Category: Healthcare

from Physician’s Weekly

Do you want to offer your patients better care, increase your own industry understanding, and improve your own understanding of your field? Reading books is one of the best, fastest and most enjoyable ways to up your game. It’s also a great way to pass commute times on public transportation, give your eyes a screen break, and keep up with the latest industry news. Check out these books healthcare professionals should read, and don’t forget to leave your own review to help others find the best books.

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Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

by Eileen O’Shanassy

As healthcare grows in new and innovative ways and more technology is added to healing and healthcare, the Human Resources department of hospitals face many new challenges. Since these departments are responsible for hiring clinical and non-clinical personnel, it’s clear the success of the facility depends largely on the decisions made in Human Resources. Therefore, it’s important for the hospital itself to have as many practices in place as possible to help HR succeed in its endeavors. To gain a greater understanding of these practices, here are some ways hospitals can be organized to ensure a Human Resources department runs as smoothly as possible.

Invest in Technology

Since the days of receiving resumes through snail mail are gone, it’s important for an HR department to have the latest technology at its disposal to attract the best applicants. Whether using an online medical recruiting service or similar online pool to find and hire the most qualified individuals, investing in cloud technology and other types of state-of-the-art equipment can make a huge difference in a hospital’s performance.

Pay Attention to Training and Credentials

Since it’s vital for doctors, nurses, and others who hold professional licenses to maintain their certifications, managers of various clinical departments should work closely with HR to ensure no lapses occur. To do so, department managers should work with HR to schedule in-house training, continuing education classes, and other training. By doing so, a hospital can often continue to attract highly-qualified personnel for its clinical positions.

Adequate Staffing

For an HR department to make the best hiring decisions, it relies on reports given to it by department managers to ensure all areas of the hospital are adequately staffed from jobs for physicians to jobs for doctors, every staffing position needs to be filled. Even housekeeping and food services, and nursing and operating room personnel should be overseen. Having staff levels that can meet the needs of patients is crucial to an efficient operation. Be sure all levels of management are able to communicate when there is a shortage.

Create a Reasonable Budget

First and foremost, a hospital is a business, and must be able to earn a profit in order to maintain high levels of operation. Because of this, hospital executives must work constantly to create budgets that will allow for necessary funding for all departments. This is a tremendous help to Human Resources, since an HR manager must know how much money they have to work with before making hiring decisions.

Even though healthcare in today’s world is more complex than ever, it’s still possible to create systems that work very efficiently. By having all departments work closely with HR, a hospital can provide world-class service to staff and patients.

Eileen O’Shanassy is a freelance writer and blogger based out of Flagstaff, AZ. She writes on a variety of topics and loves to research and write. She enjoys baking, biking, and kayaking. Check out her Twitter, @eileenoshanassy.

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

By Phil Galewitz

Three years after the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansion took effect, the number of Americans without health insurance fell to 28.1 million in 2016, down from 29 million in 2015, according to a federal report released Tuesday.

The latest numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau showed the nation’s uninsured rate dropped to 8.8 percent. It had been 9.1 percent in 2015.

Both the overall number of uninsured and the percentage are record lows.

The latest figures from the Census Bureau effectively close the book on President Barack Obama’s record on lowering the number of uninsured. He made that a linchpin of his 2008 campaign, and his administration’s effort to overhaul the nation’s health system through the ACA focused on expanding coverage.

When Obama took office in 2009, during the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, more than 50 million Americans were uninsured, or nearly 17 percent of the population.

The number of uninsured has fallen from 42 million in 2013 — before the ACA in 2014 allowed states to expand Medicaid, the federal-state program that provides coverage to low-income people, and provided federal subsidies to help lower- and middle-income Americans buy coverage on the insurance marketplaces. The decline also reflected the improving economy, which has put more Americans in jobs that offer health coverage.

The dramatic drop in the uninsured over the past few years played a major role in the congressional debate over the summer about whether to replace the 2010 health law. Advocates pleaded with the Republican-controlled Congress not to take steps to reverse the gains in coverage.

The Census numbers are considered the gold standard for tracking who has insurance because the survey samples are so large.

The uninsured rate has fallen in all 50 states and the District of Columbia since 2013, although the rate has been lower among the 31 states that expanded Medicaid as part of the health law. The lowest uninsured rate last year was 2.5 percent in Massachusetts and the highest was 16.6 percent in Texas, the Census Bureau said. States that expanded Medicaid had an average uninsured rate of 6.5 percent compared with an 11.7 percent average among states that did not expand, the Census Bureau reported.

More than half of Americans — 55.7 percent — get health insurance through their jobs. But government coverage is becoming more common. Medicaid now covers more than 19 percent of the population and Medicare nearly 17 percent.

This story was produced by Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit health newsroom whose stories appear in news outlets nationwide, is an editorially independent part of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

from The Health Care Blog

Our health system is facing an existential crisis. We’re not alone. As the largest hospital in the western United States and a member of the 2016-17 U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals Honor Roll, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is known for its exceptional quality of care… but also for its high cost of care. In an era of value-based healthcare financing and full-risk contracts, it is an existential challenge for health systems like Cedars-Sinai to bend the cost curve while maintaining or improving patient outcomes, satisfaction, and safety. If we can’t bring down costs, then insurance companies may take their business elsewhere.

To meet the challenge, healthcare systems like ours must become facile with managing and interpreting big data; learn how to implement health information technology in clinical practice; perform continuous self-assessments to ensure high-quality, safe and effective care; measure and address patient preferences and values; master the principles of digital health science; and, ultimately, ensure all these activities are cost-effective. This is exceedingly hard to do, but there is a science for doing it all. It’s called health delivery science.

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Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.