Could Data Help Us Save One Million Hearts?

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Around 600,000 people die of heart disease in the US annually. Another way of putting it: One in every four American deaths is caused by heart disease. And according to the CDC, about half of all Americans (49%) have at least one of the key factors of heart disease. In addition to endangering lives, heart disease also puts a strain on the economy. The total cost of health care services, medication and lost productivity related to coronary heart disease is estimated at $108.9 billion each year.
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How Do Doctors Treat Patients When Only 6% of Them Like Their Jobs?

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Last week when we wrote about the US’s exorbitant healthcare expenditures we mentioned that spending on physicians constitutes only about 10% of the nation’s healthcare spending. We also noted that the U.S. has only 2.4 practicing physicians per 1,000 population—putting us significantly below the OECD average of 3.1.
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Population Health: Can We Improve Care, Pay Physicians More, and Reduce Costs?

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Skyrocketing healthcare costs have been making headlines for the last three decades. Repeated policy solutions focused on financial and administrative remedies have been attempted–healthcare policy reform was a key domestic policy initiative under both Presidents Bush and Obama. President Bush initiated Medicare Part D, the largest overhaul of Medicare in the program’s history. President Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), has popularly become known as Obamacare.
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Coming Soon: New EpiCenter Enhancements

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Health Monitoring System’s EpiCenter system has long been an industry leader in syndromic surveillance. This summer, our developers have been hard at work on some exciting future EpiCenter enhancements. Here is a preview of what’s in store in the coming months for EpiCenter.
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Heat-Related Illness, Animal-Related Injuries, and Toxic Algae Blooms: It Must Be Summer

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Summer brings with it the many joys of enjoying the great outdoors, from picnicking and swimming to sporting events and outdoor performances and entertainment events. It also brings to the spotlight a familiar set of public health concerns. Thankfully, EpiCenter comes with tools designed to help monitor and analyze some of the common ones, in addition to unforeseen issues like Ohio’s recent run-in with water toxicity.  Here’s how:
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Evidence-based Public Health Initiatives

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Due to federal Meaningful Use regulations, syndromic surveillance has gone from being a fairly obscure concept to one that is now familiar–if not entirely understood–by almost every segment of healthcare provider. Health Monitoring Systems was founded long before the advent of the federal meaningful use program, and we have always had a broader vision of “Community Health Surveillance,” with syndromic surveillance being just one (key) piece of the broader surveillance network.
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The NYC A1C Diabetes Registry

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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. As the number of patients increases and costs (both physical and financial) continue to grow, a number of public health departments are investigating novel ways of addressing the problem. One of the most intriguing of these programs is the New York City A1C registry.
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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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