http://www.healthcaredive.com/news/the-case-of-the-disappearing-hospital-beds/427211/
Click to access 2016chartbook.pdf
Healthcare is leaving the traditional four walls of hospitals. As patients, payers, and providers seek to reduce costs and improve quality, they are relying less on inpatient stays and more on outpatient services. A growing reliance on outpatient services could drive healthcare costs down as costly inpatient services are increasingly reserved for patients who truly need them.
Healthcare businesses added 33,000 jobs in September, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Friday, as the sector continues to be one of the biggest drivers of American jobs.
Overall, the U.S. economy added 156,000 jobs in the month, and the unemployment rate held at 5 percent.
Ambulatory services added 23,900 jobs in the month while hospitals added 6,900 positions. Only medical and diagnostic laboratories lost jobs in the month, shedding 400.
Overall, healthcare has added 445,000 jobs in the past 12 months. September’s gains more than double the 14,000 jobs the sector added in August.
Here’s the seasonally adjusted breakdown for the healthcare sector. All numbers are in thousands:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/196193/uninsured-rate-new-low-third-quarter.aspx
In the third quarter of 2016, 10.9% of U.S. adults were without health insurance, representing a new low in Gallup’s and Healthways’ nearly nine years of trending the rate of uninsured. This is down from 11.9% in the fourth quarter of 2015, before the 2016 open enrollment period that allowed U.S. adults to obtain insurance through the government health insurance exchanges.
The uninsured rate has declined 6.2 percentage points from 17.1% in the fourth quarter of 2013, right before the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that Americans carry health insurance took effect in early 2014.
Results for the third quarter are based on approximately 44,000 interviews with U.S. adults aged 18 and older from July 1- Sept. 30, 2016, conducted as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. Gallup asks 500 U.S. adults each day whether they have health insurance, which, on an aggregated basis, allows for precise and ongoing measurement of the percentage of Americans with and without health insurance.
There’s been a lot of fanfare lately about the use of data to predict “flight risk” with employees. But one could argue that this type of approach, while seemingly proactive on the surface, actually treats the symptoms and not the actual illness itself. The illness? Hiring the wrong people to begin with.
The reason we consistently make bad hiring decisions is actually quite simple: We rarely have the information we need to make an informed decision. We get a candidate’s resume, and then we ask a few behavioral interview questions, like: “Tell me about a time when you had to …” Then we ask ourselves an interesting question. How do I feel about this candidate?
Frequently the answer to this question depends on how much the individual reminds us of ourselves. Subjectively deciding to hire a “Mini Me” is common, according to Business Insider, which found that “…when we don’t have a rigorous, replicable set of criteria from which to evaluate a potential hire’s merit, we fall back on our most immediate instrument: ourselves.” The result is a lack of diversity that can negatively impact outcomes, including financial returns. On the other hand, a 2015 McKinsey report found that companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.
Have you ever worked with a colleague who diverted drugs to feed an addiction?
Chances are you have, though you may not have known it, since drug diversion and addiction are often very secretive issues. Most estimates put nurses’ drug and alcohol misuse at around 6% to 10%, or about one in 10 nurses.
This makes it highly likely that at some point in your career you’ll encounter a colleague or staff member who is, or will, divert and misuse drugs.
Yet, diversion and addiction are still misunderstood, says Laura Wright, PhD, CRNA, associate professor in the Department of Acute, Chronic, and Continuing Care at The University of Alabama at Birmingham, School of Nursing.
“Addiction is a disease, it’s not a moral defect,” she says. “But, when I talk about addiction, I still get people asking me, ‘Why would they ever do that? That’s an awful thing. How could they do that to their children?'”
Here are five things Wright, who is a member of the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists Peer Assistance Advisors Committee, (AANA) wants nurses to know about drug diversion and addiction.
http://www.scpr.org/news/2016/10/07/65331/transgender-man-s-suit-is-latest-clash-over-cathol/
Josef Robinson was born a woman; he started the process of becoming a man about two and a half years ago. He began hormone therapy and planned to undergo a bilateral mastectomy as well.
But Robinson, a registered nurse at a Dignity Health facility in Arizona, got some surprising news: His San Francisco-based employer, which describes itself as being “rooted in the Catholic tradition,” refused to cover any of his transition-related care under its employee health insurance plan. His policy excludes all coverage related to sex transformation surgery.
That “was totally shocking to me,” said Robinson. “I never would have thought in a million years that that would happen.”
Robinson sued Dignity, alleging that its refusal to cover transition-related care qualifies as sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Affordable Care Act.
Title VII forbids discrimination on the basis of sex. The Affordable Care Act prohibits discrimination based on sex in health insurance and health care. Section 1557 of the law, which the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services finalized in May, says categorical exclusions related to gender transitions are discriminatory.
“I work for a hospital who treats all kinds of people – doesn’t matter race, religion, whatever – yet they have an insurance policy that has an exclusion for transgender individuals,” Robinson said. “It just doesn’t add up for me.”
Everything You Wanted To Know About Your Health Plan (But Were Afraid To Ask)
It can be well worth the effort to go up against your health plan if it denies you treatment you think you need.
That’s just one of the many lessons consumers can glean by using a new online tool unveiled today by the Department of Managed Health Care.
It shows that last year, nearly two-thirds of Anthem Blue Cross enrollees who filed an appeal with the department to challenge a denial of-care ended up getting the medical services they requested. The same was true in well over half of the appeals filed by people with Blue Shield of California coverage and 45 percent of cases involving members of Kaiser Permanente, the state’s largest insurer. In some of those cases, the insurer itself decided to reverse its decision.
The department’s “health plan dashboard,” which can be found on its website, contains information pertaining only to the plans it regulates. But those plans cover 25 million Californians — nearly three-quarters of the state’s insured population.
There are many other sources consumers can use to educate themselves about insurance plans, but the Department of Managed Health Care has a wealth of data that probably exceeds any other organization’s, said Betsy Imholz, director of special projects at Consumers Union, an advocacy group.
Imholz noted that many consumers are unaware of all the information available, and it is often difficult to understand. Reporting on quality and other aspects of health care is still in a developmental stage, she said. “But our hope is that data will become better and more accessible. “This [dashboard] is a good step.”
