Blame ObamaCare

[bigtree]

tweeted by, Nerdy Wonka ‏@NerdyWonka 7m

New Jersey hospitals see major drop in hospital infections and other preventable problems due to #ObamaCare http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/13/04/30/hospitals-see-rapid-progress-in-reducing-see-swift-improvement-in-reducing-infections-other-preventable-problems/ …


New Jersey hospitals are celebrating a major drop in hospital infections and other preventable problems last year, due to a federally funded initiative that’s part of the Affordable Care Act.

The effort, led by the New Jersey Hospital Association, is aimed at improving the quality of care offered at hospitals by reducing preventable illnesses that originate in healthcare facilities. These problems are a major cause of concern at hospitals and reducing their occurrence is a goal of federal health reform . . .

The state saw improvements in 11 of the 12 quality categories being tracked by the federally funded initiative. The improvement in the readmission rate is particularly significant for the state. Hospitals with high levels of readmissions face financial penalties under a separate ACA program . . .

It took only one year for hospitals to achieve broad-based improvements, according to an association report released yesterday. The initiative, known as Partnership for Patients, was launched at the beginning of 2012 and is scheduled to continue through the end of this year.


read: http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/13/04/30/hospitals-see-rapid-progress-in-reducing-see-swift-improvement-in-reducing-infections-other-preventable-problems/

[n2doc]

1. Good News

We need more of this.

[spanone]

2. k&r...

[ProSense]

3. Excellent! n/t

[srican69]

4. so are my insurance rates going down?

if not - it seems that the only ones who should be cheering the news are the hospitals - they get to be more profitable

[AlbertCat]

5. so are my insurance rates going down?

It's all about you!!!!!

[LWolf]

47. Actually,

my health care SHOULD be all about me, and not all about what I can afford or not.

I can't afford to have my knee xrayed; I think I chipped my knee cap.

I'm still paying off the bills for the abscess I had treated two months ago; I haven't met my very large deductible, and am not likely to. I don't have that much money to pay them.

[bigtree]

6. that's ridiculous

. . . hospital infection rates down. . . readmission rates down. That has absolutely nothing to do with insurance rates. If anything, this means less visits to the hospital for the unlucky percentage which had been victim to these lax standards in the past.

[judesedit]

7. Blame the insurance companies.They're always looking for an excuse to raise rates Everyone knows it

Vote for equality. Vote for universal health care....for Congress, too. They get packages we pay for that include plastic surgery, abortions, you name it....at OUR expense. They should have to buy the same crap we do. Watch how quick it would change if that happens.

[leftstreet]

8. Now it's Obstructionist Insurance Companies™

First Congress...

[geek tragedy]

9. Yeah, totally crazy to blame insurance companies for raising their rates.

Next thing you know, people will be blaming Republicans for being assholes.

[leftstreet]

10. It's not their fault. The Dems handed them what they wanted

Insurance companies have no place in healthcare

But the Democrats disagreed with that

[geek tragedy]

11. A combination of Teabagger and Naderite talking points. Well done.

1) "It's not their fault." Yes, we must never blame corporate America for what they do. It's always the gubmint's fault.

2) "Insurance companies have no place in healthcare." So, your claim is that without Obamacare we wouldn't have insuance companies. And that they certainly wouldn't be raising rates.

I guess what's implied is that if Obamacare didn't pass, Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson would have voted for single payer.

Brilliant logic, champ.

[leftstreet]

17. For-profit healthcare was once a GOP dream n/t

[geek tragedy]

18. Why not blame Obamacare for cancer and heart disease while you're

playing the "every bad thing that ever existed is Obama's fault" game?



P.S. For-profit health care has been a reality for, well, forever.

[leftstreet]

19. You're not making any sense

I know you want to defend this mess, but you should just let it go

[geek tragedy]

20. So far, you've blamed Obamacare for insurance companies, insurance companies

increasing their rates, and the existence of profit-seeking in health care.

And you're commenting about me not making sense.

[leftstreet]

21. Yes, Obama and the Democrats are at fault here

They made for-profit healthcare insurance companies the cornerstone of Obamacare

They mandated citizens purchase this for-profit insurance product

They made NO restrictions on for-profit insurance rate increases



Like I said, you should let this go

[geek tragedy]

22. "they made no restrictions on for-profit insurance rate increases"

derpity derpity derp derp derp

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/04/obamacare-to-yield-13-billion-in-rebates-for-consumers.php

Sahil Kapur- April 26, 2012, 1:30 PM 9206A lesser-known but important provision in “Obamacare” that regulates how health insurance companies spend their money is yielding benefits for consumers, a new study finds.

