Do you frequently run out of breath or feel winded even when you’re not doing physical exercise? Have you noticed that your heart rate has been out of control lately and that you’re coughing and wheezing much more than normal? Maybe you’ve even noticed that your skin tone looks incredibly pale or flushed with red. All of the things listed above are symptoms of low oxygen.
Our body uses oxygen for cell regeneration, to power our nervous system, and of course, to keep us alive and breathing. If your body isn’t getting the amount of oxygen you need, you’ll see serious consequences — and you need to give supplemental oxygen a try.
But is oxygen therapy really worth it? Read on to learn more about the top oxygen therapy benefits.
Better COPD Management
If you’re among the over 11 million people who have been diagnosed with COPD, then we know that you’re tired of dealing with dizziness, exhaustion, and shortness of breath. You may even be suffering from depression or a decrease in your social life because of your COPD.
One of the biggest oxygen therapy benefits is that it can help you to manage your COPD symptoms. It works by decreasing irregular heartbeats and keeping your pulmonary hypertension much more stable. This way, you can lessen the frequency and intensity of common COPD complications, including heart failure.
A More Intense Workout
Are you looking to take your workout to the next level?
Maybe you’re training for a marathon, trying to get in shape for a big event, or just want to see what you’re capable of. Most types of oxygen therapy can seriously increase both your energy levels and your overall metabolism.
It’s especially popular among distance runners who need to regulate their heartbeat and better control their breathing to help them stay on pace and avoid fatigue. Oxygen helps to promote new cell growth, which can mean faster results and higher overall endurance levels.
Effective and Safe Pain Management
Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of oxygen therapy is that it can serve as a form of pain management — especially for those suffering from severe nerve pain and damage.
If you have auto-immune disorders or another long-term health condition that frequently interferes with your life due to the intensity of the pain it causes you, oxygen therapy is certainly for you. This is likely because oxygen gives your body’s conductive fibers — the parts responsible for transmitting vitamins, hormones, and more through your system — a serious boost.
If you have a wound or a bruise from your illness or simply from an injury, oxygen therapy can help with that, as well. Often, these cuts and bruises last longer because your body can’t “afford” to spend its valuable oxygen supply on healing them faster.
But when you supplement the amount of oxygen your body takes in, you’ll notice things clear up much faster.
It Helps You to Focus
If you’re like most people, you likely have trouble focusing throughout the day. This lack of focus can be due to the foods we eat, our overall lifestyles, or even how interested we are in a particular topic. But many people don’t know that concentration levels are also influenced by the amount of oxygen in your body.
If your brain isn’t getting enough oxygen, it’s not able to carry messages between synapses quickly — and new cells can’t generate as quickly as they should. When you give yourself a boost, you’ll be truly ready to study or listen in during that dull meeting.
Additionally, oxygen therapy can also help you to fall asleep faster and stay asleep throughout the night. This means that you’ll avoid those mid-day crashes. Perhaps you’ll even be able to stop that over-reliance on caffeine.
You’ll Feel Better All-Around
Oxygen therapy also helps you to manage a variety of other health conditions and ensures that you feel your best. (We do want to state, however, that oxygen therapy is not a cure for any kind of illness or disease.)
It can help those suffering from migraines and frequent headaches, reduce swelling in the body and help to improve your overall digestion process.
It’s especially helpful for diabetes sufferers or those who are trying to lose weight, as it ensures that your body can process foods in a way that lets you get the highest possible amount of nutrients.
If you’re interested in trying a detox that doesn’t require you to restrict food, oxygen therapy has the same effect without the nasty juices. It can help to balance out yeast levels, eliminate bacteria, and give you a healthy gut.
Check out this site for tips on what to expect out of your first oxygen therapy session, effective types of oxygen supplementation, and more.
Experience These Oxygen Therapy Benefits for Yourself
Now that you’ve learned more about the importance of oxygenation, we bet that you’re ready to try it out for yourself. The oxygen therapy benefits featured in this post are just a small sampling of what restoring proper oxygen levels in your body can do for you.
Especially if you have COPD or another chronic illness, we do suggest that you speak with a medical professional before beginning any kind of new treatment, including oxygen therapy.
Want to learn more about what research says about oxygen therapy? Looking for other new tips and devices that can help you to better manage your COPD?
