Diabetes represents a growing public health crisis in the United States. Millions of Americans suffer from diabetes, and the CDC estimates that there are an additional 8.1 million people (representing 27.8% of all diabetics) who are living undiagnosed. The costs associated with these patients (both direct and indirect) are estimated at nearly $250 billion yearly. […]
Diabetes, the metabolic disease which causes the elevated levels of glucose in the blood due to the body’s inability to either produce or respond to insulin, is becoming a serious concern for public health professionals. According to the CDC, 1.7 million adults were newly diagnosed with diabetes in 2012 alone. The CDC states that 9.3 […]
We recently blogged about a new study finding that nearly 60 percent of the variation in hospital readmission rates appears to be associated with where the hospital is located, rather than on the hospital’s performance .
According to a new report, while half of providers believe that value-based reimbursement will eventually foster population health, reduce costs, and improve the patient experience, 80% of providers have found a need for more staff, more time, and more investments in order to make it work.
Visualizing Spatio-Temporal Patterns of Emergency Department Utilization during a Polar Vortex Dr. Andrew Walsh will present a poster on his abstract, Visualizing Spatio-Temporal Patterns of Emergency Department Utilization during a Polar Vortex, at next week’s annual CSTE conference in Nashville on Monday, June 23, 2014 from 3:30 PM-4:00 PM. Look for poster 239.
With scorching temperatures right around the corner, many people will be readying their pools, which can be a surprisingly dangerous business. According to a recent study by the CDC, 4,900 people visited the emergency department for preventable pool chemical injuries in 2012. Commonly, the diagnosis of these injuries was poisoning, which would stem from things […]
Everyone who follows the news is aware of the now-notorious Heartbleed bug, which is thought to have affected up to two-thirds of all websites. Users received notices from websites like Gmail and Pinterest advising them to change their passwords, and an estimated 39% of us actually took the step of updating our login credentials. But […]
Although they make up only a small portion of the overall requirements, the Public Health-related set of Meaningful Use requirements has still managed to generate a considerable amount of debate and confusion. One of the primary sources of this confusion relates to ambulatory care providers and the submission of syndromic surveillance data.
An Ebola outbreak has been brewing in West Africa since February. According to the CDC, on April 29, 2014, Guinea’s Ministry of Health reported 221 suspected and confirmed cases of Ebola hemorrhagic fever, including 146 deaths. Of these suspected cases, 126 have been laboratory confirmed as Ebola. At the time of writing, there were 25 […]
Childhood diseases can be a frightening topic, especially when we are seeing the re-emergence of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles and whooping-cough. There have been at least 129 measles cases from 13 states that have been reported in the U.S. in 2014, the highest number since 1996, according to the CDC. In recent years, many […]