By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Tuesdays election results ensure that implementation of Obamacare will proceed on a fast track in Colorado and Democratic lawmakers want to move ahead with Medicaid expansion that could bring health coverage to nearly a quarter million low-income Coloradans. We would like to push to get health care to as many people as possible because thats going to reduce the costs for everyone, said Rep. Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver, who is expected to take the reins of the Colorado House in January after Democrats recaptured control of it on Tuesday. Gov. John Hickenlooper is more circumspect. While he…
Category: Trends In Health Care - Part 9
By Ned Calonge This week we saw the first presentation of the Colorado All Payer Claims Database, a project of the Center for Improving Value in Health Care (CIVHC) that is jointly funded by the Colorado Health Foundation and The Colorado Trust. We at The Trust believe that the claims and costs data collected through the APCD, as well as specific measures of quality, will provide an essential missing part of the spectrum of data needed to inform health care decisions by business leaders, policymakers, providers, payers and, of course, health care consumers. The Affordable Care Act goes a long…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon An experiment to ensure that complex Medicaid patients have a regular doctor and care coordinators who can help them stay healthy has saved Colorado an estimated $20 million in its first year, according to a new report from Colorados Medicaid managers. Were very happy that its moving in the right direction, said Laurel Karabatsos, director of health programs for the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF). So far, about 20 percent of Colorados more than 600,000 Medicaid clients are enrolled in the program called the Accountable Care Collaborative (ACC). Our goal over the…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon The woman is missing most of her teeth, but grins like a 6-year-old at a birthday party. Unsteady on her feet, the 48-year-old homeless woman nonetheless proudly describes the meaning of the famous Emanuel Martinez mural outside Denvers La Alma Recreation Center. The young Chicano man is the future. The Indian is our past, says Gina Marie Crespin, who grew up in the Lincoln Park area and now spends her days in the neighborhood park. The eagle is power, Crespin says, pointing to the center of the mural where the soaring birds wings spread to form…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Frequent flyers at hospital ERs sought emergency care at least four times a year and accounted for anywhere from 11 to 40 percent of total emergency room visits around the U.S., according to seven new studies unveiled this week at the annual meeting of the American College of Emergency Physicians in Denver. In one of the studies, researchers in San Diego identified a group of super users, each of whom visited an ER 21 or more times in a single year. These patients bounced from hospital to hospital. While they represented just .2 percent of all…
By Mary Winter DENVER Holli Wiseman remembers when nurses were expected to be seen, not heard. In the late 1970s, shortly after shed graduated nursing school and was working at Porter Hospital, Wiseman says a doctor screamed at her: Dont give the patient any information unless the doctor says to! Wisemans faux pas? Shed taken time to explain blood pressure readings to a man in her care. Wiseman laughs at the memory. Today, of course, doctors depend on you to give patients information, says Wiseman, a clinical nurse specialist with the Visiting Nurse Association in Denver. Teaching is a major…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon The MacArthur Foundation has honored a Colorado doctor with a $500,000 genius grant for his work to help chronically ill older adults stay well. University of Colorado School of Medicine geriatrician, Dr. Eric Coleman, has won the prestigious MacArthur fellowshipfor creating the concept of low cost transition coaches. The coaches provide relatively simple support to chronically ill older adults and their caregivers for a month after hospitals release the patient. His program is called Care Transitions Intervention. The issue is critically important because hospital readmissions are costing taxpayers an estimated $17.5 billion dollars a year. Studies…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon COLORADO SPRINGS The relationship is on the rocks. Long divided into opposing cultures, doctors, who focus on the body, are trying to work side-by-side with behavioral health experts who try to heal patients minds. In a grand Colorado experiment called Advancing Care Together, 11 pilot sites are participating in a $4 million four-year experiment to bring these disparate worlds together. And some are pining for a divorce. Or at least they want a proper wedding that includes electronic medical records that actually talk to each other. If we want it, weve got a put a ring…
By Diane Carman Hunter Doherty Patch Adams is a physician who has never made a penny from medicine. He treats patients with laughter and loving, and he rebels openly against the tyranny of market capitalism. He said he is ashamed of the U.S. health care system. Its not about health. Its not about care. And its not a system, its a business. Adams spoke at the Tivoli Student Union on the Auraria campus Wednesday, challenging his audience to join his revolution of joy for the sake of their own well-being and that of the planet. You can decide to never…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon and Kaiser Health News The number of Americans without health insurance fell to 48.6 million last year, or 15.7 percent of the population, the first drop since 2007, according to new U.S. Census numbers released today. At the same time, a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation has found that health insurance premiums for employer-sponsored family health coverage reached $15,745 this year. Thats up 4 percent over last year, but a more modest increase than in previous years when health costs far outpaced earnings. The average family pays nearly $4,500 a year for its share of…