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IBM Security released the results of its annual study examining the financial impact of data breaches on organizations. According to the report, the cost of a data breach has risen 12% during the past five years[1] and now costs $3.92 million on average. These rising expenses are representative of the multiyear financial impact of breaches, increased regulation and the complex process of resolving criminal attacks.[2]
The financial consequences of a data breach can be particularly acute for small and midsize businesses. In the study, companies with less than 500 employees suffered losses of more than $2.5 million on average – a potentially crippling amount for small businesses, which typically earn $50 million or less in annual revenue.
For the first time this year, the report also examined the longtail financial impact of a data breach, finding that the effects of a data breach are felt for years. While an average of 67% of data breach costs were realized within the first year after a breach, 22% accrued in the second year and another 11% accumulated more than two years after a breach. The longtail costs were higher in the second and third years for organizations in highly-regulated environments, such as healthcare, financial services, energy and pharmaceuticals.
“Cybercrime represents big money for cybercriminals, and unfortunately that equates to significant losses for businesses,” said Wendi Whitmore, global lead for IBM X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Services. “With organizations facing the loss or theft of more than 11.7 billion records in the past three years alone, companies need to be aware of the full financial impact that a data breach can have on their bottom line –and focus on how they can reduce these costs.”
Sponsored by IBM Security and conducted by the Ponemon Institute, the annual Cost of a Data Breach Report is based on in-depth interviews with more than 500 companies around the world that suffered a breach over the past year.[3] The analysis takes into account hundreds of cost factors including legal, regulatory and technical activities to loss of brand equity, customers, and employee productivity. Some of the top findings from this year’s report include:
Malicious Breaches – Most Common, Most Expensive: More than 50% of data breaches in the study resulted from malicious cyberattacks and cost companies $1 million more on average than those originating from accidental causes.
“Mega Breaches” Lead to Mega Losses: While less common, breaches of more than 1 million records cost companies a projected $42 million in losses; and those of 50 million records are projected to cost companies $388 million.[4]
Practice Makes Perfect: Companies with an incident response team that also extensively tested their incident response plan experienced $1.23 million less in data breach costs on average than those that had neither measure in place.
S. Breaches Cost Double: The average cost of a breach in the U.S. is $8.19 million, more than double the worldwide average.
Healthcare Breaches Cost the Most: For the 9th year in a row, healthcare organizations had the highest cost of a breach – nearly $6.5 million on average (over 60% more than other industries in the study).
Malicious Breaches Pose a Growing Threat; Accidental Breaches Still Common
The study found that data breaches that originated from a malicious cyberattack were not only the most common root cause of a breach, but also the most expensive.
Malicious data breaches cost companies in the study $4.45 million on average – more than $1 million more than those originating from accidental causes, such as system glitch and human error. These breaches are a growing threat, as the percentage of malicious or criminal attacks as the root cause of data breaches in the report crept up from 42% to 51% over the past six years of the study (a 21% increase).
That said, inadvertent breaches from human error and system glitches were still the cause for nearly half (49%) of the data breaches in the report, costing companies $3.50 and $3.24 million respectively. These breaches from human and machine error represent an opportunity for improvement, which can be addressed through security awareness training for staff, technology investments, and testing services to identify accidental breaches early on. One particular area of concern is the misconfiguration of cloud servers, which contributed to the exposure of 990 million records in 2018, representing 43% of all lost records for the year according to the IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index[5].
Breach Response Remains Biggest Cost Saver
For the past 14 years, the Ponemon Institute has examined factors that increase or reduce the cost of a breach and has found that the speed and efficiency at which a company responds to a breach has a significant impact on the overall cost.
This year’s report found that the average lifecycle of a breach was 279 days with companies taking 206 days to first identify a breach after it occurs and an additional 73 days to contain the breach. However, companies in the study who were able to detect and contain a breach in less than 200 days spent $1.2 million less on the total cost of a breach.
A focus on incident response can help reduce the time it takes companies to respond, and the study found that these measures also had a direct correlation with overall costs. Having an incident response team in place and extensive testing of incident response plans were two of the top three greatest cost saving factors examined in the study. Companies that had both of these measures in place had $1.23 million less total costs for a data breach on average than those that had neither measure in place ($3.51 million vs. $4.74 million).
Additional factors impacting the cost of a breach for companies in the study included:
Number of compromised records: Data breaches cost companies around $150 per record that was lost or stolen.
Companies that fully deployed security automation technologies experienced around half the cost of a breach ($2.65 million average) compared to those that did not have these technologies deployed ($5.16 million average).
Extensive use of encryption was also a top cost saving factor, reducing the total cost of a breach by $360,000.
Breaches originating from a third party – such as a partner or supplier – cost companies $370,000 more than average, emphasizing the need for companies to closely vet the security of the companies they do business with, align security standards, and actively monitor third-party access.
