Posts Tagged ‘ healthcare ’

Dec.12.11-US Health Care: Worst in the World?

U.S. Health Care: Worst In The World?

Multiple news sources have reported on a study released on June 23, 2010 by the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based private foundation focused on health, concluding that American healthcare ranks highest in cost and last in performance among seven industrialized nations. The above headline comes from one of those stories that was published on June 24, 2010 in “The Week”.

A June 23, 2010 Reuters news story starts off with the ominous statement, “Americans spend twice as much as residents of other developed countries on healthcare, but get lower quality, less efficiency and have the least equitable system.” The Commonwealth Fund’s president, Karen Davis PhD., stated, “On many measures of health system performance, the U.S. has a long way to go to perform as well as other countries that spend far less than we do on healthcare, yet cover everyone. It is disappointing, but not surprising, that despite our significant investment in health care, the U.S. continues to lag behind other countries.”

The factors looked at in the Commonwealth report were quality, efficiency, access to care, equity and the ability to lead long, healthy, productive lives. The study noted that Americans spend $7,290 per person for healthcare which is twice as much as any other country studied in the survey conducted in 2007. The study reported that New Zealanders spent the least at $2,454 per person, while in the other 5 countries the amount spent on healthcare per person was $3,357 for Australians, $3,895 for Canadians, $3,588 for Germans, $3,837 for the Dutch and $2,992 for the British.

According to a June 23, 2010 Wall Street Journal article on the report, there are several key findings that need improving. They are:

  • The U.S. ranked last in measures of safe care (an indicator of quality), cost-related access problems, efficiency, equity and the long, healthy lives measure.
  • A full 54% of U.S. adults with chronic health conditions said they didn’t fill or complete a prescription, get a recommended test or treatment or visit a doctor when needed due to cost.
  • Of those same adults with chronic problems, 19% said they’d visited an ER for something that a regular doctor could have handled had one been available. In Germany and the Netherlands, that rate was 6%.
  • The U.S. has the highest “mortality amenable to health care” rate (from 2002-03), at 110 per 100,000 population. Australia was lowest, with 71 per 100,000. (That rate refers to the number of deaths before age 75 from ischemic heart disease, diabetes, stroke and bacterial infections.)
  • We ranked no higher than fourth on anything for effective care and patient-centered care.

In the Commonwealth study executive summary, the authors clearly state the problems with the US healthcare system when they say, “The U.S. health system is the most expensive in the world, but comparative analyses consistently show the United States underperforms relative to other countries on most dimensions of performance. Among the seven nations studied Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States the U.S. ranks last overall, as it did in the 2007, 2006, and 2004 reports.”

 

To Download this Article: US HealthCare Worst in World

Sept.14.11-America Spends More For Mediocre Health Care Than All Other Nations

America Spends More For Mediocre Health Care Than All Other Nations

A new study, the National Scorecard on U.S. Health System Performance, shows that the U.S. health care system is fragmented, wasteful and in some cases dangerous, and is particularly poor at serving the very young and the very old.

Despite the fact that the United States spends more on health care than any other country, it has the highest infant mortality rate among nearly two dozen industrialized nations, and the lowest life expectancy after 60.

The study, released by the Commonwealth Fund’s Commission on a High Performance Health System, assigned scores to 37 indicators of health outcomes, quality, access, equity and efficiency. On average, the United States scored 66 out of a possible 100.

Improvements in the health care system could lead to 150,000 lives and $100 billion saved annually. Currently, one-third of patients report a medical, medication or lab test mistake, and a quarter of U.S. adults have had to wait at least six days to receive care when they needed medical attention.

If you’re wondering why medical mistakes like the one I recently described are being reported with greater frequency, you’ll want to review this first-ever National Scorecard on U.S. Health System Performance.

Among the benchmarks cited in the report with the correspondingly low U.S. scores:

  • Infant mortality = 39 out of 100
  • Needless emergency room visits that could’ve been treated in an office visit = 23 out of 100
  • Adults receiving recommended screenings and preventative care = 61 out of 100

The United States spends 16 percent of its gross domestic product on health care, or $2 trillion, every year. Since the CDC and FDA are focusing on crazy treatments and toxic drugs, I can’t imagine these scores improving any time soon.

This is why I lost my faith in the modern health care system many years ago.

It is all too obvious that it is focused on the “business of unnecessary medicine” rather than true healing. The belief of quantity over quality is a powerful contributor to the downfall of the traditional medical community. By the end of the decade, health care costs are expected to rise to $3 TRILLION. This is largely due to the costs of drugs and surgery and a reliance on a medical system that does not treat the cause of disease.

The only way to improve the state of health care in America:

You simply must take better responsibility for your own health, address the true cause of your disease and move away from needless drugs and surgical procedures that merely mask your problem.

Care, not treatment, is the answer.

Drugs, surgery and hospitals are rarely the answer to chronic health problems. Following a healthy diet, exercise, and a healthy lifestyle are the basic pillars of optimal health. Effective interventions for the underlying emotional wounding behind most chronic illness are key.

 

AN OPTIMAL SPINE EQUALS OPTIMAL HEALTH as well!

To Download this Article: mediocrehealthcare

May 23.11-Alternative Healthcare

Alternative Healthcare
In the November 11th, 1998 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, (JAMA), David Eisenberg, M.D. published his long awaited follow up study on the use of “Alternative Medicine” in the United States. Several years earlier, Dr. Eisenberg published his initial study that rocked the medical community with his findings of how many people were actually going to what he termed “Alternative Providers”.
From inside the medical profession, any other health care profession was known as an alternative. However, the numbers from the Eisenberg study quickly showed that chiropractic and other non-medical forms of health care are not “alternative” in the public’s eye.
This  study, conducted in 1997, illustrated some astounding facts and figures.

 

  • Americans spent $27 billion out-of-pocket for alternative therapies in 1997.
  • Four out of 10 people used alternative healthcare in 1997.
  • Visits to alternative health care providers (mostly chiropractors) increased by almost 50% from 1990.
  • The number of visits to alternative health care providers (629 million) exceeded visits to medical providers (only 386 million) visits in 1997  alone.
  • Less than 40% of patients tell their medical doctors that they seek alternative therapies.

Researchers also found that 42% of the alternative care was for existing illness while 58% was used for prevention and wellness. These numbers look good for the chiropractic profession, which has built its health care delivery future on wellness. “Many people initially enter the chiropractor’s office for a health problem. But many then stay there for the wellness benefits chiropractic has to offer”, says Robert Braile, D.C. President of the International Chiropractor Association.
Study shows more people using “alternative” health care.
According to an article in the May 20 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), more people are turning toward what JAMA terms “Alternative Medicine”. Traditionally, chiropractors do not use the term “Alternative Medicine” when referring to the profession of chiropractic, since chiropractic is a drugless natural approach to health. But it is interesting to note how the medical profession views chiropractic and other health approaches they term “alternative”.
The article says, “Research both in the United States and abroad suggests that significant numbers of people are involved with various forms of alternative medicine. However, the reasons for such use are, at present, poorly understood. Along with being more educated and reporting poorer health status, the majority of alternative medicine users appear to be doing so not so much as a result of being dissatisfied with conventional medicine but largely because they find these health care alternatives to be more congruent with their own values, beliefs, and philosophical orientations toward health and life.” According to John A. Astin, Ph.D., a researcher at Stanford University’s School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California who surveyed 1,035 randomly selected people, “Alternative medicine users tend to hold a philosophical orientation toward health that can be described as holistic and are more likely to have had some type of transformational experience that changed their world view in a significant way.”

To Download this Article: Alternative Healthcare