Rochdale Village Health

by Robert Pear (original article)

WASHINGTON — Millions of low-income people could be required to pay more for health care under a proposed federal policy that would give states more freedom to impose co-payments and other charges on Medicaid patients.

The 2010 health care law extended Medicaid to many childless adults and others who were previously ineligible. The Supreme Court said the expansion of Medicaid was an option for states, not a requirement as Congress had intended. The administration has been trying to persuade states to take the option, emphasizing that they can reconfigure Medicaid to hold down their costs and “promote the most effective use of services.”

In the proposed rule published Tuesday in the Federal Register, the administration said it was simplifying a complex, confusing array of standards that limit states’ ability to charge Medicaid beneficiaries. Under the proposal, a family of three with annual income of $30,000 could be required to pay $1,500 in premiums and co-payments.

As if to emphasize the latitude given to states, the administration used this heading for part of the new rule: “Higher Cost Sharing Permitted for Individuals With Incomes Above 100 Percent of the Federal Poverty Level” (that is, $19,090 for a family of three).

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The AARP has come through with a fantastic tool to help you take control of your own health and well being.  The AARP Health Encyclopedia gives an easy to navigate library of information in regards to specific conditions, symptoms, and medical procedures.  Be sure to bookmark the above link and take control of your health!

(Concussion Recognition & Response App)

Community Wellness Centers of America, LLC, has taken the lead to integrate safety technology into several Rochdale Village Sports Programs by giving away free “Smart Phone Concussion Protocol Applications.” This technology allows the user to follow a protocol in diagnosing possible concussions.

The integration of safety technology into sports is vital and gives parents and coaches a clear protocol to follow, states Dr. Robert Evans, President and CEO of Community Wellness Centers of America, LLC (CWCOA). Dr Evans also states that most community based sports programs do not have sufficient concussion protocols in place to recognize possible concussion injuries, therefore many concussions go undiagnosed and lead to future mental impairments or even death. Not only is there a lack of protocols in place but a lack of healthcare providers in underserved communities to give immediate treatment after sustaining a head injury. Local hospital emergency rooms in these underserved communities can take up to several hours for a patient to be seen. The waiting time alone may discourage an athlete or his parents from seeking immediate treatment and cause them to take a “wait and see attitude” which can be very dangerous.

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Asad Zaman, M.D., is a member of the board of directors of Advocate South Suburban Physician Partners and the immediate past chair of the department of medicine at Advocate South Suburban Hospital in Hazel Crest, Ill. He is also the medical director of Crestwood Care Centre, Crestwood, Ill.

Lucy Zielinski is a vice president at Health Directions LLC, Oakbrook Terrace, Ill.

“Jane” was driving across country when soreness in her groin forced an unplanned stop in the Chicago area. An urgent care physician discovered an infected abscess and sent her to a hospital for emergency drainage surgery. At 7 p.m., Jane was discharged to a long-term care facility for wound care and intravenous antibiotics. The admitting physician gave orders to continue her medications per discharge instructions.

The next day at 11 a.m., the physician walked into the facility’s rehab unit and found Jane in agony. Because of a discrepancy in the drug formulary, the pharmacy had not delivered any medications. The patient had received no antibiotics and no pain medications for 16 hours! The physician had no choice but to send Jane back to the hospital.

Unfortunately, care gaps like this are an everyday problem in many LTC facilities. When Medicare readmission penalties begin this October, such lapses will become a problem for hospitals, too.

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Obama’s in the Oval Office but the black bourgeoisie is foundering, including the author

On the night of Barack Obama’s election, I was reporting in the crowd of Chicago’s Grant Park, and like many Americans felt hopeful that our country was finally ready to deal with the vexing matters of race. Obama’s election was an incalculable accomplishment, and the arrival of a middle-class black family in the White House seemed to tell the world that the American Dream is alive, that our country’s establishment has successfully absorbed a people it once enslaved, and unapologetically marginalized.

And yet, when the Obamas moved into the White House, the country’s economy was already in free fall, and its fragile black middle class was, to put it simply, vanishing. Between 2005 and 2009, the year the Great Recession officially ended, the average black household’s wealth fell by more than half, to $5,677, even as their white peers held about $113,000 in assets. Nearly one-quarter of African-Americans have no assets besides a car, and roughly the same share have lost their homes, or they’re close. The African-American unemployment rate hovers around 14 percent, and according to a Pew report released in July, nearly 70 percent of blacks raised in families at the middle of the wealth ladder fall to the bottom two rungs as adults. The exodus of blacks from cities like Washington, Atlanta, New Orleans and even Detroit is driving a sense of eroding political power. Perhaps most depressingly, one in three black boys can expect to be incarcerated at some point in his life.

It’s tricky, explaining what it means to be black in America at this peculiar moment, mainly because the narrative’s dominant theme is decline. “You’re airing our dirty laundry,” a black lawyer told me over brunch one recent Sunday, after I explained this story’s theme. In the fall of 2009, shortly after I began a 14-month reporting assignment in Detroit for Time magazine, a black doctor threw a party at her sprawling home in the city’s leafy Palmer Woods neighborhood, one of the last relatively affluent enclaves. Much of the region, particularly African-Americans, were outraged over the opening stories in our coverage, so the hostess, and her friends, wanted a word. The essential message: Inside Time’s pages, pretend the black middle class is doing just fine.

