20 sessions on Monday, May 6, and Tuesday, May 7. Healthcare entities of all sizes – from the "solo doc" independent practice to the largest integrated health systems – are working through changes in payment models as fee-for-service arrangements yield to a mix of managed care, accountable care organizations, medical homes and capitated systems.
Carlos Puentes has relied on using urostomy bags since surviving bladder cancer a few years ago. Then, due to a gap in health care that occurred when his managed care company, Senior Whole Health, left the Capital Region over the winter, the 86-year-old Dominican Republic native found himself removing, rinsing out and reusing the bags. Puentes doesn't speak English, and when SWH left he no longer had a translator to help him navigate the maze of paperwork and phone calls that were needed to keep up delivery of his supplies.
Two years ago, over objections from the hospital industry, the U.S. announced it would add data about "potentially life-threatening" mistakes made in hospitals to a website people can search to check on safety performance. Now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is planning to strip the site of the eight hospital-acquired conditions, which include infections and mismatched blood transfusions, while it comes up with a different set. The agency said it's taking the step because some of the eight are redundant and because an advisory panel created by the 2010 Affordable Care Act recommended regulators use other gauges.
In the closing days of their legislative sessions, lawmakers in more than a dozen states are struggling with whether to expand Medicaid under the federal health-care law, with many of them leaning against participating in a program that is key to President Obama's aim of extending coverage to 30 million uninsured Americans. Twenty states and the District of Columbia have signed on to the expansion, and 14 are planning to decline. But 16 remain in limbo as lawmakers clash in the final days and weeks of the legislative calendar, when many must come to a decision in time for the provision to kick in next year.