Cartoon – Victory for the Average American
Monthly Archives: December 2016
Cartoon – Importance of Staff Input
Lax Ambulance Rules Put Paramedics, Patients at Risk
When an ambulance driver using her phone’s GPS got distracted and crashed through a guardrail, rolling off an embankment in north-central Ohio in August 2014, the consequences were dire: A 56-year-old patient was ejected and killed, and an EMS worker was injured.
The emergency medical service worker was not strapped in, and the patient was only partially restrained, a situation that is all too common in ambulances across the nation.
Unlike school buses, ambulances are not regulated by the federal government. While states set minimum standards for how they operate, it’s usually up to local EMS agencies or fire departments to purchase the vehicles and decide whether to require their crew to undergo more stringent education and training.
Some agencies demand that crew members in the back of an ambulance use lap and shoulder restraints for their patients and themselves, but many agencies don’t. In some places, ambulance drivers don’t receive any special training before they get behind the wheel, even though they must speed through traffic under tremendous pressure.
“One agency will make them take a course before they can drive. Another will just say, ‘here are the keys,’ ” said Bruce Cheeseman, Idaho’s EMS operations manager.
Ambulances have been involved in 4,500 crashes a year on average over a 20-year period, a third of which resulted in injuries, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). About 2,600 people a year were injured and 33 were killed. Some were drivers or ambulance crew members, some were patients and some were pedestrians, bicyclists or occupants of other vehicles.
Safety and EMS experts say ambulances should be safer than cars and more like school buses, given that they’re transporting sick or injured people and workers caring for them. While the number of injuries and fatalities may seem small compared to the number of people transported, the experts say state and local agencies need to do a better job overseeing ambulance safety.
“These are vehicles carrying cargo that’s human and vulnerable and fragile because they’re already injured or experiencing a medical emergency,” said Dia Gainor, executive director of the National Association of State EMS Officials, whose members license ambulance services and personnel. “It’s unconscionable that the public is placed at risk when being put in the back of an ambulance.”
What happens when you don’t price-regulate drugs? Just look at the United States.
http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/11/30/12945756/prescription-drug-prices-explained
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Americans aren’t buying lots more drugs. We’re just spending more on the ones we do buy.
There isn’t much evidence that Americans use an inordinately high amount of prescription drugs. It’s just that when we buy prescription medications, we pay more for the exact same product.
Should a Simple Fitness Check Be Part of Your Checkup?
Aerobic fitness should be considered a vital sign, just as body temperature, blood pressure, pulse and breathing rates are now, according to a new scientific statement from the American Heart Association.
The statement points out that fitness can be a better indicator of someone’s risk for heart disease and early death than such standard risk factors as smoking, obesity and high blood pressure. The authors recommend that each of us should have our aerobic fitness assessed as part of medical examinations and, if our fitness is on the low side, we should be advised and helped to start exercising.
The authors also suggest that if your physician does not begin to determine your aerobic fitness in the near future, you should do so yourself, using any of several scientifically validated online tools.
Aerobic, or cardiorespiratory, fitness is a measure of how well your body can deliver oxygen to tissues. Because that process is pervasive and essential within our bodies, it is also a “reflection of overall physiological health and function, especially of the cardiovascular system,” according to the report.
Many past studies have found that relatively low aerobic fitness is linked with a significantly increased risk for heart disease and premature death and that being out of shape may, in fact, represent a greater risk for developing heart disease than if you have a poor cholesterol profile, Type 2 diabetes, a history of smoking or a high body mass index.
Editor’s Corner: A fraud scheme in a league of its own
Earlier this month, authorities arrested Christopher Bathum, the self-described “rehab mogul” and founder of more than two dozen sober homes and outpatient drug treatment facilities in California and Colorado. Bathum was charged with fraudulently billing four different insurance companies more than $176 million.
According to a release by California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones, Bathum, the CEO of Community Recovery of Los Angeles (CRLA), and Kirsten Wallace, the company’s CFO, lured drug addicts to CRLA facilities, stole patient information in order to purchase health insurance policies without their consent, and then billed insurers for drug treatment services beyond what was provided.
Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, Health Net and Humana paid the company $44 million before discovering the scheme. Bathum profited handsomely.
But the 50-count fraud complaint (PDF) against Bathum paled in comparison to the allegations contained in a separate lawsuit filed by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. In that suit, Bathum was charged with sexually assaulting and raping female patients between 2013 and 2016, even going as far as to coerce recovering addicts with drugs.
The allegations against Bathum—who has pleaded not guilty to all charges—are a culmination of nearly a year’s worth of negative press for the rehab mogul. In December, LA Weekly wrote a lengthy feature on Bathum that included allegations from one former patient claiming Bathum sexually assaulted her. At that point, Bathum was also being investigated by city and state law enforcement agencies, along with “nearly every large insurance company in California,” according to LA Weekly.
Three more women have come forward since then, filing civil lawsuits accusing Bathum of sexual assault. In June, Bathum was the target of an hourlong 20/20 investigation that focused primarily on his relationship with several female patients. One woman described how Bathum sexually assaulted her in a cramped sweat lodge at a Malibu sober home. Another said Bathum took her to a seedy Malibu hotel where he overdosed on meth and heroin.
In both the LA Weekly story and the 20/20 special, Bathum repeatedly and categorically denied all of the allegations against him, including any insinuation that he had sexually assaulted female patients or used drugs. He blamed identity theft for the ambulance records linking him to an overdose. At one point he filed a libel lawsuit against LA Weekly’s parent company, which he later withdrew.
Hospital Impact: Navigating rapid regulatory change in a post-ACA world
Since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law in 2010, the environment for healthcare has changed dramatically. Now, it could change even more with the possibility of an ACA repeal. But over the past six years, I have learned a few tips on how to navigate difficult times and transitions through experience, education, and collaboration with colleagues and governmental leaders. Here’s a review of some major industry trends and how healthcare organizations can adapt:
House OKs 21st Century Cures bill; Senate votes next week
Not everyone was on board, however. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) voted against the measure because he said that though the bill attempts to address the need for research funding, it doesn’t guarantee the money: “There may be bipartisan agreement, but there is not a bipartisan advancement.”
He also said the revised version of the bill grants all of big pharma’s “wish lists” and doesn’t tackle rising drug costs. Indeed, Doggett said it was appropriate that the medical cures bill is packed into a larger measure called the Tsunami Warning Bill because people who rely on lifesaving drugs and want to fill a prescription have been “buried in one wave, after another wave, after a giant wave of pharmaceutical price gouging. Whether it’s an EpiPen for a child who is going to have an allergic reaction, whether it’s for insulin for someone who is diabetic and relies on that insulin, whether it’s an oncology drug that costs over $100,000, it is wave after wave of a tsunami of price gouging.”
HENRY KOTULA 