Regional and Industry Trends
The study also examined the cost of data breaches in different industries and regions, finding that data breaches in the U.S. are vastly more expensive – costing $8.19 million, or more than double the average for worldwide companies in the study. Costs for data breaches in the U.S. increased by 130% over the past 14 years of the study; up from $3.54 million in the 2006 study.
Additionally, organizations in the Middle East reported the highest average number of breached records with nearly 40,000 breached records per incident (compared to global average of around 25,500.)
For the 9th year in a row, healthcare organizations in the study had the highest costs associated with data breaches. The average cost of a breach in the healthcare industry was nearly $6.5 million – over 60% higher than the cross-industry average.
[1] Comparison of the average global cost of a data breach from the 2014 Cost of as Data Breach Report to the 2019 report.
[2] IBM analysis based on Cost of a Data Breach Report data.
[3] The limitations of the report and methodologies employed can be found in the full report.
[4] Mega breach cost calculations are based on an analysis of 14 companies, applying a Monte-Carlo analytic approach to simulate results of greater statistical significance.
This new technology is being added as an online component to AHIMA’s most popular textbook Health Information Management Technology: An Applied Approach, Sixth Edition and was announced during AHIMA’s 2019 Assembly on Education Symposium/Faculty Development Institute (AOE/FDI). AOE/FDI is the premier conference for health information and informatics educators and the primary forum for leadership in HIM education.
“We are thrilled to add this advanced tool to our flagship textbook which will provide personalized learning experiences to HIM students,” said AHIMA CEO Wylecia Wiggs Harris. “As a leader in HIM, we take pride in delivering the best education possible to students entering the field who will play a crucial role in furthering the profession.”
The adaptive learning model uses artificial intelligence backed technology to provide a customized experience to each learner. It presents progressive content and allows students to receive follow-up in areas in which they need additional guidance. This approach is based on each learner’s individual needs to fill skill gaps and build greater competency, quickly, and effectively in key areas.
“We are very pleased to partner with AHIMA in offering personalized adaptive learning features in its flagship textbook. Adaptive learning meets learners where they are—helping them gain the knowledge and skills they need to practice with greater competence and confidence in their abilities.” said Ulrik Juul Christensen, M.D., Area9 Lyceum CEO.
The online adaptive learning online component will be available for purchase in March 2020. More information will be available soon on AHIMA’s website.
Brightree announces the results from its survey in post-acute care, revealing a significant gap between what referring providers and health systems want, and what home health and hospice providers are delivering, when it comes to interoperability.
The survey was conducted by Porter Research, and is the first to interview both home health and hospice providers (675 respondents) and their referral sources (440 respondents). It found that electronic referrals are high on the priority list:
70% of home health and hospice organizations reported an increase in the number of referral sources requesting referral data to be sent electronically over the past one to two years;
60% of referring providers said they would switch to a new post-acute care provider if that organization were able to accept electronic referrals; and
Only 4% of home health and hospice organizations reported they were able to accept electronic referrals from a referral source (electronic medical record) EMR system.
This lack of automation and reliance on manual labor takes a toll on post-acute providers’ bottom lines. According to the survey findings, almost two-thirds of home health and hospice organizations require several full-time equivalents (FTEs) each month tracking down data and documents they feel could be obtained with better integration in place.
“Interoperability is no longer an option, but an essential aspect of any home health and hospice business,” said Nick Knowlton, Brightree vice president of strategic initiatives. “We were pleased to find users of our Brightree home health and hospice solution were among respondents reporting the highest ability to receive electronic referrals properly, but there’s still tremendous opportunity to continue bridging the gap.”
Many post-acute care providers are considering interoperability a business necessity. According to the survey:
30% of home health and hospice organizations said they are planning to expand their efforts into interoperability this year; and
31% claim they would even switch electronic health record (EHR) systems if they found one that could better support their interoperability needs.
Rochester RHIO has released its inaugural population health study—the Community Health Indicators Report—based on the analysis clinical data points from more than 600,000 screenings. The report provides a glimpse into residents’ well-being across New York State’s Greater Finger Lakes region, for which Rochester RHIO is the secure electronic health information exchange (HIE).
The report was made possible, in part, through Rochester RHIO’s implementation of Stella Technology’s Prism, a big data analytics platform that makes best of class advances in agile analytics, and optimizes them for specific use cases, including large scale population health analysis.
