Improving Health in a Sinking Economy
 |
|
This is a cross-post from Labor Management Partnership by John August, executive director of Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions.
It was one of those weeks. Many people could not ignore the economic news, despite the abstract way we talk about it that makes so many people feel powerless and intimidated.
The administration announced its “compromise.” Bush-era tax cuts, including those for the richest people in the country, would remain in effect for another two years. The president’s own party was in revolt. Why, many Democrats asked, is it necessary to allow hundreds of billions of dollars of additional debt to provide tax cuts to the people at the very top of the income scale?
Technology Alone Can’t Deliver Better Health Care
 |
||||
|
||||
With the federal government poised to invest billions of dollars in health information technology as part of comprehensive health care reform, the AFL-CIO joined with Kaiser Permanente and the Alliance for Health Reform to show how the efficient use of new information systems and involvement of all caregivers—doctors, pharmacists, nurses and others—in health decisions can lead to better health care. In fact, Kaiser says its pilot program is using technology in new ways to cut cardiac deaths by 73 percent.
During a briefing Friday in Washington, D.C., Kaiser Permanente CEO George Halvorson pointed out how the company’s practitioners in Colorado used Kaiser’s trademarked health information system to deliver better care to cardiac patients. The Collaborative Cardiac Care Service program uses integrated nursing and pharmacy teams that work collaboratively with heart disease patients and their doctors. The team is connected by technology that helps them deliver care. Activities such as lifestyle modification, medication management, patient education, laboratory results monitoring and management of adverse events are all coordinated through the program, which helps guide the patient through both short- and long-term care decisions.
