Health Care Victories for the Week Ending May 23, '08

Some are big; Some are minor. All are important.

From Kelly Montgomery's About Health Insurance:

1000 Californians have coverage again

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that over 1,000 Californians will have their health insurance coverage reinstated after it was retroactively canceled by Kaiser Permanente or HealthNet.

Michigan Judge Limits Rate Hikes for Blue Cross Policies

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan would like to raise its rates for individual insurance policies, but an administrative law judge has ruled that the rate hike is not justified....

From HealthLawProf blog:

The Power of the Apology

At the University of Michigan Health System, one of the first to experiment with full disclosure, existing claims and lawsuits dropped to 83 in August 2007 from 262 in August 2001, said Richard C. Boothman, the medical center’s chief risk officer.  “Improving patient safety and patient communication is more likely to cure the malpractice crisis than defensiveness and denial,” Mr. Boothman said.

From The American Prospect:

The Primacy of Prevention.

Almost four in 10 deaths are attributable to four behaviors that lie at the intersection of the social setting and individual choice: smoking, poor diet, drinking alcohol, and physical inactivity. Studies on the prevention of coronary heart disease (CHD) in the U.S., Finland, and Ireland have documented that 44 percent to 80 percent of the drop in CHD rates is due to systematic declines in major risk factors among the general population, like smoking, cholesterol, and lack of physical activity. Targeting specific high-risk populations with early interventions can also dramatically improve health outcomes.

I went through 10 times as many blog posts to come up with these solutions. It's not many.  But it's a start.

Comments

[Becky McCray]

10 times as many... not an encouraging ratio.

But I admire that you go through that many.

[Zane Safrit]

I revisited the numbers for this claim. I think I was being conservative, really. Good news for health care system changes is rare, limited in scope and difficult to find.