Recent events such as Hurricane Harvey have illustrated the importance of information sharing during a disaster response. Communication and coordination between first responders, health care facilities, emergency management, public health, and other responders is critical to protecting the health and well-being of disaster victims. After action reports and lessons learned from previous responses almost always [...]
Last week we passed a major milestone in our Strategic Plan when we filed our final new set of rules for the Arizona's 5,500 licensed healthcare facilities. With this week's filing - we've now completed our overhaul of the State's regulations for hospitals, behavioral health inpatient facilities, nursing care institutions, recovery care centers, hospices, behavioral health residential facilities, assisted living facilities, outpatient surgical centers, outpatient treatment centers, adult day health care [...]
On previous Blogs I’ve shared information about Community Integrated Paramedicine. One of the most promising opportunities for Community Paramedicine is in working with hospitals to prevent readmission of patients with diseases like diabetes, asthma or congestive heart failure. It’s also a great opportunity for EMS providers to provide some coaching on other prevention initiatives including [...]
HB 2036 was passed and signed during the 2012 legislative session… tasking the ADHS with several things related to the regulation of abortions. Among them were requirements for us to: 1) Develop a parental informed consent form for minors seeking an abortion; 2) Establish a website with information identified in the Statute; and 3) Require [...]
We rolled out a new electronic birth certificate system this week that will be a game-changer for public health. Our system (which took about 18 months to plan, create & launch) will help us collect better surveillance data for our Winnable Battles like obesity, tobacco use, substance abuse, and better data about birth outcomes that will help [...]
Over the last 18 months, our licensing team in collaboration with trade organizations from every sphere of healthcare delivery, partnered with Health Services Advisory Group (HSAG), Arizona’s Medicare Quality Improvement Organization, in its statewide initiative designed to reduce by 4000 the number of preventable hospital readmissions. Aptly named the No Place Like Home Campaign, because [...]
A couple of weeks ago, I introduced the concept of “Over Triage”… which is when EMS transports a patient to the highest level of care (like a level I trauma center) when they could have taken them to a level III or IV trauma center closer to their home. The downside of over-triage is that [...]
In early 2012, Arizona set the ambitious goal of reducing the statewide hospital readmission rate by 20% and averting 4,000 avoidable hospital readmissions. Curious to find out what we accomplished by working together? Interested in learning about extraordinary best practices from all provider settings that may take your organization from ordinary to extraordinary? Would you [...]
The 5 most common hospital-acquired infections cost the U.S. health care system almost $10B a year, according to a new study by Harvard researchers. The study was published online in JAMA Internal Medicine this week. According to CDC, one out of every 20 patients admitted to a hospital will pick up an infection while there. Central [...]
Community paramedicine is a paradigm shift for the use of paramedics in the US. It’s an emerging model in which paramedics function outside their usual emergency response & transport roles- delving into the world of primary care. As the health care world increasingly shifts toward prevention and well care- the system will increasingly demand more folks [...]
