Michigan health & hospitals最新文献

The scientific evidence is clear--regular physical activity has powerful positive effects on both physical and psychological health. Conversely, physical inactivity has a high human cost in terms of health. It shortens years of life, decreases quality of life, and limits functional independence. These health effects arise from physical inactivity's contribution to cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis, mental health disorders, and some cancers (i.e., colon and breast).

To Mary Gallagher, Any Town Hospital's new CEO, the growing need for physicians and administrators to work together to solve the challenges before them seemed obvious. Physicians agreed, but little progress had occurred. Recessionary government budgets and employer pushback through reduced benefits and increased co-payments seemed ominous. Medical malpractice premiums were spiraling upwards, pharmaceutical costs were escalating, and the percentage of health care insurance premiums going to medical claims was decreasing. The basis for competition was shifting from managed care contracting to quality, demanding further financial investments (e.g., computer technology).

For more than 100 years, Michigan's nonprofit community hospitals have provided high-quality health care to all who come to their doors, regardless of the individual's ability to pay. This mission of compassionate caring is a long-standing tradition and one that defines what hospitals are all about. Michigan's nonprofit community hospitals serve as the health care safety net for the uninsured and underinsured. Their doors are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Michigan citizens have come to expect nothing less and oftentimes more. But providing high-quality and accessible acute care is only part of what makes Michigan's nonprofit hospitals an essential community asset.

Lean Thinking is an integrated approach to designing, doing and improving the work of people that have come together to produce and deliver goods, services and information. Healthcare Lean is based on the Toyota production system and applies concepts and techniques of Lean Thinking to hospitals and physician practices.

Over the last 10 years, hospitals in the north central region of Michigan have collaborated with human service agencies across a 21-country area of northern Lower Michigan on the Community Health Assessment Project: Building A Healthier Northern Michigan. A survey was completed in 1995 that provided insight into the health status of adults in the region. The survey helped communities identify health priorities and implement plans to address them.

By the year 2011, medical expenditures in the United States are projected to double from today's outlay of $1.5 trillion. This is in an environment where purchasers of health care coverage already think the rate of growth in health care expenditures is unsustainable.

When an executive moves up the hierarchal ladder in the organization, the promotion is often accompanied by an increasing sense of isolation and loneliness. Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee coined the phrase "CEO disease" to describe the isolation of top executives in their book Primal Leadership. It refers to an information vacuum around leaders, created when people withhold important and sometimes unpleasant information.

In the continuing pursuit of performance excellence, many quality improvement models such as CQI, TQM, ISO, Six Sigma, and the Malcolm Baldrige criteria for performance excellence have been introduced and implemented with varying degrees of success.

Scandals have dominated newspaper headlines, bringing corporate directors under increasing scrutiny. These issues continue to elicit public outrage about wrongdoing and ultimately resulted in standards for for-profit corporate board members through the enactment of the Sarbanes Oxley Act in 2002. Although all board members must address corporate responsibility issues, directors of health care organizations also have responsibilities unique to the health care industry that must be met in relation to corporate compliance requirements.

These are times of great change and upheaval in health care. More and more people are uninsured, consumers and employers pay substantially higher health insurance premiums for care, there is a shortage of nurses, and doctors go on strike. And these facts don't take into account that hospitals are going bankrupt while searching for their roles in the 21st century, the population is aging, the growth of alternative and complementary health care, the biotechnology and genetics revolution, the depersonalization of health care, and the huge cutbacks in federal and state government funding of health care and other human services.