Turning 50
Two things happen when you turn 50. First, you start getting invitations to join the AARP in the mail every couple of weeks (until they give up). Second, your doctor tells you it’s time for your colonoscopy screening. That’s the one that puts a lump in your throat. At 51, I finally bit the bullet and got my colonoscopy screen [...]
New Healthcare Associated Infections Toolkit
Healthcare-associated infections are a critical challenge to public health in Arizona. Healthcare associated infections are acquired during healthcare treatment and can be devastating and even deadly- importantly, they’re preventable. At any given time, about 1 in 20 patients have an infection while receiving healthcare treatment in U.S. hospitals, causing up to $33B in excess medical costs every year. For example, [...]
Medical Marijuana Registration Website
We've had a lot of traffic on our Medical Marijuana Registration webpage today - some of you may have had some difficulty uploading photos or had a "session expired" message pop up. Thanks to your help, we're working to resolve these bumps in the road. If you have had problems this morning, you may want to try again later today.
Opening Day for Medical Marijuana
Today was Opening Day for the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act. We rolled out our brand-new website at 8 a.m. today and began processing applications for Qualifying Patient and Designated Caregiver Registry Identification Cards. The system went live at 8:00 a.m. and we completed our first qualified patient card at about 8:30. Our first applicant was a 60 year-old gentleman from Scottsdale [...]
Adjusting Licensing to Accommodate Integration
I’ve written often over the last few weeks about our priority over the next couple of years to better integrate primary healthcare and psychiatric care in AZ, and that last week HHS approved the Health Homes Planning Grant which will focus on improving coordination of care and increasing access to primary care and prevention services, resulting in meaningful improvements in [...]
Incentivizing Chronic Disease Self-Management
This month AHCCCS told us that they’ve picked our Bureau of Tobacco & Chronic Disease as the state applicant for HHS’ Medicaid Incentives for Prevention of Chronic Diseases Grant. The grant proposal (which will be developed with AHCCCS) must be turned in to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services early next month. The grant is competitive, so we’re not [...]