by Ryan Winter on February 24, 2010
Hospitals doing more with less
A compelling PubMed article entitled “Retooling Without Layoffs” highlighted the great need of hospitals to intelligently cut expenses while maintaining their greatest strength: people.
What’s interesting is that the article was written in 1996, before either recession hit (the aim then was to retool in preparation for expected restrictions in the growth of the Medicare and Medicaid programs.)
What the successful hospitals in the article learned was that the pink slip usually isn’t the best way to achieve cost reductions.
With the medical industry once more in a severe crunch to reduce operating costs, hospitals are again looking to do more with less.
Here’s a look at some of those who are doing it well… [continue reading…]
by Ryan Winter on January 13, 2010
More than anything else, people who pray, pray for good health. But are religion and spirituality relevant to treatment? If so, do they have a positive or negative effect?
A recent study published in the November 2009 issue of the journal Social Problems suggested that religion can be both a bridge and a barrier when it comes to medical treatment. (source)
According to the study, for every case where religion was a barrier (i.e. religious belief prevented consent for a proven treatment), there was another instance where it was a bridge – for example, a case where the family of a terminally-ill child could suggest answers where medicine couldn’t.
Another study, this one by Zogby International, suggested that born-again Christians were 14% less likely to get the H1N1 vaccination than people who did not identify themselves as such. (source)
Can religion make you healthy?
So does being religious help or hinder your health?
[continue reading…]
by Ryan Winter on December 22, 2009
While 20% of Americans live in rural areas, only 9% of America’s doctors practice there. Oddly enough though, patients of urban physicians often have longer wait-times.
So which medical environment is better? Rural or urban?
Though there’s an urge to discover whether people in cities or the countryside have it better when it comes to access to medical professionals, statistical differences between states and the way people in both areas use healthcare make a definitive winner-loser comparison impossible.
What we can do is look at a few telling aspects of how rural medical care compares to that of cities: [continue reading…]
by Jennifer Bradford on November 4, 2009
According to a 2008 report by the California Healthcare Foundation, 34 percent of Americans searching for health information online go directly to social media sites, behind only health portal sites and general search engines.
So what does the healthcare industry become when information for patients and practitioners is measured by Tweets and views, by fans and followers? [continue reading…]
by Ryan Winter on October 21, 2009
One of the first popular mentions of nanotechnology was the 1989 Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Evolution” in which self aware, nano-scale robots take over the Enterprise.
Though nothing on such a grand scale is lurking around today, nanotechnology – on a rudimentary level – is on the verge of coming into wide use.
Industry journals estimate that in the medical world alone, there are more than 150 nanotech-based drugs and delivery systems in development.
So what will (or could) nano-scale constructions mean for health-care in the next few years? [continue reading…]
by Ryan Winter on September 22, 2009
By 2020, the U.S. government predicts that it will be short between 800,000 and one million nurses. (Close to 117,000 short in California alone.)
Before that – 2015 – the U.S. Department of Health projects that 400,000 new nurses will be needed just to fill vacancies left by retirees.
[continue reading…]
A compelling PubMed article entitled “Retooling Without Layoffs” highlighted the great need of hospitals to intelligently cut expenses while maintaining their greatest strength: people.
