Healthcare Business Today

By Billy Findley

Long-term care facilities are a reality for many seniors nationwide. In fact, by 2050 the number of individuals living in long-term care facilities will likely double to 27 million people. With so many loved ones living in these residences, many families worry about safety, and regulatory compliance within the facilities is essential.

Long-term care facilities must meet numerous regulations to keep their doors open — from staff training to building to safety codes and everything in between. However, there is one category of regulations that many are unaware of and can often overlook. Cooking in long-term care facilities is a vital part of the NFPA Life Safety Code and includes multiple standards. The NFPA recently updated the codes that long-term care facilities must meet. What are these new codes and how should facilities adapt? Let’s take a look. 

Chapter 19.3.2.5.2

The first section that was updated by the NFPA states that when food warming equipment is being used, it does not require that the area is protected in the same manner that a hazardous area would be. This includes compliance regulations near residential cooking equipment. When residential cooking equipment is used for warming food, or other limited functions, it does not require protection. To sum it up, this section is in regards to cooking equipment such as hot plates, toasters, and microwaves which are used for limited functions. 

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Six practical steps you can start implementing in your organization.

By Shlomo Matityaho

Expanding patient-centric care in all areas of healthcare is not just an empty slogan. It’s a commitment we make as healthcare professionals to better the lives of the people we treat.

Whether patients select a hospital of their choice or are directed to one through their HMO, they rightfully expect “the system” to provide superb treatment. Patients cannot be expected to distinguish between the services provided by the clinical team and the staff supporting them. If an error occurs, such as implanting expired stock, it does not matter to the patient whether the responsibility is with the supplier who did not update the stock on time, or the nurse who did not notice this, or the surgeon who did not bother to double check. The hospital, as a whole, is guilty and will be held accountable.

According to an article written by the American Society of Radiologic Technologists:

Most patients judge the quality of their healthcare much like they rate an airplane flight. Criteria for judging an airline are personal and include aspects like comfort, efficient service and on-time schedules. Similarly, patients judge the standard of their healthcare on nontechnical aspects. Most are unable to evaluate the level of technical skill or quality of therapy, so the conditions they can assess — patient satisfaction and preserving health over time — become of the utmost importance.

This article lays out 6 steps that can immediately be adopted in your own organization to create a more patient-centric supply chain.

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By Andy Goldstone

Medical debt is the number one cause of bankruptcy in the U.S. Unlike other financial obligations, such as car loans or credit cards, most medical debt is not generally brought on by choice and accompanied by a signature with an interest rate. Rather, medical debt is brought on by unforeseen circumstances, such as diseases or accidents, which require healthcare on a temporary or sustained basis. 

American consumers are already experiencing financial stress due to rising federal interest rates, stagnant wages, and their individual debt obligations including ‘higher than ever’ outstanding credit card balances. Thus, adding hundreds, or even more likely thousands, of dollars in new bills from something like an emergency surgery pushes people beyond financial sustainability and into bankruptcy. 

This, unfortunately, is not a new phenomenon: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reported that 2016 healthcare related debt (the most recent year with data available) was 46.8%, which is nearly half of all collected debts in the U.S. 

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By Steele Clarke Smith III

While the legalization of cannabis continues to be a hot topic, its origin in the United States is speculative at best. The issue wasn’t really an issue until 1910, when refugees of the Mexican Revolution began bringing it across the Mexico-US border. 

Four years later, the US federal government approved the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 to tax and regulate the distribution of opioids. A string of increasingly rigorous laws followed, including the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, the Boggs Act of 1952, and the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. The Controlled Substances Act placed substances that Congress deemed hazardous or medically suspect into a category known as Schedule 1. This criminalized the use of cannabis, heroin, and LSD and made these substances difficult for physicians and scientists to obtain for research purposes. 

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By Mark Schneider

Interested in quickly improving the clinical and financial performance of your medical group or practice? It starts by building a more engaging, patient-focused culture in your organization.

That’s the key takeaway of a recently released report from the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), which found that fostering a patient-centric culture was the most common business strategy among the nation’s top-performing medical groups and practices. The study was based on an analysis of more than 3,000 medical groups identified as high-performing in at least one of four categories: operations, productivity, profitability and value. 

As this and similar studies have shown, when clinical practices proactively take steps to improve their operations, processes and patient interactions, patients are more efficiently served. This increases patient and staff satisfaction, heightens patient compliance and retention rates, and leads to improved patient outcomes. Truly, a win-win for all.

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Graduate entry medicine means accelerated medicine courses that provide science and biomedical science graduates to transfer to a higher year of medicine. There are several opportunities to study graduate entry medicine in English in Europe. Several countries in abroad such as Poland and Ukraine are offering fantastic high quality medical and dental courses. 

Tuition Fees

In the UK, science graduates have the option to pursue medicine in 4 years only. This is accepted by the GMC as students have covered science subjects in their degree. This allows students to have the academic skills and knowledge to study fast-track medicine. However, these courses are very expensive. The UK tuition fees used to be around £3000 per year in pre-2012 days, but the significant increase in fees post-2012 to over £9000 per year has made all medical applicants think twice about their pursuing their dream of studying medicine. 

Thankfully, the opportunity to pursue your dream for affordable tuition fees is not off the tables! Many British and International students are now heading to Europe to pursue their dream of studying medicine. European English-taught medical universities offer degrees for 6 years, with the option of decreasing the years to as little as 3 years for biomedical science and other science bachelor degree graduates. 

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One of the most important things in our life is our health. Taking care of our body and mind is a good way to keep yourself healthy. Nowadays people are gaining more awareness about living healthy, taking care of the body, mind, and spirit.

People are finding different ways to be healthy or to stay healthy and eventually to become the best version of themselves. How is that possible? How can you become the best version of yourself, to feel strong, to feel more alive, to feel invincible, to be self-confident?

How can you achieve to be full of energy? How can you improve your health for good?

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