U.S. rated poorly in chronic healthcare

[Chris]

WASHINGTON, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Chronically ill Americans are more likely to forgo medical care because of high costs or experience medical errors than patients in other affluent countries, according to a study released on Thursday.

The study comparing the experiences of patients in eight nations reflected poorly on the U.S. health care system as President-elect Barack Obama and his allies work on plans to rein in health costs and extend insurance to more people.

The researchers questioned 7,500 adults in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Britain and the United States. Each had at least one of seven chronic conditions: high blood pressure, heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, cancer, arthritis and depression.

Dutch patients had the fewest complaints, while the Americans had plenty, according to the study by the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based health policy research group.

Fifty-four percent of Americans surveyed said high costs prevented them at some point from getting recommended medical care, filling prescriptions or seeing a doctor when ill. Seven percent of the Dutch cited cost as a barrier to treatment.

In addition, 41 percent of the U.S. patients said they spent more than $1,000 over the past year on out-of-pocket medical costs. That compared to lows of 4 percent in Britain and 5 percent in France.

A third of U.S. patients said they were given the wrong medication or dosage, experienced a medical error, received incorrect test results or faced delays in hearing about test results, more than any of the other countries.

WASTED TIME

Almost half of the U.S. patients said their time had been wasted because of poorly organized care or had received care of little or no value during the past two years. These views were lowest in the Netherlands and Britain.

Only Canadians reported visiting an emergency room at higher rates in the past two years than the Americans.

The Commonwealth Fund's Cathy Schoen, who worked on the study, said the United States spends twice as much on health care as the others, with the current economic woes putting more people at risk of losing employer-provided health insurance.

"Overall, the United States stands out for chronically ill adults reporting the most negative experiences," Schoen said in a conference call with reporters.

"In short, the U.S. patients are telling us about inefficient, unsafe and often wasteful care. The lack of access, combined with poorly coordinated care, is putting these patients at very high health risk and driving up costs of care."

http://www.reuters.com/article/vcCandidateFeed2/idUSN12299426

 

[waltky]

Granny does her exercises early inna mornin' fer her rheumatizm...

‘Exercise as medicine’ can help treat chronic diseases – if done properly
Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016 - Imagine your doctor wrote a prescription for your elevated blood pressure and then sent you to an exercise facility to fill it. What if a few of your old pills magically transformed into a treadmill (with you on it) and your side effects flipped from low energy and fatigue to a feeling of vitality and vigour?

Numerous studies support the notion that medication and exercise can be beneficial tools for chronic-disease management, but, unlike pharmaceutical therapy, the concept of “exercise as medicine” is seldom applied with enough detail. For example, when a doctor prescribes a drug to a patient, there is a specific dose, volume, method of administration, frequency and duration to the treatment that ensures optimal benefit while mitigating risk. When it comes to exercise prescription, the same is seldom true. It’s time to change this.

Regular exercise can help patients manage chronic conditions such as Type 2 diabetes and osteoporosis.​

A better world can exist where generic advice such as “be more active” is replaced by specific exercise recommendations that include the same detail afforded to medication guidelines. Evidence-based research is the link that can connect the good intentions of your doctor with the expertise of an experienced exercise professional. The supporting science is already here, and new national programs such as Exercise is Medicine Canada (EIMC) are trying hard to bridge the gap between physicians and medical-exercise specialists.

Check out three examples below of how the right details can raise the bar on your wellness. Supervised medical exercise can be used as a complimentary tool to reduce the incidence and severity of many serious chronic diseases – especially when it follows a specific protocol that is evidence-based. (Always consult with your doctor before starting any exercise program. The examples below are for information purposes only.)

Primary issue: Management of Type 2 diabetes

Specific exercise recommendations: For people with Type 2 diabetes, The American Diabetes Association recommends at least 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity at 50 per cent to 70 per cent of maximum heart rate, and/or at least 90 minutes a week of vigorous aerobic exercise at 70 per cent of maximum heart rate. The physical activity should be distributed over at least three days a week and with no more than two consecutive days without physical activity. Resistance training should be performed three days a week, target all muscle groups and build up to three sets of eight to 10 repetitions.

Overall benefit from exercise: Improved glycemic control, weight maintenance and reduced risk of cardiovascular disease.

Primary issue: Management of osteoporosis

 

[waltky]

Family, friends support important to managing chronic illness...

Analysts Accent Role of Friends, Family in Managing Patients' Chronic Illnesses
December 29, 2016 - When it comes to helping patients manage chronic illnesses like diabetes or heart disease, friends and family may be more helpful than the family doctor — and they're a lot cheaper, too. That's the conclusion of analysts at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Health Care Innovation.

In an article in The New England Journal of Medicine, behavioral economists said leveraging existing social relationships can lead to new healthy habits and behaviors, such as improvements in diets and exercising. That's because friends and family members are around patients more than the doctors and nurses who manage their care and see them only occasionally.

A diabetes patient walks on a treadmill as part of an exercise program to help control the disease.​

The researchers present a five-step ladder of social interactions that can influence healthy behaviors. At the bottom rung, patients are trying to manage their health condition alone, often with the least success. As one moves up the ladder, the degree of success increases with the levels of social interaction. At the top rung, there's mutual support between the patient and loved ones, with shared goals, leading to the most positive results. Social interactions, said researchers, are more likely to lead to healthful behaviors, such as steering a patient away from a sedentary activity, like watching television, to taking a walk or going to the gym. And they noted friends and family can more effectively suggest better choices at restaurants than a doctor telling a patient to watch his diet.

'Missed opportunity'

Center director David Asch, who co-authored the article, called the benefits of these cost-free social interactions a "missed opportunity" that remains "largely untapped" by the medical community. He said concerns about privacy frequently get in the way of medical personnel's desire to rally the assistance of social connections. While Asch noted that privacy is important in some cases, patients with diabetes, for example, would "love" it if friends and family would help them manage their condition and get their health under control.