Four key health measures were assessed using full-year 2017 anonymized data, including Body Mass Index (BMI), blood pressure, diabetes risk (HbA1C) and smoking status. While the report is intended to serve as a benchmark for the community, it can also be used for incorporation by regional leaders in their own health programs.
Jill Eisenstein
“The Community Health Indicators Report is a first-of-its-kind report and a rich resource for public analysis and planning,” said Jill Eisenstein, president and CEO, Rochester RHIO. “Population health data is often based on health insurance claims data or self-reporting. Now we have actual clinical inputs that help us better understand our community and can set the stage for health improvement concepts and programs in the years to come.”
“We are thrilled that Rochester RHIO was able to achieve this breakthrough and derive actionable insights from the clinical data they have worked so hard to gather over the years,” said Lalo Valdez, president and CEO of Stella Technology. “In times of an ever-shifting healthcare landscape, Stella Prism, with its unparalleled scalability and flexibility, allows healthcare organizations to not only find key insights from their data today, but also harness the power of that rich data set to future-proof their business. Rochester RHIO and Stella teams worked hand-in-hand to produce this first of many reports. We look forward to continued collaboration with Rochester RHIO and other HIE initiatives to identify additional population health insights and opportunities in the future.”
Leaders from the American College of Surgeons (ACS) and Harvard Business School’s (HBS) Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness have announced a new partnership aimed at improving healthcare value. The two organizations, recognized as global leaders in quality and cost measurement, announced a new program to help hospitals and surgical practices improve patient outcomes while lowering the cost of delivering care. Better measurement of quality and costs will enable hospitals to improve the value they deliver to patients while positioning them for success as reimbursement shifts to bundled payments, an approach that increases transparency and accountability.
“Clearly defining the value of patient care is critical to our nation’s healthcare system,” said David B. Hoyt, MD, FACS, executive director of the American College of Surgeons. “As the patient care model continues to evolve, we must place a premium on providing the utmost quality and efficiency in our hospitals. This program will help hospitals identify clear opportunities to do that.”
At the event on Capitol Hill, leaders of the program, called ACS THRIVE (Transforming Health care Resources to Increase Value and Efficiency), discussed the challenges the nation’s health system faces as it moves from volume to value-based payment models, the changing team dynamics within hospitals, and the new care models that health systems must adopt.
“We want to reduce the high costs incurred in the U.S. healthcare sector, but do this in ways that don’t compromise the quality of care or a patient’s access to it,” said Prof. Robert Kaplan, MS, PhD, senior fellow and Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development, Emeritus, HBS. “Cutting costs by arbitrary reduction in headcount is not a sustainable solution. True cost improvement requires that we first measure what it costs today to treat a patient’s medical condition, and then redesign the care model to deliver the same or, preferably, better outcomes with a lower-cost mix of resources, especially personnel, equipment, devices and drugs.”
“Surgical care is more than just the operative procedure,” said Frank G. Opelka, MD, FACS, medical director, ACS quality and health policy. “Surgical care involves teams of clinicians who begin delivering care in the preoperative phase, include anesthesia, nursing care and medical specialties and continues through to postoperative rehabilitation. As a team, we need to optimize each phase of care to provide the best outcomes for patients and meet their goals.”
Initially, ACS THRIVE leaders will pilot the value-measurement process with 10-15 hospitals in the U.S., focusing on measuring the full cycle of care – including its key surgical, medical, behavioral and social elements – for three surgical conditions. Results from the pilot will be used to create a scalable approach that all hospitals can use to measure and improve value. The method will also include risk-adjusted benchmarks, so hospitals can compare their value with one another to generate system-wide improvement. High-value providers will be recognized, while those with opportunities for improvement can learn from the best practices of the high-value hospitals and health systems.
The new program will build on the two organizations’ expertise in cost and quality measurement. ACS has been a leader in hospital quality since it first proposed its Hospital Standardization Program in 1912, which evolved to become The Joint Commission. In 1922, the ACS created the Commission on Cancer, which today sets standards used by 80 percent of U.S. cancer centers. In the 1960s, the ACS Committee on Trauma was an instrumental leader in helping establish the nation’s trauma system. And in the early 2000s, the ACS launched the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP), recognized as the gold standard for collecting clinical, risk-adjusted, 30-day surgical outcomes data.
“We know quality improvement requires accurate and reliable data, with risk and case-mix adjustment,” said Clifford Ko, MD, MS, MSHS, FACS, FASCRS, director of the ACS division of research and optimal patient care. “Clinical data, not claims data, are routinely the best data to use. However, data alone are not sufficient. Appropriate and adequate resources, infrastructure and adherence to evidence-based standards are all likewise needed to provide high-value care. ACS has a long history of helping providers and hospitals achieve these aspects reliably.”