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States must expand Medicaid all the way if they want to receive full Obamacare funding, federal officials said Monday.

The health care reform law enacted in 2010 calls for Medicaid to be offered to anyone who earns up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, which is $14,856 this year. Under the law, the federal government would pay the full cost of enrolling newly eligible people from 2014 to 2016, after which the share would gradually shrink until it reached 90 percent starting in 2022.

States have been slow to embrace this aspect of Obamacare, despite the unprecedented level of federal financing for Medicaid. Texas, South Dakota, and seven other states have said they won’t expand Medicaid. Officials in Indiana, New Mexico, Wisconsin and other states questioned whether they could offer benefits to fewer people by extending eligibility to some level of income below 133 percent of poverty.

After months of waiting for an answer about partially expanding Medicaid under health care reform, states received a simple reply from the Obama administration Monday: no. States that partially expand will not receive the enhanced funding that would come with a full expansion.

“The law contemplated that every American would have a way to get health insurance coverage, and Medicaid expansion to 133 percent of poverty to low-income adults was the method identified in the law,” Cindy Mann, the director of the Center for Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program Services, said during a conference call with reporters.

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(CNN) – The U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) released a report of state high school graduation rates, which for the first time includes apples-to-apples comparisons among most states. Each state used to determine its own graduation rate; now states are moving toward a common method of measurement.

As Schools of Thought reported earlier, graduation rates for some states have dropped not because students are failing more often, but because the math has changed. The USDOE points this out in a press release on its website: “While 26 states reported lower graduation rates and 24 states reported unchanged or increased rates under the new metric, these changes should not be viewed as measures of progress but rather as a more accurate snapshot.” The new data is based on a “four year cohort graduation rate,” which also accounts for students who drop out or do not earn a regular high school diploma.

article taken from cnn.com.  click here for original article.

Read “The new graduation rates” for an explanation of these metrics.

In the video, Brooke Baldwin examines the states with the highest and lowest gradation rates. Across the United States, the range of state graduation rates is between Nevada’s 62% and Iowa’s 88%. The District of Columbia’s rate is lower than that of any state, at 59%. Some states, including Kentucky and Idaho, are not using the new method and were not included in the data released by USDOE.

Looking at the data itself another picture emerges – a gap between whites and blacks still exists, but an even wider gap persists between general graduation rates and the graduation rates of children with disabilities and limited English proficiency students. For these subgroups, graduation rates in many states are below 50%, and sometimes even below 30%.

Almost a quarter of new HIV cases are seen in young people, and more than half of them don’t know they’re infected, says a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

According to the report, more than 12,000 new cases occurred in young people aged 13 to 24 in 2010, and close to 60% of them did not know their HIV status.

“That so many young people become infected with HIV each year is a preventable tragedy,” wrote CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden in the report.

Among the hardest-hit every year are young gay and bisexual men and young African-American men, according to the report. And despite recommendations from the CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the U.S.Preventive Services Task Force that everyone 15 and older receive HIV testing, many teens and young adults still do not get tested.

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Original article found here

Reasons to think twice before going under the knife

Any surgery is dangerous. The body considers an operation a serious insult, and even some minor procedures come with major risks, such as bleeding, blood clots, infections, and damage to other organs. So it’s essential to know if surgery is necessary — or beneficial.

The four operations discussed on the following pages are overperformed for a variety of reasons: Some are moneymakers for hospitals and doctors, others are expedient, and still others seem to work, at least in the short term. But evidence shows that all have questionable long-term outcomes for treating certain conditions, and some may even cause harm. Here’s what to do if your doctor recommends one of them.

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Oringinal article found here

Think that it’s a small problem? Think again

We have a job to do.

Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis suggested 165 years ago that simply by washing their hands, physicians would reduce the high death rate among women during childbirth. He couldn’t prove it, though, and since he predated Louis Pasteur, antiseptics and antibiotics, Semmelweis’ advice was ignored. He was hounded out of his profession and died in disgrace.

Much has changed. Still, health professionals have not learned to wash their hands. That’s the thrust of an important new study by the Institute of Medicine. It documents the historic medical, technological and demographic changes driving the health care industry. Yet up to half of health professionals fail to wash their hands before beginning medical procedures. “The U.S. health care system now is characterized by more to do, more to know, and more to manage than at any time in history,” the study said. “The result is a paradox: advances in science and technology have improved the ability of the health care system to treat diseases, yet the sheer volume of new discoveries stresses the capabilities of the system to effectively generate and manage knowledge and apply it to regular care.

These dynamics have balkanized the system, even as the demands on it multiply, especially from a population living longer with more chronic disease. “If home building were like health care, carpenters, electricians, and plumbers each would work with different blueprints, with very little coordination,” the study found.

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