By this August, insurers are projected to send consumers a total of $1.3 billion in rebates, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis released Thursday — $541 million to large employers, $377 million to small businesses and $426 million to people with their own insurance plans.

The rebates are the result of a rule in the Affordable Care Act that requires insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent or 85 percent of premium earnings on health care — as opposed to marketing and administrative activities — or otherwise send money back to consumers.

There are those such as yourself and Michelle Bachmann who feel that we would be better off with the pre-Obamacare system, but you are a tiny minority on Democratic/progressive boards.

[leftstreet]

23. You're wrong

That provision regulates the amounts an insurer spends on healthcare - not the amount the insurer charges

But then you probably know that...

[geek tragedy]

24. Not an economics or math major, I see.

If you don't understand why a regulation mandating that 85% of gross premium receipts get spent on patient care is a restriction on for-profit rate increases, you should really bone up on the subject for embarrassing yourself further.

The fact that the Obamacare rule resulted in REBATES being issued to policyholders should have been a hint.

Last word is yours, since your determination to obfuscate has overwhelmed by patience in explaining the basics of the issue.

[srican69]

38. If I mandate a minimum loss ratio of 85% on insurance companies - then the only way an insurance

company can hit a dollar revenue target is to let the health care costs rise ..


I'll would be incentivized to let the health care pie become bigger rather than smaller as intended by ACA - because I need a the 15% of the pie to meet my revenue targets. Agree?

[geek tragedy]

40. They're incentivized to increase the size of the pie by increasing the

size of their customer base--drawing in more paying insurance customers.

If they just decide to jack up the amount they pay for goods and services and thus premiums, they will get undercut by their competitors in the market place.

[pampango]

31. Republicans were also for the Civil Rights Act, the EPA, a guaranteed annual income, cap-and-trade

and high tariffs at one time or another in the past. Republicans hate them all now. If we jettison every policy that a republican has ever supported - even in the distant past - we will be throwing out a lot of good with the bad.

We have more to worry about from the policies of the modern day far-right, tea party-intimidated republicans (that hate Obamacare, civil rights, voting rights, the EPA, etc.) than we do from the policies of the old republican party.

[Ikonoklast]

44. Insurance providers are used under socialized single payer plans in other countries for health care

to varying degrees.

Are they wrong? They seem to be happy the way things are.

[malaise]

34. Whatever n/t

[cbdo2007]

41. Maybe. Guess you'll have to wait and see what happens

over the next few years. Nobody said this was all going to improve overnight.

[zipplewrath]

12. Um.... Classic

The one-year drop was the result of years of work focusing on these issues, according to Dr. Anthony G. Slonim, executive vice president and chief medical officer of Barnabas Health.

So there was an existing program, that ACA incorporated into its structure, and some how Obamacare is responsible for this success.

[geek tragedy]

14. No, there was no existing program. Reading is fundamental.

The association has been holding face-to-face learning sessions in which doctors and nurses share their experiences in reducing the spread of infections, readmission rates, and other preventable problems.

“It’s really bringing together clinicians and focusing on what are the best practices,” said Aline Holmes, director of the NJHA Institute for Quality and Patient Safety and a registered nurse.

....
What we’ve seen in a variety of other places and approaches is that teamwork really matters,” said Slonim, adding the success is a result of collaboration between hospitals, the association and the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which launched the initiative.


For example, the sessions drew on years of work by the association and hospitals in reducing urinary infections from catheters, by ensuring that catheters are only used when appropriate and removing them as soon as possible, Holmes said. In addition, changing the material that is applied to the skin before the line is inserted has reduced central line infections.

What Obamacare did was facilitate the information exchange of best practices "the years of work" developed by various hospitals so they all started using each other's best ideas.

[zipplewrath]

15. So the 1 year decline isn't due to the years of work?

""The one-year drop was the result of years of work focusing on these issues..."

As I originally quoted.

It would seem that the assertion is being made that the 1 year drop, that is being credited to Obama care, is due to "years of work" that preceded the current program.

