U.S Rates Hospital Heart Care Online
June 29, 2007
A new initiative by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is now ranking all American hospitals and posting the results of treatments for heart failure and heart attacks. The move is a natural one in the increasingly high-tech world of medicine. Currently, results are available for more than 4700 different institutions.
Not only does the study allow patients of various hospitals to see how theirs stacks up against the competition, it also allows researchers previously unattainable access to medical statistics broken down both by region and specific hospitals. Think of it as Consumer Reports for the cardiac arrest set.
A link to the study is available right here. A recent post in The Cardio Blog also mentioned that the group responsible for conducting the study have also offered help to institutions ranked poorly on the study. They also quote Michael Leavitt, secretary of the U.S DHHS, saying that the move is a natural step “because for most of its history, Medicare has been paying for services, but not paying for results.”
Reuters News Agency released some further information about the study and detailed some of the actual results of the study. According to Reuters, “just seven hospitals were rated worse-than-average for death rates following a heart attack, while 17 were rated better-than- average,” while, “In heart failure, 38 hospitals scored a top rating, while 35 scored a worse-than-average for that measure.”
The study also details results for over 30 different elective hospital procedures. Not only is this a big step in giving people more information with which to educate themselves on the quality of service at their regional medical facilities, but it will also provide some tremendously interesting data once it is aggregated and analyzed over the course of several years.
Will giving consumers more access to healthcare information result in better healthcare itself? Only time will tell.
NUMEROUS ACADEMIC STUDIES CONFIRM REMOTE DIGITAL MONITORING IS THE FUTURE OF PREVENTATIVE HEALTHCARE
The results of several different studies have offered conclusive proof that remote monitoring for heart patients significantly improves survival rates. The studies, released in the British Journal of Sports Medicine and the International Journal of Electronic Healthcare, correspond with the classical medical maxim that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
The British Journal of Sports Medicine study focuses on the potential impact of wireless digital monitoring to track heart rates and other medical information, all in real time. While admitting that the industry is in its infancy, it offers several examples of how wireless digital monitoring is helping to increase the performance of top-level athletes. The authors of the study recognize the fact that this prohibitively expensive technology, is being used predominantly by universities, medical experts and top athletes.
While acknowledging that remote digital monitoring has the possibility to connect with general consumers, the BJSM study is most excited about its effect in the world of medical research and health science. The authors stated, “the broad range of research that health and sports monitoring encompasses would benefit enormously from this ability to collect data unobtrusively and without hindering movement or performance,” before concluding, “Utilization of their full capabilities could allow many health- and sports-monitoring research areas to step into a new territory previously fenced off by wires.”
The second major study, recently released by the International Journal of Electronic Healthcare, reveals a world of possibilities for at-home electronic digital monitoring. Having released an entire issue specifically related to Integrating Mobility into the Healthcare Sector: the Next Generation of Mobile Health Applications, the IJEH demonstrates a firm belief that this growing sector of the medical field can improve the health, heart and lifestyle of its practitioners.
One of their studies outlines a hypothetical product combining digital monitoring with the ease-of-use of television and the Internet. “In this paper, we describe the development of an Internet-based system and a novel mobile home based device for the management of medication. We extend these concepts through the descriptions of an enhanced service with the use of mobile phone technology and home based digital TV services.”
Clearly, this distinguished group of medical experts is convinced that remote digital monitoring will not only help save the lives of patients, but will improve the quality and efficiency of service to the point where regular taxpayers could notice a lighter tab come tax-time. “The proposed system has the potential to improve patients’ quality of life by allowing them to move around freely while undergoing continuous heart monitoring and to reduce healthcare costs associated with prolonged hospitalisation, treatment and monitoring.”
The world of medical blogs, an invaluable information tool, are also demonstrating their agreement with these two studies. MedGadget, a blog chronicling digital advances in the medical health industry, confirms its belief that remote heart monitoring improves survival rates reporting that “a joint Canadian and Australian study revealed that remote monitoring for heart patients improved survival rates by a full 20%.”
Another widely-praised source of medical news is ScienceDaily. They quoted the same study as MedGadget, reports that “the use of remote monitoring for patients with chronic heart failure has the potential to significantly improve clinical outcomes (mortality, morbidity and quality indicators).” The authors of the post attribute the potential success of remote monitoring to the fact that, “permits closer follow-up of patients with heart failure, this allows for the potential for earlier detection and management of changes in a patient’s health.”
The exciting worlds of technology and medicine make for lifesaving bedfellows. Concepts in Orthopedic and Sports Rehab, another well-respect blog, considers the concept of remote monitoring to have massive potential for success, “technology and healthcare are merging at a rapid pace. I think we will continue to see more wireless technologies in healthcare in providing improved and more efficient patient care and record storage.”
