Managing Diabetes: A Public Health Perspective

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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 percent of the US population currently suffers from diabetes. Dr. Ann Albright, director of CDC’s Division of Diabetes Translation, expressed her concern:
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5 Things You Should Know About the Medicare Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program

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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 .
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Breezing through Nashville

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As promised, I had the opportunity to present my poster “Visualizing Spatio-Temporal Patterns of Emergency Department Utilization during a Polar Vortex” at the 2014 CSTE Annual Conference in Nashville, TN. Thanks to everyone who stopped by; I think it was generally well received. As an experiment in visualization, it was a moderate success. Most folks could understand the graphics once they were explained, but the patterns were not as immediately apparent as one might want. By virtue of sharing the visualization in this forum, I was able to get helpful feedback that should improve future attempts to present information in this format.
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Refining Accountability in Patient Care

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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.
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HMS CSTE Conference Presentation Reminder

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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.
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Readmissions & Demographics

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Working with public health departments, Health Monitoring Systems’ staff has worked with over 700 hospitals to collect emergency department registrations and admissions data from them. The question we always strive to answer is, “What else can we do?” Public health is intrinsically data-driven, attempting to understand both health trends and events in an effort to anticipate and plan intervention to monitor and protect the community’s health.
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Pool Poison: Preventable Injuries in the Thousands

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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 such as inhalation of vapors, fumes and gases. Fortunately, there were no deaths relating to pool chemicals at the time of the study.
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Heartbleed Update

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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 why was it an issue in the first place? Was EpiCenter affected?
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Pilot Project: Ambulatory Care Data & Syndromic Surveillance

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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.
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Outbreak Preparedness & Ebola in Guinea

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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 suspected or confirmed cases reported among healthcare workers, and that number included 16 deaths.
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