Rhapsody, a global leader in healthcare data interoperability, today announced that the company will merge with Corepoint Health, the supplier of the Best in KLAS healthcare integration platform. The transaction will bring together two companies at the forefront of interoperability and create a dynamic combination of technology, talent, services, and trusted customer relationships to address the most complex healthcare interoperability challenges.
Both
companies will continue to support and advance their respective solutions,
while the combined entity will also devote its expanded resources to addressing
the growing need for interoperability among regional, national and
international healthcare providers and vendors.
“Corepoint’s platform offers incredibly fast, turn-key operations for provider organizations, HIEs and OEM partners, all with industry leading customer satisfaction. Complementing this with Rhapsody’s fully customizable and multi-platform capabilities creates great synergies for our current and future customers,” said Erkan Akyuz, president and CEO, Rhapsody. “Both entities share great technical depth and breadth and both have maintained long-standing customer relationships, which together yields a broader foundation on which to build the future of interoperability in healthcare. Together, we can better support our customers to fulfill all of their changing and future needs.”
Available on premises and as a cloud-based service, the Rhapsody and Corepoint interoperability platforms offer comprehensive routing and transformation functionality for every operating environment, offering highly differentiated features, applications and end customer focuses. The two platforms also support commonly used messaging standards and protocols such as FHIR, HL7 V2, CCD/C-CDA and DICOM.
These integration engines are among the most secure technology platforms in the healthcare industry, with customer bases that include the entire healthcare ecosystem and across the globe, including provider organizations, technology vendors, HIEs and public health systems.
“We are entering a new era in healthcare where the emphasis will be on expanding ecosystems and establishing new data trading partner relationships to optimize clinical and operational workflows. These initiatives will be powered by interoperability and data management: healthcare organizations that can excel in these areas will have a significant competitive advantage,” said Sean Cassidy, CEO of Corepoint Health.
“The combination of Rhapsody and Corepoint enables our customers to continue to get tremendous value out of the products and services they love, while having the confidence that their interoperability partner is heavily invested in helping them confront the challenges they will face in the future,” Cassidy added.
AdhereHealth has announced a partnership with Papa, a companionship platform company serving the elderly, blind and disabled. A growing issue for millions of Americans enrolled in Medicare are SDoH, such as loneliness, food insecurity and transportation, any one of them impeding optimal healthcare and medication adherence. This combined relationship addresses foundational barriers to care through advanced technologies and a compassionate, personal interaction.
“We could not be more excited about this
partnership as it extends the Adhere platform’s reach into the home with Papa
assisting those most in need of personal support,” said Jason Z. Rose,
AdhereHealth CEO. “Our analytics and clinical workflows will help direct Papa
Pals to address a myriad of SDOH issues our consumers face, such as
transportation to doctor appointments and local pharmacies, grocery shopping,
housing chores, and other senior services.”
In 2018, CMS announced
a new policy allowing Medicare Advantage and Part D health plans to pay for
SDOH services as a medical expense for seniors with chronic diseases. Now
AdhereHealth can deploy “Papa Pals” to consumers at risk for poor health
outcomes for face-to-face support. Most Papa Pals are college students
majoring in nursing, social work, or hospitality that desire to improve
consumer quality of life.
Andrew Parker, founder and CEO of Papa, shared,
“We have realized that social determinants of health in America is an
increasing factor in medical non-compliance.” He continued,
“Collaborating with AdhereHealth will allow Papa’s team of personal
companions to make an intergenerational impact on the most vulnerable in our
society, providing them the freedom to age in place while having an advocate at
their side to aid them in the journey through health care.”
Graduating from Silicon Valley’s prestigious Y
Combinator accelerator program, Papa works with large Medicaid and Medicare
clients who have embraced companion health for their members. The Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention uses the healthy days metric to measure consumer
quality of life. This partnership is immediately available to over 20 million
American’s covered by Medicare Advantage plans, plans interested can visit www.adherehealth.com/papa.
Do you frequently run out of breath or feel winded even when you’re not doing physical exercise? Have you noticed that your heart rate has been out of control lately and that you’re coughing and wheezing much more than normal? Maybe you’ve even noticed that your skin tone looks incredibly pale or flushed with red. All of the things listed above are symptoms of low oxygen.
IBM Security released the results of its annual study examining the financial impact of data breaches on organizations. According to the report, the cost of a data breach has risen 12% during the past five years
The 