Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Have Good News to Tell About Your Care Coordination Initiative Share It At the Care Continuum Alliance Annual Meeting!
Monday, March 24, 2014
The Disease Management Care Blog feels your pain.
You help lead a unique and innovative care coordination initiative. Your program has some preliminary data that strongly suggests quality has increased while costs have remained neutral or gone down. Patients are satisfied. Docs are happy. You even have a patient anecdote or two.
But somethings missing.
While your institutions marketing department has been supportive, you believe that the customers you want to serve are tired of glossy brochures, breathless press releases and chatty sales reps. Your customer meetings are fun, but you cant tell if the positive feedback is the result of real insight or that second glass of wine.
On the other hand, the prospect of publishing your findings in some scientific journal is too dreary to contemplate.
You know some more meaningful is at stake. You want to share your good news and get some feedback.
Heres your solution: the Care Continuum Alliance Annual Conference. Hundreds of individuals just like you - individuals who give a damn about patients, are excited about making a difference and want to make a living doing it - will be available to give feedback. Who knows, some of them may talk partnerships. Others will resent your competition, confirming that you are on the right track.
The CCA Call for Proposals can be found here. You have until March 6 to submit.
You help lead a unique and innovative care coordination initiative. Your program has some preliminary data that strongly suggests quality has increased while costs have remained neutral or gone down. Patients are satisfied. Docs are happy. You even have a patient anecdote or two.
But somethings missing.
While your institutions marketing department has been supportive, you believe that the customers you want to serve are tired of glossy brochures, breathless press releases and chatty sales reps. Your customer meetings are fun, but you cant tell if the positive feedback is the result of real insight or that second glass of wine.
On the other hand, the prospect of publishing your findings in some scientific journal is too dreary to contemplate.
You know some more meaningful is at stake. You want to share your good news and get some feedback.
Heres your solution: the Care Continuum Alliance Annual Conference. Hundreds of individuals just like you - individuals who give a damn about patients, are excited about making a difference and want to make a living doing it - will be available to give feedback. Who knows, some of them may talk partnerships. Others will resent your competition, confirming that you are on the right track.
The CCA Call for Proposals can be found here. You have until March 6 to submit.
Which of These Four News Reports Is False Insights from the Wacky World of Health Care Reform
Saturday, February 22, 2014
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| Baron Von Munchhausen |
BtL has guests try to guess which of three funny stories is based on a real true news report. The DMCB thinks health care is so wacky that itd be more challenging to guess which of the four stories below is false.
Unfortunately, if you win, getting the DMCB to put its voice on your home answering machine is unlikely to impress anyone. However, if you can pick out which story is a complete Munchhausenesque fabrication, you will deserve the respect of your friends and co-workers.
Ready to try to get some bragging rights?
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Even doltish man-trolls know better than to try to organize an all-male blogging conference. Unable to reach out to that demographic, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius did whats best: appeared before the annual "BlogHer" Conference in an appeal to women bloggers to tout the benefits of Obamacare. Her outreach supplements plans to rely on celebrities to help with a nationwide drive to increase enrollment through the insurance exchanges. Next up will be effort to recruit motor scooter owners to sport pro-Obamacare ads on the back of their helmets. Then its on to asking members of the European Beret Society to host recruitment drives at their monthly chardonnay tastings.
Answer here.
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Al Lewis and Vik Khanna condemned the wellness industry in a Wall Street Journal editorial when they proclaimed that "workplace programs dont work." They went on to say that they are "ineffective at reducing costs, lack support in the medical literature, are unpopular enough to require incentives and are occasionally even harmful." Yet, the Khanna On Health Blogs “workplace wellness consulting” page suggests the authors’ unique consulting insights can help potential customers “do wellness right.” Did the DMCB mention that both individuals are lawyers?
Answer here.
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Writing in a separate issue of the Wall Street Journal, former Vermont Governor and Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean actually attacked Obamacare by criticizing its Independent Payment Advisory Board as a rate setting enterprise that is doomed to failure. Brazenly using Tea Party terms such as "bureaucrats" and "health rationing," Dr. Deans liberal-progressive apostasy prompted ACA architect Peter Orszag to curiously opine in a separate article in Bloomberg that the argument favoring IPAB is that it will be a much better rate setting body than Congress. If this keeps up, even labor unions will start criticizing Obamacare.
Answer here.
