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Governments in many countries are taking a look internally at their health care systems and trying to figure out what to do to build or maintain a viable system for the future. USA Today put together a useful country-by-country comparison that may help you understand how different countries are currently operating.
Scenario planning is an interesting way to look at the future by using your best judgment on how to create strategies to meet the coming challenges. The World Economic Forum’s report The Future of Pensions and Healthcare in a Rapidly Ageing World: Scenarios to 2030 describes three scenarios designed to challenge current thinking, create new insights, facilitate the debate between key decision-makers and provide momentum for action.
Christine Owen of Mercer Global Health Management Consulting has gone one step further, tracking through their global clients the trends as they emerge and focusing on the most likely scenario. It is too early to come to conclusions but as Ms. Owen says in her report, ‘the true winners will be the businesses that come to understand the key role they will increasingly plan in the health of their global workforces and the likely impact that health will have on global economic growth’.
The paper paints a somewhat bleak picture. I won’t give away the ending but for-warned is for-armed.
With the coming of winter also comes the threat of the flu. Each year health departments try to predict the type of influenza virus will spread across the globe and prepare a vaccine to prevent the spread of the disease.
However there is always a chance that the vaccine will not provide the protection needed. If that happens, a pandemic could result. To assist healthcare providers in taking steps to prepare for an influenza pandemic, this free checklist was developed by the American Health Lawyers Association (AHLA) in conjunction with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Who knows what will happen this winter but hopefully this resource will help you prepare for it.
The Technology Research for Independent Living (TRIL) centre’s Clinic at St. James’s Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, recently won the prestigious Irish Healthcare Award 2008 for the Best Use of Information Technology. The awards, coordinated by the Irish Medical Times, recognize and reward people and projects that have made a difference and demonstrate excellence, originality and innovation in the health care or pharmaceutical industry over the past year.
Eric Dishman, Intel Corporation’s Director of Product Research and Innovation, will be giving a keynote address on TRIL and its programs at IAHSA’s 8th International Conference in London next July.
The Australian Productivity Commission recently released a study, Trends in Aged Care Services: Some Implications, a build on its earlier report on demographic change, health care and aged care.
This study analyzes major trends in both demand for aged care services and the supply of these services. It also explores the implications for the future structure and mix of aged care services, the workforce and the capacity of the sector to lift its productivity growth.
Looks like a good reference for others.
Over the past few years, the US-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement [IHI] led the 100,000 Lives Campaign, a project to save 100,000 lives by reducing preventable errors in hospitals.
The group faced numerous challenges, including entrenched attitudes, conflicting stakeholders, stretched resources, but they still managed to make progress in reducing needless loss of life.
The project, described in the McKinsey Quarterly, found that ‘The lessons that we draw from this single case are tentative, but we are struck by a theme that surfaced again and again in the 100,000 Lives Campaign and that receives scant attention in the innovation literature: IHI constantly found ways of making it easier rather than harder for hospitals to innovate. That simple idea, which might be called the ergonomics of innovation, helped save 100,000 lives.’
Are these lessons applicable to organizations that serve the elderly? Read this article and let us know what you think.
Last week, we blogged about the challenges facing African health care programs because they can’t find adequate medical workers.
There is also a grave shortage of basic medical equipment and supplies.
That’s where Doc to Dock comes in. Doc to Dock, the brainchild of Dr. Bruce Charash, was founded to connect the tremendous surplus of medical equipment and supplies in one part of the world to the great need in another by engaging physicians, nurses and volunteers in a collaborative effort to collect, sort, ship and distribute unused medical supplies to hospitals and patients that need them most.
Every day thousands of patients in the developing world are turned away from hospitals and medical centers due to a lack of basic medical equipment and supplies.
Shortage of medical supplies is compounding the region’s health crisis and is a recognized problem. “Morale is low all over the developing world, where doctors and nurses have the knowledge to save lives but lack the tools. Where AIDS and drug-resistant TB now burn through populations like forest fires, health-care workers say that the absence of medicines and other supplies leaves them feeling more like hospice and mortuary workers than healers.”
— Foreign Affairs, January/February, 2007
Doc to Dock is dedicated to improving the health and lives of people in Africa by providing healthcare workers with the tools they need.
It is estimated that in the United States thousands of tons of medical supplies are discarded every day due to overproduction, procedural excess and regulatory requirements. This surplus of medical materials is either incinerated of deposited in landfills, both of which are harmful to the environment.
Doc to Dock strives to reverse this cycle of waste by collecting the unused medical supplies from New York hospitals and shipping them to hospitals and clinics in need in Africa.
The first shipment was made in May 2007 when Doc to Dock delivered a 40-foot container of medical supplies and equipment to the Hubert Maga Hospital in Cotonou, Benin.
Hurrah for Doc to Dock! Visit the Doc to Dock website to learn how you can help.
Finding an adequate number of workers has been identified as one of the major challenges brought on by the global ageing crisis. Ageing service providers around the world have recently felt the shortage and continually look for ways to address the issue.
Long-term care is hardly alone in facing the workforce shortage.
According to a study by McKinsey & Company, Africa bears one-quarter of the burden of disease around the world yet has barely 3 percent of all health workers. Millions of people across sub-Saharan Africa suffer needlessly because they cannot obtain medical care from trained workers. Fully 820,000 additional doctors and nurses are needed to provide the region with even the most basic health services. The money to hire, train, and sustain such an increase won’t be available in the foreseeable future. Even if funding materialized, 600 additional medical and nursing schools would be needed to fill the gap, and it would take more than two decades to train the requisite number of professionals.
McKinsey believes that to ameliorate the problem in the coming decade, countries in Africa should build systems based on thoughtful ratios between professional and paraprofessional workers. Governments can’t do so alone; the development community and the private sector also have roles to play.
To read the study, click on the link below.
Last week I read an article in McKnights’s Long Term Care entitled Study: Older Americans far less healthy than older Europeans. The study by researchers at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, found that US adults aged 50 and older are twice as likely as older European adults to have a number of chronic diseases. Many of the diseases are related to obesity and smoking, causing chronic conditions such as heart disease, arthritis, and diabetes.
As the study noted, this gap exists despite the fact that the US spends more on health care than any European country.
Reading this study reminded me of the movie Sicko, which came out this summer. Produced by Michael Moore, the controversial Academy Award winning documentary film maker, the movie investigates the American health care system, focusing on its for-profit health insurance and pharmaceutical industry and compares the non-universal and for-profit U.S. system with the universal and non-profit systems of Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Cuba.
A lot of people didn’t agree with the message from the movie and felt that the health care systems both in the US and the other countries were misrepresented. But you sometime need to exaggerate to get the point across. Exaggeration or not, I have recommended the movie to everyone I know – and the importance of the message is reflected in the fact that health care has reappeared as a major issue in the US presidential race.
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