AZ Medical Marijuana @ 2
Our Vital Health Statistics team along with our partners at the UA College of Public Health completed our Year 2 Annual Report for the Arizona Medical Marijuana Program last week. You’ll find a wide range of information in the report including data about the demographics and kinds and qualifying conditions of our cardholders, geographic distribution and rates as well as [...]
Undy 5000
Colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in Arizona. Most of the new diagnoses of the disease are late stage. Discovery in late stage reduces the chance of survival. There’s really no reason for people to die from it – research shows colonoscopies that find polyps can dramatically reduce the chance of dying from colon cancer. So [...]
Regulatory Reform Revolution Continues
One of the things I’m most proud of over the last 5 years has been the way we successfully overhauled our regulation licensed healthcare institutions in AZ. Very few government entities could have accomplished such an all-encompassing regulatory reform effort that creates a new outcome-based system that will improve public health- while maintaining support from the vast majority of our Stakeholders. [...]
Hydrocodone Combination Products Moving to Schedule II?
Poisoning (including alcohol and prescription drugs) causes more deaths than car crashes in AZ. Committed folks across the state are taking action on this issue. We’re part of the Arizona Prescription Drug Misuse and Abuse Initiative, a multi-agency, multi-systemic approach to addressing the epidemic. As part of this initiative, new guidelines have been issued for prescribing controlled substances in Emergency Departments [...]
Trauma System Performance- Act 4
Over the past month we have been looking at some different ways to measure and describe how a trauma system is performing. In the world of performance improvement the general belief is that you have to look at a number of different measures in order to be able to describe how the system is performing. Here goes: Over-Triage - In [...]
Bringing Primary Care to Rural AZ
Getting enough primary care providers into rural areas is a struggle everywhere- and AZ is no exception. Each state needs to have a coordinated and creative strategy to the get these critical access to care resources to the right places. We have a few strategies. One is the J1 Visa Program. Each year, we provide (through the J1 Visa Waiver Program) a [...]