We all face aging and possible illness as a part of life. While various healthcare technologies and medical breakthroughs have helped extend the average life expectancy, people are far from immortal. Like it or not, we must accept the fact that these human bodies, no matter how well we care for them, eventually break down.
When it is time to make some of those important health care directives and decisions, don’t be left in the dark. Take some time now to map out plans for the future, no matter how healthy you are, and you’ll experience less stress you do find yourself with the need to do this important work:
Think about life insurance
Life insurance isn’t just for you, it’s for those that you love and want to care for as well. Taking into consideration some things like your age, your current state of health, and what kind of coverage you need to wipe out debts and liabilities for your loved ones will help you determine what kind of coverage you need. Comparing term life insurance vs whole life insurance policies is a great place to start. You can determine if being able to cash out your policy at the end will benefit you more than the need for coverage for a finite period of time. Talk to your financial advisor to decide which of these plans is best for your situation.
Cancer is one of the most dreaded diseases. It is estimated that more than eight million people die of cancer every year. Scientists believe that there are more than 100 types of cancer and each one of them has different levels of severity and mortality rates.
However, technology has brought great relief to cancer patients across the world. Doctors and scientists have been able to develop various cancer treatment options. Most of these treatment options although still at the experimental stage, have proved to cure different types of cancers.
Below are some of the exciting and experimental cancer treatment options:
Hyperthermia Therapy
Hyperthermia therapy is an experimental treatment option for cancer that employs whole-body administration of heat. The heat is intended to cause coagulation and denaturation of cellular proteins – hence destroying the cells in a tumor.
This treatment option is exciting because it offers very promising results. It basically kills the cancerous tumor from the inside out – shielding other healthy cells from being infected. Hyperthermia therapy is still in the initial stages of experimentation. There are several things that scientists are still testing before fully launching it as a cancer treatment option.
The dieting world has been speaking a lot about the Ketogenic diet. The ketogenic diet has been a popular choice for many, and recently, people have turned to it for its health benefits. The keto diet works via a process called ketosis. During the ketosis process, your body starts using ketones as an energy source. This is important to push your body in the fat-burning zone.
Ketosis can have numerous health benefits like weight loss, blood sugar control, control of hormonal fluctuations, and much more. This is a powerful diet that combines calorie restrictions and ketosis to give incredible results and wellness benefits.
Here are six practical ways to make the most out of the keto diet.
Understand your macro distribution and your main focus
You can effectively follow a keto diet when you understand the main macronutrient distribution. Always find out the central area of focus in a ketogenic diet. Find out adequate calories, the correct distribution for you, and the main food groups to include.
Create a menu with a few basic principles. These include eating more protein-dense and fiber-rich foods. You should make an effort to include healthy fats. Another thing to keep in mind is to avoid all kinds of processed foods that contain additives and are caloric dense. Thus, your primary focus should be eating fewer calories and consuming foods of good quality with very less processing.
Receiving proper healthcare services is important for all people. While this can include having access to a local primary care physician, it should also mean being able to see a specialist when necessary. Traditionally, people in and around bigger cities have been able to find a specialist nearby.
However, it was often much harder for someone in a rural market to receive the same attention. While this has been a challenge in the past, this trend is changing as more and more healthcare services are expanding to more rural locations. There are several reasons why this is occurring.
By Brenda Turner, director of product consulting, MedeAnalytics.
Brenda Turner
The COVID-19 landscape as it relates to testing is frequently changing as CMS made wholesale changes and smaller adjustments to payment schedules.
CMS announced Medicare will nearly double payment for certain lab tests that use high-throughput technologies to rapidly diagnose large numbers of 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) cases.
Medicare will pay the higher payment of $100 for COVID-19 clinical diagnostic lab tests making use of high-throughput technologies developed by the private sector that allows for increased testing capacity, faster results, and more effective means of combating the spread of the virus. High-throughput lab tests can process more than 200 specimens a day using highly sophisticated equipment requiring specially-trained technicians and more time-intensive processes to ensure quality. Medicare will pay laboratories for the tests at $100 per test effective April 14, 2020, through the duration of the COVID-19 national emergency.
CMS and the US Departments of Labor and Treasury issued guidance to ensure Americans with private health insurance have coverage of COVID-19 diagnostic testing and certain other related services, including antibody testing, at no cost.
Specifically, the requirement for group health plans, and group and individual health insurance is to cover both diagnostic testing, and certain related items and services provided during a medical visit with no cost-sharing. This includes urgent care visits, emergency department visits, and in-person or telehealth visits to the doctor’s office that result in an order for or administration of a COVID-19 test.
Covered tests include all FDA-authorized COVID-19 diagnostic tests, COVID-19 diagnostic tests that developers request authorization for on an emergency basis, and COVID-19 diagnostic tests developed in and authorized by states. It also ensures that COVID-19 antibody testing also will be covered.
The initial pricing for the new codes U0001 and U0002 for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) test will be approximately $36 and non-CDC tests will initially be approximately $51. These prices may vary slightly depending on the local Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC).
