Transformative impact of inflation on the healthcare sector

February 5, 2023 Vera

The once-in-a-century pandemic thrust the healthcare industry into the teeth of the storm. The combination of accelerating affordability challenges, access issues exacerbated by clinical-staff shortages and COVID-19, and limited population-wide progress on outcomes is ominous. This gathering storm has the potential to reorder the healthcare industry and put nearly half of the profit pools at risk. Those who thrive will tap into the $1 trillion of improvement available by redesigning their organizations for speed-accelerating productivity improvements, reshaping their portfolio, innovating new business models to refashion care, and reallocating constrained resources. The healthcare industry has lagged behind other industries in applying these practices; players who are able to do so in this crisis could set themselves up for success in the coming years. This article is the second in our five-article series addressing the gathering storm.

Consumer prices have rarely risen faster than healthcare inflation, but that’s the situation today. The impact of inflation on the broader economy has driven up input costs in healthcare significantly. Moreover, the likelihood of continued labor shortages in healthcare—even as demand for services continues to rise—means that higher inflation could persist. Our latest analysis estimates that the annual US national health expenditure is likely to be $370 billion higher by 2027 due to the impact of inflation compared with prepandemic projections.

Pressure on healthcare input costs

Healthcare supply input costs spiked in late 2020 and 2021 during the COVID-19 crisis. Labor costs per adjusted hospital discharge grew 25 percent between 2019 and 2022, closely followed by pharmaceuticals at 21 percent, supplies at 18 percent, and services at 16 percent.

While these costs have moderated in 2022, they continue to be above the norm; in particular, growth in labor cost remains high.

Clinical labor

The worsening clinical labor shortage is a significant contributor to our projected increase in healthcare costs over the next five years. By 2025, we expect a gap of 200,000 to 450,000 registered nurses and 50,000 to 80,000 doctors (10 to 20 percent and 6 to 10 percent of the workforce, respectively).

These shortages underpin our estimate that healthcare labor cost growth will outpace inflation. We expect clinical labor cost growth of 6 to 10 percent over the next two years, about three to seven percentage points above the prevailing rate of inflation, before a correction to

Do You Have the Holiday Spirit? How (and Why) the Holidays Impact Our Mood

December 16, 2022 Vera

If Scrooge and the Grinch can find the holiday spirit, can you?

Research shows that holiday images, memories of childhood, songs and even Hallmark movies can all help contribute to a sense of happiness that can be dubbed the “holiday spirit” or “good cheer.”

“There is a subconscious code of generosity, kindness and charity that the holidays promote, known as ‘holiday spirit,’” notes Carla Schnitzlein, DO, medical director of Natchaug Hospital, part of the Hartford HealthCare Behavioral Health Network.

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But where does that ‘holiday spirit’ come from?

This, research shows, is due to a variety of factors, including:

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If your holiday memories are happy, your brain will be too.

Several years ago, a researcher performed brain scans on one group of people who celebrated Christmas and another that did not. When shown holiday images, those in the former group showed activity in the front of the brain, where happiness registers.

“Many of us associate the holidays with positive memories and our brains are wired to respond in certain ways when we view certain images, either pleasant or unpleasant,” Dr. Schnitzlein says. “If the holiday memories you have are happy, your brain is more likely to respond in a way that represents happiness or joy.”

It works for music, too, she adds.

“Musical concepts like tempo, rhythm and key impact mood,” she notes. “Major keys, in which many holiday songs are written, are considered happy sounding and can put us in the holiday mindset and spirit.”

This, research indicates, might be why retailers start playing holiday tunes early, hoping they encourage spending.

Not feeling so happy? This might explain why.

The music, lights and trappings of the holidays don’t feel joyous to everyone, however.

“Certainly, may people have strong family connections and wonderful family traditions, which helps promote a positive outlook during the holidays,” Dr. Schnitzlein says. “That said, not everyone has these connections, and they can feel isolated during the holidays.”

Another consideration, she adds, is the 38% of people who, when surveyed, reported increased stress, anxiety and other mental health concerns.