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While partisan blood continues to spill over Obamacare in Washington DC, there is much good news outside the beltway. Its been announced that the IRS will not only rely on self-reporting of income levels in setting premium subsidies. Even better, individuals who qualify for tax credits while buying their health insurance with the on-line exchanges will get a two-fer: 1) the option of applying the rebates to reduce their monthly premiums, and 2) confidence that there wont be any tax liability "claw backs" should their final income be higher than anticipated. Interest and penalties will be optional.
Answer here
Negative Reaction to Good News How Can That Be
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Lets explore the dynamics of bad news and good news. (I addressed what to do when you get bad news in a prior article.)
Anticipation is the enemy because it produces anxiety and stress. When diagnosed with a serious or life-threatening illness the focus is on treatment. The anticipation is that the treatment will be successful or at least there is hope that it will be. But this is only the beginning of the journey. Eventually the doctors will check to see if the treatment is working or not. The anticipation and waiting for that first test is hard and emotional. After all, your family and friends are doing the same thing... waiting. This shared experience might feel like support or perhaps it will feel like you are responsible for their feelings too or something in between. Anticipation builds nervous energy inside coupled with negative projections and a sense of responsibility for how others will feel.
You get good news! The treatment is working. A wave of relief can be felt by everyone. There is happiness, celebration, and expectations of being well. The truth is that the waiting game just begins again for the next test and marker of your health. The next test and results follow. Perhaps it is good news again or perhaps youll get bad news. The anticipation rises again. You and your loved ones find yourselves nervous, on edge, and maybe a bit burned out with the process that you now know will continue unless the health crisis ends. The cycle starts again and anticipation gets worse especially if you have been yo-yoing between good and bad news.
Now I understand the "down" feelings after good news. The flame of expectation is lit again for yourself and those close to you. The expectation leads to anticipation, which leads to anxiety, stress and other feelings.
Feeling down upon hearing good news is also self-protection from the yo-yo effect of the cycle of positive and negative news. If you dont get too excited then it wont hurt so much if the news is negative or neutral (more waiting). If you are one of those who feel responsible for others feelings you may not even have the celebratory experience. Feeling down or neutral after good news protects you from disappointment, protects you from upset, and protects you from future projections about your health outcome.
Now you know the mechanism and the cycle that creates anticipation and the cause of low or neutral feelings upon hearing good news. Is it OK to handle news about your health status in this manner? Of course it is! There is no right or wrong with feelings. Each person manages them in their own unique way. Someone told me that staying neutral with the good and bad news is healthy. No big ups and downs allows the body to stay calm and in healing mode. The cycle and process of handling a health crisis is just what it is: a cycle, a process, life... your life.
Staying present will also help manage anticipation. That means paying attention to what is happening now instead of thinking about what has happened in the past and creating projections about what could happen or should happen in the future. These projections dont help unless you are using positive imagery to work with your subconscious mind via hypnosis, for example, which is very effective to calm the mind, body and emotions and keep you present in the now. After all, the NOW is all you, your family, and friends can really handle and staying focused in the present moment makes things easier.
Exercise: If you find yourself in anticipatory anxiety, either from past experiences or projections about the future, you can do something about it!
Get into a comfortable position with your eyes closed. Take 3 or 4 slow breaths. If your mind is still running or you feel negative feelings, just notice them. No "fixing" is necessary. As you breathe slowly, let your body begin to relax. Your limbs might feel a little heavy, your back will let go of tension, and your neck will release along with your hands and feet. Your heart rate may slow as you relax. Just keep noticing your body, your thoughts, and your feelings. There is nothing to do at all but notice. Simply breathe and pay attention to either your right or left foot. Notice your toes, heal, arch, and ankle. Draw your attention up your calf and shin, behind your knee, and in front of your knee to your thigh and buttocks. Notice your hip. Keep breathing slowly. Draw your attention up your hip to your thigh, into the small of your back, up your spine, and to the side of your back. Notice your abdomen and belly. Become aware of your chest and the movement of your chest as you breathe.
Notice your shoulder, drawing your attention down through your arm to your hand and notice each finger. Shift back to your shoulder and become aware of your neck and throat. Then move your awareness to that side of your face, including your mouth, jaw, eye, forehead and ear and your forehead. Pay attention to the back of your head, moving up to the top of your scalp. Then shift your attention to the other side of your body and let your attention travel down from your head and scalp to your toes.
That is it. You will have an experience of being present with your body, your mind will quiet, and you will relax. If you like, you can move your awareness around your body 2 or 3 times which will deepen your experience. This process promotes relaxation, balanced emotions, and being present, the space from which you can best handle the experience of managing a health crisis.
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