Now more than ever, society needs skilled healthcare workers. The current shortage of medical professionals is an opportunity for the students of today to become the healthcare heroes of tomorrow. And while college is admittedly expensive, an investment in a healthcare education will pay a handsome return in the years to come, according to Dr. Johnica J. Morrow, Pre-Health Pathways advisor at South Dakota School of Mines & Technology.
South Dakota Mines is working hard to prepare its pre-health students to enter health professions and address these needs in rural America and across the country, says Morrow. Pre-health students at Mines are pursing degrees in traditional fields such as biology, chemistry and pre-professional health sciences, as well as in engineering fields, such as mechanical, industrial and biomedical. These students have bright futures, in part because South Dakota Mines ranks as the best in the nation for return on investment.
The healthcare industry has a great job outlook, Morrow says. By the end of 2018, there were 16.2 million people working in the healthcare sector, accounting for about 11% of all jobs in the United States. It’s also one of the fastest growing industries in the country, with around 346,000 jobs created in 2018, which equates to about 29,000 new jobs every month. The Bureau of Labor Statistics expects that the industry will continue to grow, projecting a 14% increase between 2018 and 2028, which will add an additional 1.9 million over that decade.
In small rural states like South Dakota, the number of jobs in healthcare is projected to grow by 6.8% between 2016-2026, with an average of 58,885 annual job openings in the industry. Much of this anticipated growth stems from having a population that is getting older as the last of the baby boomers become senior citizens. As a population ages, and a generation with a large cohort of current healthcare workers enters retirement, there becomes a greater demand for healthcare providers.
Right now, there is a major shortfall in the number of healthcare professionals needed to address this growing need for health care services. The American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) estimates that there could be a shortage of more than 120,000 physicians through 2030. This shortage will have significant impacts on mortality rates and life expectancy.
By Rahul Varshneya, founder and president, Arkenea.
Rahul Varshneya
Cloud computing has become the new watchword for healthcare organizations across the globe. The adoption of cloud technology has been escalating at a frenetic pace and, as recent research suggests, the global market for cloud technologies in the industry is expected to reach $35 billion by 2020.
The underlying reason behind the recent hype in this technology is simple though. If healthcare institutions were plainly service providers before, today, they’re true technology organizations that now depend on their IT departments for administrative, clinical, and financial purposes.And that’s not all. As new payment models are added to the equation and patient expectations change, technology has become vital to drive efficiency and improve patient care.
In this article, we’ll be looking at a few things that have been made possible in healthcare due to the rapid adoption of cloud technology.
1) Reduced Costs of Data Storage
On-premises healthcare data centers not only demand an investment in hardware ahead of time, but they also come with ongoing costs of maintaining physical spaces, servers, and cooling solutions among many other things.
“Cloud solutions are very beneficial from the standpoint that as you migrate data, you don’t need to maintain your own datasets which can be costly and expensive,” explains Forward Health Group CTO Jeff Thomas. “Maintaining datasets on-site can also be expensive in that it takes up real estate which can sometimes be used for something else.”
By managing the structure, harmonious functioning and maintenance of cloud storage services, cloud computing vendors can significantly aid organizations in lowering their data storage costs and enable them to concentrate their efforts on caring for their patients.
Healthcare organizations can also leverage custom cloud EMR or EHR software to fit the needs of their specific practice. That way, they get exactly what they’re looking for without them having to dig a hole in their pockets.
A new report from the U.C. Berkeley Labor Center and Working Partnerships USA shows how technology is likely to impact job quality in healthcare and suggests that technological adoption may accelerate as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The report, titled “Technological Change in Health Care Delivery: Its Drivers and Consequences for Work and Workers,” also finds that the pandemic could provide a wind of opportunity to shift the dominant strategy for technological adoption in health care toward a “work centered” approach. The current approach is likely to lead to increased surveillance, micro-managing, and worker deskilling, as technologies are used to cut costs. A work-centered approach would instead allow workers to have a say in how new technologies are introduced, to receive training to develop new skills, and ensure their job quality isn’t diminished.
“Technological change in health care is accelerating, putting more strain on workers as providers seek to cut costs and increase efficiency,” said Adam Seth Litwin, the report’s author and an associate professor of industrial and labor relations at Cornell University. “If business continues as normal, we could see workers stripped of rewarding tasks, alienating them from their work and suppressing job quality. But that path isn’t inevitable. If workers are brought into the fold, technological changes can increase the quality of care workers are able to provide, while driving improvements in their pay and job quality.”
Healthcare is one of the largest sectors in the country, with annual health care spending equal to $3.5 trillion in 2017, or 17.9 percent of GDP. It’s also the fastest growing sector for jobs, with 13 percent of all private sector workers and 16 percent of the union workforce. Women and people of color are over-represented in many healthcare occupations.
“We know that our need for health care workers is growing in the U.S., and the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored just how essential these workers are,” said Annette Bernhardt, director of the Low-Wage Work Program at the U.C. Berkeley Labor Center. “This report shows that the biggest threat that technology poses to health care workers in the near future is not job loss due to automation, but instead job quality loss in the form of reduced wages, and increased micromanaging through surveillance.”
A new report from the U.C. Berkeley Labor Center and Working Partnerships USA shows how technology is likely to impact job quality in healthcare and suggests that technological adoption may accelerate as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.