“We have to remember that, although the holidays can spark joy in a large part of the population, it can also be challenging to those with strained family relationships or limited financial means,” Dr. Schnitzlein says.

Court docket lets Tennessee 6-7 days abortion ban take impact | Overall health and Fitness

July 7, 2022 Vera

By JONATHAN MATTISE and KIMBERLEE KRUESI – Connected Push

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A federal courtroom on Tuesday permitted Tennessee’s ban on abortion as early as six weeks into being pregnant to take impact, citing the Supreme Court’s selection final week overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights case.

The motion by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court docket of Appeals comes ahead of Tennessee’s other abortion ban, the so-known as cause ban, is predicted to limit abortion pretty much solely by mid-August, according to a recently thorough lawful interpretation by the condition lawyer general. Both actions would make accomplishing an abortion a felony and subject doctors to up to 15 yrs in jail if convicted.

Republican Legal professional Normal Herbert Slatery submitted an emergency movement Friday to let condition to start utilizing the 6-week ban. GOP supermajorities in the Legislature passed the law in 2020 with Republican Gov. Invoice Lee’s backing, and it was immediately blocked in federal court docket.

Especially, the ban halts abortion after cardiac exercise is detected, which is all-around 6 months in pregnancy— when most girls don’t know they are pregnant.

“There are a good deal of issues that I am quite passionate about and choose really individually in this work that I have, but … this was the most critical detail that I could do as governor,” Lee explained whilst speaking pretty much with anti-abortion religious leaders Friday, immediately after the Supreme Court docket ruling.

Lee reported Tuesday that the federal appeals court’s final decision marked “another significant defense for unborn little ones in our state.”

It only can make an exception when an abortion is important to stop the woman’s death or “serious hazard of sizeable and irreversible impairment of a main bodily perform.” Nonetheless, it specifies that a woman’s mental health and fitness does not qualify for an exemption.

“Abortion bans rob folks of their potential to make the selections that are greatest for themselves, their lives, and their futures,” said Ashley Coffield, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi, in a assertion. “It is unconscionable that Tennesseans will drop accessibility to abortion in their communities for the reason that of this selection.”

Prepared Parenthood was not executing abortions at its services in Nashville and Memphis on Monday in anticipation of courtroom action to unblock the 6-week ban, reported spokesperson Matt Anderson.

Separately,

Turnaway Study offers insights on the impact of losing access to abortion : Shots

May 22, 2022 Vera

With Roe v. Wade primed to be overruled, people seeking abortions could soon face new barriers in many states. Researcher Diana Greene Foster documented what happens when someone is denied an abortion in The Turnaway Study.

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Though it’s impossible to know exactly what will happen to abortion access if Roe v. Wade is overturned, demographer Diana Greene Foster does know what happens when someone is denied an abortion. She documented it in her groundbreaking yearslong research project, The Turnaway Study and her findings provide insight into the ways getting an abortion – or being denied one – affects a person’s mental health and economic wellbeing.

For over 10 years, Dr. Foster and her team of researchers tracked the experiences of women who’d received abortions or who had been denied them because of clinic policies on gestational age limits.

The research team regularly interviewed each of nearly 1,000 women for five years and found those who’d been denied abortion experienced worse economic and mental health outcomes than the cohort that received care. And 95% of study participants who received an abortion said they made the right decision.

The idea for the Turnaway Study emerged from a 2007 Supreme Court abortion case, Gonzales v. Carhart. In the majority opinion upholding a ban on a specific procedure used rarely in later abortions, Justice Anthony Kennedy speculated that abortions led to poor mental health. “While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon, it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained,” he wrote. “Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow.”

Dr. Diana Greene Foster is the lead researcher on the interdisciplinary team behind The Turnaway Study.

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Kennedy’s speculation — and admitted lack of evidence — captured Foster’s attention, “because you can’t make policy based on assumptions of what seems reasonable without talking to a representative sample of people who actually wanted an abortion,” she said. The Turnaway Study fact-checked the justice’s guess, finding that not having a wanted

Climate change: The impact on health

April 24, 2022 Vera

The consensus among scientists is that we are in an era of global heating and extreme weather events, primarily due to the devastating effects of human action on the environment. Why are researchers concerned, and what are the implications for health?

