Category: Health

The new blue light specials: Flu shots, strep tests, sutures

In recent years grocery stores and discount retailers have been leasing space to banks, pharmacies, beauty parlors and even optometrists in an effort to increase foot traffic and sales. The latest twist on the trend brings health-care clinics to the places where people shop. Drug store chains and discount retailers like Target and Wal-Mart have joined forces with health-care companies to open in-store medical clinics operated by nurse practitioners or physician’s assistants. The concept is not without its critics, but proponents say it can be a boon to people with minor health-care issues and no insurance, who otherwise might end up in the local hospital’s emergency room.

Psychiatrists in short supply throughout Western states

A study from the new Center for Health Information and Research details a shortage of psychiatrists across the nation that is particularly severe in Western states. Anchoring the bottom of a list that ranks states by number of psychiatrists per 100,000 population are Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Alaska. In Arizona, the shortage leaves some counties with no psychiatrists at all. The situation is particularly acute in the pediatric specialties. As a result, pediatricians and primary care physicians are acquiring additional training in mental health services, and in some cases are assisting psychiatrists to shoulder the caseload.

Katrina’s heavy blow reveals health care frailties

Without the experience of a war on its shores, the United States has not developed a plan to provide health care to large numbers of people at once. Even the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, did not result in this kind of planning. Exacerbating the situation, decades of cost-cutting and tight reimbursements have left the health-care system in the United States with almost no excess capacity. In the aftermath of wind and water, Louisiana and the Gulf Coast must determine how best to care for its sick with greatly reduced facilities. W. P. Carey School experts comment on the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Arizona’s physician shortage hovering near critical stage

If states were graded based on the number of doctors in service to the population, Arizona would get a D-minus, according to a recent study undertaken jointly by the School of Health Management and Policy at the W. P. Carey School of Business and the University of Arizona College of Medicine. The numbers place Arizona near the bottom of a ranking of states based on their supply of physicians, along with Oklahoma, Mississippi and Alaska. And while Arizona’s population continues to climb at a record pace, the inrushing tide of immigrants contains few doctors. With the growth of the population and the aging of the baby-boomer generation, that D-minus grade is about to get worse.

Clockspeed’s concept offers boon to health care

How efficiently hospitals keep track of health-care supplies can make the difference not only in cost but also the quality of patient care. There’s plenty at stake: the Health Industry Group Purchasing Association reports that "goods and purchased services" is the second-largest expense — after labor costs — in hospital settings. Eugene Schneller and the late Lawrence Smeltzer of the W. P. Carey School of Business spent the last few years studying procurement processes employed in U.S. hospitals. They discovered that a key to streamlining health-care delivery may lie in the industrial supply chain concept of "clockspeed."

The road to RHIOS: Health care IT networks on the horizon

The availability of health data has implications for individual patients, health-care systems and policymakers, yet despite advances in information management, patient health records to a large extent are still scattered and difficult to retrieve. A research team at the W. P. Carey School of Business created a database of patient information that aggregates information about disease and treatment from physicians, clinics and hospitals without compromising confidentiality. The database has been useful to health-care planners and public health researchers -– and is a model of local innovation as the nation moves toward the regional health information sources.