By Diane Carman The question before the court in New Mexico is absurdly simple and yet impossibly complex. What is the meaning of assisting suicide? If a terminally-ill patient refuses a ventilator or a feeding tube and the physician yields to that decision, is that assisting suicide? If the patient is in excruciating pain and requests total sedation and no nutrition or fluids, can the doctor be held accountable for his death? What if the patient seeks a prescription from her physician so that when the pain of dying is overwhelming she can seek the ultimate relief on her own?…
Category: Trends In Health Care - Part 11
By Mark Wallace Too often, bedbugs get in the way of delivering cost-effective, efficient, high-quality health care both literally and figuratively. In the literal sense, consider a case of a middle-aged woman Ill call Mary. A frequent visitor to emergency rooms in northern Colorado, Mary brings with her a long list of complex medical problems. She takes multiple prescription medications and suffers from behavioral health issues and chronic pain. Recently, a pilot project implemented by the North Colorado Health Alliance in cooperation with Colorado Access and Rocky Mountain Health Plan sought to determine why people like Mary keep returning to…
By Diane Carman Peering into the controversy over routine use of the blood test to screen for the prostate-specific antigen is like falling down, down, down into the dark and bewildering rabbit hole that is the health care system in the United States. In many ways the debate over the PSA test illustrates why the system is so confounding, expensive, unmanageable and resistant to change. As men, their providers and policy experts wrestle with the PSA conundrum, recent battles over mammography and hormone replacement therapy illustrate key lessons. When women learned that there was potential harm from annual breast screening…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Calling U.S. health costs a massive drain on the economy, Gov. John Hickenlooper on Tuesday endorsed bold moves to fight poor health like New York Mayor Michael Bloombergs war on super-sized sugary drinks. Hickenlooper spoke Wednesday to an international conference of wellness experts gathered from more than 40 countries at the Aspen Institute for The Global Spa & Wellness Summit. If you listen to that hum in the distance, sometimes you think thats the ventilation system, but really that sucking noise is the drain on our economy from the health care system. I probably shouldnt say…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Colorado has made substantial progress in implementing a health insurance exchange, but significant work remains in part because of Colorados flawed computer systems, a new reportfrom the Urban Institute has found. The biggest challenge for Colorado may be that the state is starting with a flawed foundation, a legacy computer system CBMS (Colorado Benefits Management System) that is inflexible and difficult to modify, the report states. Researchers from the Urban Institute are conducting a comprehensive monitoring and tracking project to assess implementation of the Affordable Care Act throughout the U.S. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Possession of small amounts of meth, cocaine, marijuana and other illegal drugs would become misdemeanors rather than felonies under a new bill introduced in the Colorado legislature this week. Lawmakers from across the political spectrum formed a coalition to sponsor Senate Bill 12-163,which aims to give drug addicts treatment instead of costly prison sentences. State budget analysts are still determining the bills fiscal impact. The bill calls for savings to fund more drug treatment programs. A fiscal note is due within about a week. Sponsors acknowledged that they introduced the bill late in the session in…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Do you wear a seat belt when you drive? Do you recycle? Do you think smoking is unhealthy? Its likely your answers are yes, yes and yes again. But decades ago, cars didnt have seat belts, no one bothered to recycle and once upon a time, Americans viewed smoking as glamorous, not as a killer habit to be uniformly condemned. Education campaigns over years convinced people to change their attitudes. Thats the long-term goal of a new effort that is being launched today to engage Coloradans about important health coverage and care issues. The campaign, Project…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Colorados adult obesity levels recently jumped at the second-fastest rate in the country, a disturbing increase for a state that has long bragged of being the leanest in the nation. Its not good news. If anything, its even more of a wake-up call. One of the things we know about obesity is its much easier to prevent than to reverse it. Weve got the opportunity to use prevention in Colorado. Were going to rapidly lose that, said James O. Hill, director of the Colorado Center for Health and Wellness at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Surveys of nearly 700 Coloradans found they support the states new health insurance exchange, but found they want hands-on help to make sense of the online market slated to go into effect in 2014. A navigator system is critical, said Danny Katz, director of the Colorado Public Interest Research Group Foundation, CoPIRG, one of the groups that conducted focus group meetings in October and November at 53 sites across Colorado. People liked the idea of comparing health plans (online), but said, we need to have an ability to talk to somebody to get advice, Katz said….
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon of Solutions COLORADO SPRINGS An attack seizes Chaz Moores body, stealing much of his breath. Spasms in his throat, lungs and diaphragm cause the 17-year-old to speak in hiccups, one syllable at a time. He says it feels like a grown man is jumping on his chest as the muscles in his belly roll like waves. Chaz opens a jar labeled MMJ, pulls out some fresh green buds and crumbles the marijuana into a small pipe. He lights up the bowl and inhales as deeply as possible through the spasms, turning to blow smoke out his…