This month we wrapped up an 18-month quality improvement pilot project to better integrate environmental health and chronic disease information and referrals into our state home visiting programs. A cross-divisional team made up of folks from Women's & Children's Health, environmental Health, chronic disease, workforce development, and performance management worked together to standardize and pilot [...]
We did it… and by we, I mean ADHS and partners around the state. We accepted the Association of Territorial and State Health Officers (ASTHO) challenge to reduce the rate of babies born too early by 8% by 2014. On Friday, ADHS and the March of Dimes Arizona Chapter received the Virginia Apgar award. The [...]
Throughout human history, war and political unrest have been associated with the spread of disease, often called the “third army”. During the Napoleonic wars, 8 times more people in the British army died from disease than from battle wounds. In our Civil War, 66% of the 660,000 deaths among soldiers were caused by pneumonia, typhoid, [...]
Objective evaluation is critical to assessing and improving the performance of any public health system- including the behavioral health system that we manage. One of the ways we assess our behavioral health system is to conduct a “Quality Services Review”, which identifies strengths, service capacity gaps, and areas for improvement at a system-wide level. A [...]
To help meet the growing demand for health care administrators the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at the U of A (in Phoenix) will begin offering a new accredited Master of Public Health in Health Services Administration program in fall 2014. The health services administration program will provide students with the knowledge [...]
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the basics of evaluating a trauma system and last week I posted about over & under triage. This week is about a tool we use to measure whether we’re striking the right balance- the “Z Statistic”. Back in 1990, there was a famous study published (Major Trauma [...]
Investigators of a new study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association discovered another reason that some people may benefit from getting the flu shot. The study found that getting an annual flu vaccine puts the person at lower risk of having a heart attack, stroke, heart failure, or death [...]
This past summer I blogged about Rural Metro failing to meet a bond payment and having some issues with an ambulance service contract in California. They subsequently filed for bankruptcy and are in the process of negotiating with their creditors. This is important- because they’re a big provider of 9-1-1 and hospital to hospital [...]
Arizona law requires kids to receive certain vaccines in order to attend school unless a doctor signs a medical exemption form or a parent signs a religious or personal beliefs exemption form. There has been an increasing number of parents who are signing exemption forms- putting herd immunity at risk in some parts of the [...]
The formal protest process regarding our award of the Regional Behavioral Health Authority contract in Maricopa County is finally winding down. The oral part of the hearing in front of the Administrative Law Judge was completed a couple of weeks ago. The final legal filings are due next week and the responses to those filings [...]