[geek tragedy]

16. It's both. The best practices were developed by individual doctors, hospitals,

health systems, etc over several years.

Obamacare then brought everyone together so that they could share best practices with each other. This resulted in improvements across the board because the various hospitals began learning from each other.

[zipplewrath]

26. Funny, the guy didn't say that

But I guess I should accept your interpretation instead of his statement.

[geek tragedy]

28. Yes, you should take his quote out of context from the rest of the story.

And, above all else, don't think. Just seize on quotes in a knee-jerk basis so you can distort them into a bad faith interpretation serving your "whine about Obamacare" agenda, the truth be damned.

Note that I did accurately quote him--and you misleadingly left off his quote:

“What we’ve seen in a variety of other places and approaches is that teamwork really matters,” said Slonim, adding the success is a result of collaboration between hospitals, the association and the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which launched the initiative.

You are the one who falsely claimed that he said there was a program already in place.

He said no such thing.

You are the one who is claiming he denied that the federal program made a difference.

He said no such thing.

You are the one who is ignoring his statement CREDITING THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PROGRAM for this success.


You are the one who willfully chose to ignore the rest of the article, seizing upon one quote from a health industry executive you thought you could distort.

Fail.

[zipplewrath]

29. Actually, I find it very consistent

The proponents of Obamacare regularly try to over inflate the impact of ACA by taking credit for things that predate ACA. It's nothing new. Starwars, reductions in crime rates, Lilly Leadbetter, you'll find all manner of folks trying to take credit for trends and programs that predate their participation. Heck, the Govenor of Florida was taking credit for job creations that occured in the first months of his administration, before they had issued the first executive order, or passed the first piece of legislation.

When I read the article, not only wasn't it obvious what contribution the one year old program had made, it isn't particularly obvious that it made any difference at all, but merely came in at the end of a multi-year process and took credit for the results. You claim that the reductions were due to the coordination between hospitals, but the quote credits the reductions to efforts at that hospital that spanned years.

You seemed prepared to jump to the conclusion that ACA was the differentiating factor, when it isn't clear anyone BUT the advocates of the ACA initiative made any difference at all.

[geek tragedy]

32. THE GUY YOU QUOTED CREDITED THE OBAMACARE EFFORT.

New Jersey hospitals are celebrating a major drop in hospital infections and other preventable problems last year, due to a federally funded initiative that’s part of the Affordable Care Act....

The one-year drop was the result of years of work focusing on these issues, according to Dr. Anthony G. Slonim, executive vice president and chief medical officer of Barnabas Health.

“What we’ve seen in a variety of other places and approaches is that teamwork really matters,” said Slonim, adding the success is a result of collaboration between hospitals, the association and the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which launched the initiative.

Also, please stop lying about a "multi-year process"--there is no such process mentioned anywhere in the story.

[zipplewrath]

36. Not exactly

It took only one year for hospitals to achieve broad-based improvements, according to an association report released yesterday. The initiative, known as Partnership for Patients, was launched at the beginning of 2012 and is scheduled to continue through the end of this year.

An NJHA affiliate is one of 26 “hospital engagement networks” across the country that is aiming to reduce the 12 preventable problems by 40 percent from 2011 to 2013.

So they are attempting to reduce problems from 2011 to 2013 but there is no multi-year program and nothing existed prior to ACA.

And he didn't credit the program. He mentioned that teamwork matters and he credited THREE entities. An existing collaboration between hospitals (that multi-year effort from the previous quote), "the association" (I presume the New Jersey Hospital Association), and the CMS. The work predates the CMS involvement and the intiative they launched.

So you have work they didn't start, run by an organization that predates them, funded through the CMS that existed before ACA, that started a program to fund them to share work in a particular manner that was already being shared before, but Obamacare made all the difference.

Yeah, right.

This is what passes for critical thinking?

[geek tragedy]

39. "share work in a particular manner that was already being shared before"

Doubling down on the falsehoods, eh?

There is no quote from the article stating that such information sharing was being conducted before this initiative was launched.

There is nothing in the article said by anyone that there was an information sharing program like this in place in New Jersey.

Note that the entire point of the Obamacare-funded effort was to faciliate this kind of teamwork/information sharing.

Your bizarre claim that the sudden decrease from 2011 to 2012 was completely unrelated to the Obamacare-funded effort is bad faith at best, given that every piece of information contradicts your obsessive need to hate on the ACA.