The authors pointed to studies that have shown the benefits of social interactions in health care. For example, in one investigation, patients who talked on the phone weekly with a peer saw a more significant drop in a marker of diabetes, called glycated hemoglobin levels, than those who worked only with clinicians. "Sure, health care is serious business," wrote Asch. "But who says it can't be social?"

Analysts Accent Role of Friends, Family in Managing Patients' Chronic Illnesses

 

[yiostheoy]

WASHINGTON, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Chronically ill Americans are more likely to forgo medical care because of high costs or experience medical errors than patients in other affluent countries, according to a study released on Thursday.

The study comparing the experiences of patients in eight nations reflected poorly on the U.S. health care system as President-elect Barack Obama and his allies work on plans to rein in health costs and extend insurance to more people.

The researchers questioned 7,500 adults in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Britain and the United States. Each had at least one of seven chronic conditions: high blood pressure, heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, cancer, arthritis and depression.

Dutch patients had the fewest complaints, while the Americans had plenty, according to the study by the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based health policy research group.

Fifty-four percent of Americans surveyed said high costs prevented them at some point from getting recommended medical care, filling prescriptions or seeing a doctor when ill. Seven percent of the Dutch cited cost as a barrier to treatment.

In addition, 41 percent of the U.S. patients said they spent more than $1,000 over the past year on out-of-pocket medical costs. That compared to lows of 4 percent in Britain and 5 percent in France.

A third of U.S. patients said they were given the wrong medication or dosage, experienced a medical error, received incorrect test results or faced delays in hearing about test results, more than any of the other countries.

WASTED TIME

Almost half of the U.S. patients said their time had been wasted because of poorly organized care or had received care of little or no value during the past two years. These views were lowest in the Netherlands and Britain.

Only Canadians reported visiting an emergency room at higher rates in the past two years than the Americans.

The Commonwealth Fund's Cathy Schoen, who worked on the study, said the United States spends twice as much on health care as the others, with the current economic woes putting more people at risk of losing employer-provided health insurance.

"Overall, the United States stands out for chronically ill adults reporting the most negative experiences," Schoen said in a conference call with reporters.

"In short, the U.S. patients are telling us about inefficient, unsafe and often wasteful care. The lack of access, combined with poorly coordinated care, is putting these patients at very high health risk and driving up costs of care."

http://www.reuters.com/article/vcCandidateFeed2/idUSN12299426

When you say "the US rated poorly ..." it means the people doing the rating did a poor job. You have mistakenly used an adverb where you needed an adjective.

The correct context would have been "the US rated POOR ... ."

So you need to be careful about this girlie-talk of yours where you use -ly suffixes to sound smart, and in reality you end up stounding illiterate and stupid.

 

[yiostheoy]

Granny does her exercises early inna mornin' fer her rheumatizm...

‘Exercise as medicine’ can help treat chronic diseases – if done properly
Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016 - Imagine your doctor wrote a prescription for your elevated blood pressure and then sent you to an exercise facility to fill it. What if a few of your old pills magically transformed into a treadmill (with you on it) and your side effects flipped from low energy and fatigue to a feeling of vitality and vigour?

Numerous studies support the notion that medication and exercise can be beneficial tools for chronic-disease management, but, unlike pharmaceutical therapy, the concept of “exercise as medicine” is seldom applied with enough detail. For example, when a doctor prescribes a drug to a patient, there is a specific dose, volume, method of administration, frequency and duration to the treatment that ensures optimal benefit while mitigating risk. When it comes to exercise prescription, the same is seldom true. It’s time to change this.

Regular exercise can help patients manage chronic conditions such as Type 2 diabetes and osteoporosis.​

A better world can exist where generic advice such as “be more active” is replaced by specific exercise recommendations that include the same detail afforded to medication guidelines. Evidence-based research is the link that can connect the good intentions of your doctor with the expertise of an experienced exercise professional. The supporting science is already here, and new national programs such as Exercise is Medicine Canada (EIMC) are trying hard to bridge the gap between physicians and medical-exercise specialists.

Check out three examples below of how the right details can raise the bar on your wellness. Supervised medical exercise can be used as a complimentary tool to reduce the incidence and severity of many serious chronic diseases – especially when it follows a specific protocol that is evidence-based. (Always consult with your doctor before starting any exercise program. The examples below are for information purposes only.)

Primary issue: Management of Type 2 diabetes

Specific exercise recommendations: For people with Type 2 diabetes, The American Diabetes Association recommends at least 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity at 50 per cent to 70 per cent of maximum heart rate, and/or at least 90 minutes a week of vigorous aerobic exercise at 70 per cent of maximum heart rate. The physical activity should be distributed over at least three days a week and with no more than two consecutive days without physical activity. Resistance training should be performed three days a week, target all muscle groups and build up to three sets of eight to 10 repetitions.

Overall benefit from exercise: Improved glycemic control, weight maintenance and reduced risk of cardiovascular disease.

Primary issue: Management of osteoporosis

I exercise 6 days out of the week.

Sunday is my day of rest, and for church, and for NFL football.

 

[kiwiman127]

But, but we have the best healthcare in the world, that's what we have been told over and over by the US healthcare industry. True, it's almost cost double of the next highest paying country. True, we have more uninsured than any other industrial country. True, the healthcare industry spent $510 million dollars lobbying government officials in 2015 alone, just to keep government from staying out of their business and business practices.
But hey, this is America, we can afford it. Right?

 

[EverCurious]

Oh my, someone who admits the failure of ACA so easily? Are you on the right Kiwiman127, surely you couldn't be on the left to so freely admit such a thing...