The Lancet Countdown team is a group of over 120 leading experts on climate, public health, economy, and political science — among others — who have committed to monitoring climate change, particularly its impact on global health.

Since 2015, the year of the Paris Agreement, the experts affiliated with the Lancet Countdown commission have published yearly reports assessing this situation and keeping signatory governments and decision-makers accountable for the commitments they have taken on following the Agreement.

The latest report, which appeared in The Lancet in October 2021, records “deepening inequities” across all regions as global heating remains a concern. The report discusses the impact of climate change in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it emphasizes the concern caused by extreme heat events and related natural disasters that have occurred over the past 2 years.

Among the issues outlined in the Lancet Countdown report 2021, there is the impact of climate change on the livelihood of communities around the world, its direct and indirect effect on mental and physical health, and the way in which it contributes to the spread of infectious diseases.

These findings largely coincide with those outlined by another set of landmark reports on climate change — those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

According to the IPCC 2022 reports, at present, extreme weather events caused by human action are surpassing the resilience of some ecological and human systems, sometimes with irreversible effects.

The reports show that weather extremes related to climate change have affected the productivity of various food sectors — including agricultural, forestry, and fishery sectors — around the world, thus exacerbating food insecurity.

They also emphasize the impact of climate change on mental health, and the ways in which it contributes to the spread of vector-borne communicable diseases.

In our latest installment of the In Conversation podcast, we discuss these aspects at length with two key experts. One of them is Prof. David Pencheon, honorary professor of health and sustainable development at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, and founder of the Sustainable Development Unit for National Health Services England and Public Health England.

Our

Doctor fired from ER warns about impact of for-financial gain companies on U.S. health treatment

March 31, 2022 Vera

Clients searching for unexpected emergency treatment at the hectic Overland Park Regional Health-related Centre in Kansas around Kansas Metropolis, Missouri, did not know their safety was potentially at threat. But the medical director of the crisis division saw the hazard in 2012 and for many years urged his bosses to tackle it by introducing team associates.

Then he was fired.

What happened to the health care director, a former Army health care provider named Ray Brovont, isn’t an anomaly, some medical professionals say. It is a escalating problem as more emergency departments are staffed by for-earnings firms. A laser focus on earnings in health care can imperil patients, they say, but when some physicians have questioned the practices, they have been let go. Medical professionals who keep on being employed see that talking out can put their occupations on the line.

Now, an believed 40-plus per cent of the country’s hospital crisis departments are overseen by for-profit overall health care staffing businesses owned by private fairness corporations, tutorial investigate, regulatory filings and interior paperwork clearly show. Two of the greatest, according to their websites and news releases, are Imagine Healthcare, owned by KKR, and TeamHealth, of the Blackstone Group. EmCare, the wellness care staffing corporation that managed Brovont, is aspect of Imagine.

Non-public equity corporations have taken around a broad swath of health treatment entities in current decades. They use substantial amounts of debt to obtain organizations, aiming to boost their revenue speedily so they can resell them at gains in a number of several years.

There’s a explanation private equity firms have invested in businesses staffing clinic emergency departments, reported Richard M. Scheffler, a professor of well being economics and general public plan at the College of California, Berkeley.

“The revenue in the healthcare facility is in the ER,” he claimed. “It is the largest net generator and a big profit middle for nearly all hospitals.” The trouble, he explained, is that “ER doctors are becoming told how to practice medicine” by monetary supervisors.

Brovont, the fired Overland Park unexpected emergency place medical professional, agreed.

“These directors who make these improvements and put into action these procedures really don’t come to feel the downstream outcomes of their plan alterations,” he said. “They glimpse at the end result, and the result is ‘Hey, we’re making cash.’”

Three areas at once

As a previous armed service

Pressure on healthcare input costs

Clinical labor

But where does that ‘holiday spirit’ come from?

If your holiday memories are happy, your brain will be too.

Not feeling so happy? This might explain why.

Individuals are also reading…

Three areas at once