[zipplewrath]

42. My bad faith or your rose colored glasses?

There is little to nothing to explain what the ACA did, other than provide funding. Furthermore, everyone, every organization, and effort existed prior to the start of this program. The hospitals were already part of an affiliation. They already had programs to address the referenced issues. They were already seeing success which they referenced. One has to presume that the were doing absolutely nothing to collaborate or cooperate, even though the associations, programs, and information predated the ACA. You have to presume that there was no coordination, cooperation, or any other program that predated the ACA, despite the structures and associations that were already in place to do exactly that.

Or you can presume that they saw a funding source for something they were already doing and now the funding source is looking to justify themselves by taking credit for actions and outcomes that predated the funding source.

Occum's razor alone suggest the latter.

[geek tragedy]

43. Again, you're entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts.

Furthermore, everyone, every organization, and effort existed prior to the start of this program.

Repeating a falsehood over and over and over doesn't make it true. You're just making shit up in this case.

There is nothing in the article supporting your fabrications. You have provided no external ones.

You seize on one quote, out of context, from an executive of an ACO--a category of health care providers created by the ACA by the way--that "work" had been done in the past.

You spin that one comment into a refutation of the entire article, and wind up claiming that the one-year drop coinciding with the new federal program is just a fluke of luck.

[zipplewrath]

46. You're really gonna make me do this?

You really believe these organizations and programs just popped up when ACA was passed? You really think that they only started to look at these issues in the last year after the ACA started funding it? You really think that professionals had to wait for the ACA to come around to realize that cooperation amongst themselves might actually be useful?

"Founded in 1918, NJHA has grown to become one of the largest and most influential healthcare organizations in the state. Our membership has grown in numbers and diversity, with close to 400 healthcare organizations including hospitals, health systems, nursing homes, home health agencies, hospice providers and healthcare-related business and educational institutions in our membership ranks.

NJHA provides leadership in advocacy, policy analysis, quality and financial data, education and community outreach. Our nonprofit affiliate the Health Research and Educational Trust of New Jersey partners with state government and other healthcare interests to promote community health endeavors and other initiatives to build a healthier New Jersey."

" New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute

Founded in 1997 and partially funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the NJHCQI brings together all key stakeholders to make real and measurable improvements to our state's health care system. Its purpose is to "undertake projects that will ensure that quality, accountability, and cost containment are all closely linked to the delivery of health care services in New Jersey."

"The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), previously known as the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), is a federal agency within the United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) that administers the Medicare program and works in partnership with state governments to administer Medicaid, the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), and health insurance portability standards."

They've been here for years, decades really, the NJHA has been around for nearly a CENTURY. ACA came along and these organizations (including the CMS) saw a FUNDING opportunity and took the money. It didn't take ACA for these professionals to become concerned about these issues. ACA just became the current funding authority for activities that had already been going on.

It takes a real strong set of rose colored glasses to avoid this kind of critical thinking. Ask yourself, if the article had been written EXACTLY the same, but the ACA had been passed by Bush (much like the medicare part D was) would you be claiming that the ACA was this critical to the published success? Or would you realize that maybe, just maybe, the ACA was taking credit for work that would have happened, with or without its existence? It takes a particular kind of mental gymnastics to avoid the reality that money under the current ACA frequently already existed under other auspices of government healthcare.

[geek tragedy]

48. Linking to stuff that doesn't back you up is not persuasive.

For example, the NJHQI doesn't mention doing anything of the kind of thing done by this federal initiative.

No one is doubting that various actors in New Jersey have tried to improve health care quality and efficiency.

But, this program is new. And it did coincide with improvements across the board.

As far as the Bush question is concerned, I would have given him credit where credit is due. For instance, Bush's efforts on HIV/AIDS in Africa was truly praiseworthy.

[zipplewrath]

49. It takes a leap of faith

So your critical thinking skills lead you to believe that until the ACA, that these organizations were doing nothing to coordinate or share information, and weren't working these issues AT ALL, despite the references to work being conducted over years. That without the ACA, the gains would not have been achieved and these professionals would have continued bungling along in failure.

Those are some dark rose colored glasses you have.

[dawg]

13. If we can manage to stay the course, we'll eventually see lots of real-life health benefits ...

from ObamaCare.

