By Anne Llewellyn, RN.C, BHSA, CCM, CRRN, Editor in Chief

Question of the Week: Case Managers let me know the most important issue you see impacting your CM department. Please email your response to allewellyn@dorlandhealth.com.

In the News:

Dartmouth Study Shows Need for Overhaul in How U.S. Manages Chronic Illness and Raises Issues Regarding the Effectiveness of Medical and Utilization Management of Resources

A new report by researchers at Dartmouth Medical School finds striking variation in spending and resources used to manage care of chronically-ill elderly patients.

The report estimates that Medicare could have saved $40 billion — or nearly one-third of what the government spent for patient care during a four-year period — if all U.S. hospitals practiced according to specific standards identified in the study. The authors call for overhauling the way America cares for people with chronic illness.

The report also finds that some leading academic medical centers — often perceived by the public as providing top-notch care — did not always rank highly on medical quality. The data studied 4.7 million Medicare enrollees who died during 2000-2003 and had at least one of 12 chronic illnesses.

For the first time, the Dartmouth Atlas project allows anyone to access information about more than 4,300 hospitals nationwide and directly compare it to a series of benchmarks. The report follows a Dartmouth Atlas analysis of variation among 226 California hospitals released by the California HealthCare Foundation last year. The new study was funded by CHCF, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, long-time funder of the Dartmouth Atlas Project and others.

Click here to read more and determine ways that your organization can improve utilization of resources.

Workers Compensation and Disability Managers

Doing a good job in the area of Workers Compensation or Disability Management? Take time out to nominate your organization for the 2006 Teddy Awards! The award was named for President Theodore Roosevelt, who pioneered some of the first workers compensation laws in the United States. Risk & Insurance magazine sponsors the award and will present the 2006 awardees at the annual workers compensation and disability conference on November 14 in Las Vegas; NV Nominations are due by July 1! To learn more and enter, go to http://www.riskandinsurance.com/teddyawards.asp. The Teddy Award coordinator, Michelle Kerr, can be reached at mkerr@lrp.com or
215-784-0910, ext. 6320.

Learning a New Language:

One of the groups that Case Managers come into contact with are the deaf and hard of hearing. Here are some communication tips to help you learn how to communicate better with this special group of people.

• Make sure you are facing the person and don’t look down when you speak.
• Speak clearly and naturally, perhaps a little slower than usual.
• Don’t shout. It is embarrassing and can cause discomfort to someone wearing a hearing aid.
• Remember to keep your hands away from your mouth.
• Body language helps to project the meaning of what you are saying, so try to be animated and use lots of facial expression.
• Be patient and prepared to write things down if you are not being understood.

Want more information? Here are some websites that you can check out to gain more information on hearing loss:

• www.chs.ca: The Canadian Hearing Society
• www.drf.org: The Deaf Reach Foundation
• http://www.hearinglossweb.com : Hearing Loss Web
• http://www.asha.org : American Speech and Hearing Association

Preventative Health to Safeguard Hearing and Identifying Hearing Loss

Hearing loss is so gradual and painless that you might not notice it. Once it occurs, noise- induced hearing loss is permanent and irreversible. Here are some tips on protecting yourself:

• Reduce your exposure to noisy situations whenever possible.
• Keep TV and music set at a responsible volume.
• Set levels in a quiet atmosphere and don’t raise the volume to drown out background noise.
• Wear hearing protection whenever you are using noisy equipment, such as lawnmowers or leaf blowers, and when you are in noisy environments.
• Have your hearing tested every two years by an audiologist, especially if you experience any of the symptoms listed below.

Warning signs that can signal you of noise-induced hearing loss: PLEASE SHARE WITH FAMILY, FRIENDS AND CHILDREN:

• A ringing or buzzing in the ears immediately following exposure to noise.
• A slight muffling of sounds making it difficult to understand people once you leave a noisy area.
• Difficulty understanding speech. You can hear the words but not understand all of them.

Source: The Canadian Hearing Loss Society

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Launches New “Learning Resources” To Help Providers Adopt Health IT

On Press Release Date: February 13, 2006 Health and Human Servcies Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has launched a new suite of “learning resources” designed to help healthcare providers adopt health information technologies quickly and effectively.

“The goal is simple: Help healthcare providers at the ground level learn from each other’s real-world experience and give them easy access to the best information available,” said AHRQ Director Carolyn M. Clancy, M.D. “For providers, especially those in smaller practices, adoption of health IT can be challenging on many levels. Adoption of health IT will be too slow if providers have to reinvent the wheel one by one. This shared learning tool brings the lessons of experience together in one place, so we can help providers avoid problems and achieve greater benefits when they make their move to health IT.”

The step represents a new phase for the AHRQ National Resource Center on Health Information Technology, as the Agency acts rapidly to convey the lessons learned through AHRQ-funded projects and other sources. The new resources are at the center’s Web site: http://www.healthit.ahrq.gov.

HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt has made advancing Health Information Technology a major initiative in support of President Bush’s charge to use electronic health records and information to control costs and reduce medical errors. AHRQ’s new resource center is a critical component of that effort and a key part of HHS‘ overall Health IT Web presence at http://hhs.gov/healthinformationtechnology/.

AHRQ’s $166 million health IT initiative funds more than 100 projects throughout the nation, in settings ranging from large health plans and hospitals to small practices, including rural and inner city communities. As leaders of these projects plan and implement various health IT products, they provide a clinic-level window on the pitfalls and opportunities that others will face. AHRQ will synthesize these experiences to create useful findings and tools. The projects also will measure actual benefits from AHRQ’s health IT projects, providing evidence for the business case for health IT adoption.

The resource center site provides emerging lessons from the field; a knowledge library with links to more than 5,000 health IT information resources; an evaluation toolkit to help those implementing health IT projects; a summary of key topics; plus other resources pointing to current health IT activities, funding opportunities and other information.

Dr. Clancy emphasized that AHRQ is moving early to create the Web-based learning structure. In the first year of the AHRQ projects, the resource center site has served as an internal communication tool serving participants in the AHRQ initiative and other involved agencies. Rather than wait for finished findings, AHRQ is creating the public resource now to capture lessons learned as they emerge.

“This is a learn-as-you-go project,” Dr. Clancy said. “The President and HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt have made health IT adoption an urgent priority. We‘re not waiting for perfect information. We’ll make good information available as we learn it.”

For more information, please contact AHRQ Public Affairs: (301) 427-1241 or (301) 427-1855 or go to www.ahpq.org