Arizona Community Profiles Dashboard (Part I of IV)
We collect all kinds of surveillance about prevalence of disease, birth, causes of death, reasons for hospital visits, smoking rates and hundreds of other indicators to help us assess health indicators and design interventions to improve outcomes. For the first time ever, we now have a tool to explore this data and visualize it in several different ways. Our new [...]
e-Book Edition of the “Guide to Clinical Preventive Services”
For the first time, the US Preventive Services Task Force has released an e-book version of its Guide to Clinical Preventive Services which helps primary care clinicians and patients decide together what preventive services are right for a patient’s needs. The 2014 Guide includes all active Task Force evidence-based recommendations including 28 new and updated recommendations since the 2012 version. [...]
Vital Records Quality Improvement Team Gets Impressive Results
Our Vital Records team handles more than 600 mail-in requests for birth and death certificates each week. The average wait time for mail-in certificates had been nearly 4 weeks...too slow in anybody’s book. Last month we established a cross-functional quality improvement team to find and implement ways to reduce the turnaround time. We now have some great results to show [...]
ADHS Recognized for Communication Success
Several of our marketing efforts were honored at the National Conference on Health Communication in Atlanta. Our Intranet Re-design, Call 9-1-1 CPR and Cardiac Arrest video, Dairy Made Easy radio ads and Language Access List grabbed the attention of judges from Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. The winners in the annual contest are on the [...]
Bed Bugs: A Most Unwelcome Nuisance
Just the idea of bed bugs makes folks squirm...which is understandable, but here in Arizona we have scarier bugs like Rhipicephalus sanguineus or Culex quinquefasciatus that actually transmit diseases like Rocky Mountain spotted fever and West Nile virus. Bed bugs don’t transmit disease but they can cause skin reactions and psychosocial stress (e.g., anxiety and sleeplessness). Bed bugs feed on [...]
Two More Medical Marijuana Lawsuits This Week
A few weeks ago I issued a Director’s Decision authorizing the use of marijuana for medical marijuana patients undergoing conventional treatment for PTSD. Beginning January 1 physician certifications will be valid for palliative care of PTSD symptoms as long as certifying physicians attest that the patient is currently undergoing some kind of conventional treatment for PTSD before signing the certification. I [...]