There is a real physical toll that is taken when 30 million or more people are shut out of the health care system.

[zipplewrath]

25. Dubious

What I mean is that adding 8 - 12% of the population to the health insurance won't particularly result in these kinds of reductions (i.e 40 percent reductions, which are the goals). Especially considering that many of those people won't actually be able to afford the underlying care. Truth is, many people insured NOW, can't. Now, efforts to reduce Medicare and medicaid costs through systematic improvments might. It's what many have always suggested, the primary way to improve the health CARE system is going to be directly, through the power that the federal government has as the single largest purchaser of health care in the country. Of course that would mean allowing them to do things like negotiate with big pharma to reduce drug costs.

[dawg]

27. I don't know about hitting any arbitrary targets ...

but more people with health insurance will result in better health outcomes. Could this have been accomplished more efficiently? Of course. But it's still a good thing, warts and all.

[zipplewrath]

33. Presumption

Some will benefit, some will not. In the aggregate it isn't clear what will happen. Such large numbers of those added will either not need, or not be able to use the insurance, that it isn't clear it will compare to the number of people adversely affected by the new laws. Alot of us will be paying more, it isn't clear how many actual people that will help. The lone comfort for me is that there will be people who could afford insurance now, that couldn't before due to pre-existing conditions. That alone may be worth the extra costs many will be paying. I'm not sure we'll ever know.

[dawg]

35. The whole pre-existing conditions thing is barbaric.

I think that was (still is, for a few more months anyway) one of the most shameful things about the United States.

[zipplewrath]

37. No, single payer

No, but close. You get sick, you go see the doctor, you get well, THEN we argue about how to pay for it. THAT'S a humane system.

[Cha]

30. Good on the FEDS and Obamacare Initiative!

New Jersey hospitals are celebrating a major drop in hospital infections and other preventable problems last year, due to a federally funded initiative that’s part of the Affordable Care Act.

The effort, led by the New Jersey Hospital Association, is aimed at improving the quality of care offered at hospitals by reducing preventable illnesses that originate in healthcare facilities. These problems are a major cause of concern at hospitals and reducing their occurrence is a goal of federal health reform.

thanks bigtree

[SunSeeker]

45. K&R

[Plaid Adder]

50. 65% drop in "pressure ulcers." Would this be, in plain English, "bedsores"? n/t

[bigtree]

51. sign of neglect

Hospitals Face a New Epidemic - Bedsores - NYTimes.com
December 8, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/health/08bedsores.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print


Decubitus Ulcers Remain Deadly Problem for Hospital Patients

A recent article in Britain’s Daily Mail says that hospital-acquired bed sores continue to plague England’s National Health System in alarming numbers.
“Bed sores affected 412,000 NHS patients, and killed 4,708 people between 2003 and 2008,” the article states. The Daily Mail obtained its statistics from “Dr. Foster…,” (of course, this is England )

http://www.bedsorefaq.com/category/hospital-bed-sore/


UCLA-led study finds direct correlation between hospital bedsores, patient mortality

A new clinical study spearheaded by the dean of UCLA's School of Nursing has found a direct correlation between pressure ulcers — commonly known as bedsores — and patient mortality and increased hospitalization.

According to the study, featured as the lead article in the current issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, seniors who developed pressure ulcers were more likely to die during their hospital stay, to have longer stays in the hospital, and to be readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of their discharge.

To arrive at their findings, the researchers tracked more than 51,000 randomly selected Medicare beneficiaries hospitalized across the United States in 2006 and 2007.

"Hospital-acquired pressure ulcers were shown to be an important risk factor associated with mortality," said Dr. Courtney Lyder, lead investigator on the study and dean of the UCLA School of Nursing. "It is incumbent upon hospitals to identify individuals at high risk for these ulcers and implement preventive interventions immediately upon admission."

According to Lyder and his research team, individuals at the highest risk are those with existing chronic conditions, such as congestive heart failure, pulmonary disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity, as well as those on steroids.

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/study-spearheaded-by-ucla-nursing-239046.aspx

[orleans]

52. when i read your opening line about a major drop in "hospital infections

and other preventable problems"
first thing i thought of was:
yay! they're WASHING THEIR HANDS!

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/01/10/hospitals-efforts-raise-rate-of-hand-washing-to-86.html