John Cleese takes us on a tour of a laughter therapy practice in India.
Laughter promotes stress reduction, community bonding, stronger immune system... and joy. What a simple solution!
These new tips and information can help seniors and Medicare beneficiaries deter, detect and defend against Medical identity theft.
"When criminals steal from Medicare, they are stealing from all of us," said Secretary Sebelius. "Preventing medical identify theft is an important part of our work to stop Medicare fraud, and these tools will give seniors important information about how to deter, detect and defend against ID theft and fraud."
The Department of Justice (DOJ), in collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), will continue to protect the integrity of the nation's public health programs and vigorously pursue those who seek to take advantage of our most vulnerable citizens.
"Medical
identity theft can disrupt your life, damage your credit rating, and
threaten your health if inaccurate information ends up in your medical
records," added HHS Inspector General Daniel R. Levinson.
OIG's agents frequently uncover fraud schemes that involve the sale
and use of stolen Medicare identification numbers.
The
effort to help prevent medical identity theft is one part of the Obama
Administration's work to crack down on Medicare fraud. In May, Attorney
General Eric Holder and Secretary Sebelius announced the creation of a
new interagency effort, the Health Care Fraud Prevention and
Enforcement Action Team (HEAT), to combat Medicare fraud.
Teams that have been successfully fighting fraud in South Florida, Los Angeles, Detroit and Houston. Established in 2007, these teams have a proven record of success using data analysis techniques and community policing to identify, investigate and prosecute on-going fraud.
The Centers for
Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has undertaken other steps to
fight fraud and protect beneficiaries who buy durable medical equipment
or rely on home health services.
Senior Medicare Patrol programs
The SMP programs are funded by HHS' Administration on Aging and help Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries prevent, detect, and report health care fraud. Because this work often requires face-to-face contact to be most effective, SMPs nationwide recruit and train nearly 5,000 volunteers every year to help in this effort. Most SMP volunteers are both retired and Medicare beneficiaries and thus well-positioned to assist their peers.
To learn more about stopping Medicare fraud, visit www.StopMedicareFraud.gov. To report suspected Medicare fraud call the Inspector General's toll-free Hotline at 800-447-8477 (800-HHS-TIPS). The toll-free TTY number is 800-377-4950.
The cost of providing health care to seniors is rising more than twice as fast in Dallas as in San Diego, and Medicare now spends nearly three times more to care for its enrollees in Miami than it does in Honolulu.
The researchers project that, at current spending rates, Medicare will be $660 billion in the red by 2023.
But by reducing the annual growth in per capita spending from 3.5 percent, the national average, to 2.4 percent, the rate in San Francisco, Medicare could save $1.42 trillion and turn the deficit into a healthy surplus.
The authors call on physicians to lead an effort to reform how the U.S. delivers and pays for health care to bring spending under control.
Depression often coexists with other long-term health problems,
presenting additional complexities. About 60 percent of depressed
outpatients have at least one other chronic medical condition as well,
such as a heart problem, high blood pressure, or diabetes.
The US Department of Health & Human Services, through the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has funded
research to track effective care of depression.
Heart Attacks and Depression
Research results have shown that patients with a history of heart attacks have 1.8 times more depressive spells in a year and more persistent symptoms than depressed patients without a history of heart attacks.
Chronic Conditions and Depression in Older Persons
The challenge of treating depression as one of multiple chronic conditions is especially an issue in older persons. AHRQ research comparing elderly patients with and without depression in a primary care clinic found that the depressed patients had:
To reduce the cost of care and improve outcomes for older persons with depression, coexisting psychiatric and medical illnesses must be targeted for treatment.
The organization of care can affect care delivery for depression.
One AHRQ-sponsored study showed that shifting patients away from mental
health specialists to general medical providers (as is the practice in
some managed care arrangements) may lead to fewer improvements in
patient functioning but costs two to three times less.
Other AHRQ-funded research on the effects of changes in health care payment and delivery found that after switching to a prepaid plan, the health status of outpatients with depression did not appear to suffer although they were 12 percent less likely to use antidepressants and made 35 to 40 percent fewer visits to their mental health care providers.
Even where there is substantial agreement about how treatment for depression can be improved, changes to everyday practice have been slow. Past efforts by managed care organizations to improve compliance with guidelines for improving diagnosis and treatment of depression have met with only modest success.
Two AHRQ studies investigating academic detailing and continuous quality improvement interventions in managed care organizations concluded that these approaches were only mildly effective in improving clinicians' adherence to the recommended guidelines for care. However, promising early results from a current study evaluating ways to increase use of antidepressants and psychotherapy in managed primary care practice suggest that depressed patients in the intervention groups were more likely to receive these interventions and exhibit better outcomes.
The National Guideline Clearinghouse™ (NGC) sponsored by AHRQ in partnership with the American Medical Association and the American Association of Health Plans, allows physicians and other Internet users to assess and compare guidelines online at http://www.guideline.gov. The NGC is being used by Georgetown University Medical Center's Mood Disorder Program in the development of clinical practice guidelines on depression for primary care physicians in managed care settings.
Primary care is valuable to individuals in at least the five ways listed below:
Unlike many other areas in health care, the practice of oncology
presents unique challenges that make assessing and improving value
especially complex.
First, patients and professionals feel a
well-justified sense of urgency to treat for cure, and if cure is not
possible, to extend life and reduce the burden of disease.
Second,
treatments are often both life sparing and highly toxic.
Third,
distinctive payment structures for cancer medicines are intertwined
with practice.
Fourth, providers often face tremendous pressure to
apply the newest technologies to patients who fail to respond to
established treatments, even when the evidence supporting those
technologies is incomplete or uncertain, and providers may be reluctant
to stop toxic treatments and move to palliation, even at the end of
life.
Finally, the newest and most novel treatments in oncology are among the most costly in medicine.
"Assessing and Improving Value in Cancer Care: Workshop Summary" summarizes the
results of a workshop that addressed these issues from multiple
perspectives, including those of patients and patient advocates,
providers, insurers, health care researchers, federal agencies, and
industry. Its broad goal was to describe value in oncology in a
complete and nuanced way, to better inform decisions regarding
developing, evaluating, prescribing, and paying for cancer therapeutics.
Rehabilitative care of hospitalized war veterans in the 1940's and 1950's greatly expanded the practice of HT. Today, HT is recognized as a practical and viable treatment with wide-ranging benefits for people in therapeutic, vocational, and wellness programs.
Horticultural Therapy is now taught and practiced throughout the world in a rich diversity of settings and cultures.
The Secret of the Garden
The American Horticultural Therapy Association is a champion of barrier-free, therapeutic gardens that enable everyone to work, learn, and relax in the garden. Horticultural therapists are skilled at creating garden spaces that accommodate people with a wide range of abilities. People with physical or mental disabilities benefit from gardening experiences as part of HT programs, and they learn skills, adaptations, and gardening methods that allow for continued participation at home.