Nursing still needs one united voice to speak on such issues. Maybe this work will help to solidify such a voice. I know that Donna Shalala, the Commission's co-chair, will continue to champion nursing and breaking down the barriers to access to nursing services. I hope organized nursing will not wait for Shalala, but will ask how it can support the IOM's work.
Picture this: in early September of this year, the novel H1N1 influenza virus mutates into a strain that can quickly lead to wracking fevers, violent vomiting, respiratory failure, dehydration, and death. It is also highly resistant to existing antiviral agents. The first cases of this new strain are identified after a spate of deaths in a Kansas City nursing home as well as among members of a church choir in the same city. The new strain quickly shows up in a number of major metropolitan areas in the U.S. and then in several European countries. As hospitals are swamped and the number of deaths rises unabated, borders are sealed between countries—but it's too late to stop the new strain from spreading as the fall and winter flu season gets into full swing.
On July 8, vice president Joe Biden announced that in striving to gain support for its health reform plan, the White House reached an agreement with the key hospital groups, including the American Hospital Association, the Federation of American Hospitals, and the Catholic Health Association of the United States.
The deal is a quid pro quo deal: according to the AHA Web site, the associations agreed they will not fight $155 billion in cuts in Medicare and Medicaid payments, in return for assurances that the cuts are linked to expanded coverage. Additionally, if health reform legislation turns out to include a public insurance plan, then hospitals will receive payments higher than the traditional Medicare and Medicaid rates. The idea is that losses from the reduced payments would be offset by insurance payments from the increased numbers of patients who will be covered. Hospitals will have fewer “pro bono” patients to deal with.
So how will this affect patient care and nursing services? […]
Timothy Egan at the NY Times says we’ve reached a historic legislative moment in the U.S. He’s talking about the actual possiblity that health care reform will be passed by Congress. It probably won’t be the version of reform that everyone wants—even so, he argues, it may still lead to a health care system that Americans will someday take for granted and come to see as absolutely essential to their security and quality of life.
Politics is so often a salon sport, with its up-and-down arrows, weekly winners and losers, and reliable hypocrisies providing sustainable entertainment for the permanent class in Washington. But every now and then elected officials do something that has deep and lasting consequences — a generational life-changer.
This happened 44 years ago, with the creation of Medicare, the socialized health care plan for the elderly. At the time, the poorest Americans were more often the oldest Americans. And half of all seniors had no health care coverage.
Are you too cynical at this point to care, do you want things to stay just as they are, or do you actually feel some real hope?
The following was released yesterday by the CDC:
It is critical to assure that medical offices and other outpatient facilities (e.g., outpatient/ambulatory clinics, outpatient surgery centers, urgent care centers, physical therapy/rehabilitation offices or clinics) that provide routine, episodic, and/or chronic healthcare services can manage an increased demand for services in the midst of a novel H1N1 influenza outbreak. Ensuring a sustainable community healthcare response will be important for a likely recurrence of novel H1N1 flu in the fall. See CDC’s H1N1 website for up-to-date information.
1. Develop a Business Continuity Plan – Novel H1N1 flu outbreaks will impact your organization, employees, suppliers of critical materiel, and your family. Identify your office/clinic’s essential functions and the individuals who perform them. Make sure you have trained enough people to properly work in these essential functions and allow for potential absenteeism. Develop a plan that will sustain your core business activities for several weeks. Make sure you have alternate plans for critical supplies in case there is disruption in your supply chains. For information about planning see: http://www.ready.gov/business/plan/index.html.
2. Inform employees about your plan for coping with additional […]