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The AARP just met with the leadership of the Mayo Clinic, one of the most outstanding medical institutions in the country. They provide excellent care at a cost that is less than most other parts of the healthcare system - and with improved outcomes. We asked them about their secret to success. Mayo has an electronic medical record and all their patients have their information online. The physicians are on salary, so there's no incentive to order unnecessary tests or procedures, and Mayo has an ethic of patient-centered care, with a long history of attracting the best people and rewarding them. If Mayo can do it, why can't everyone else? The AARP believes that the potential is there for most communities to have excellent care - we must emulate the care delivery of institutions like the Mayo Clinic, and put in place payment and information systems that will coordinate care management better. It's a big job and will take some investment, but we have many opportunities to do a better job than we're doing today.

"This series includes three Reviews about intensive care medicine. The papers describe the evolution of the specialty, the demand for and ability to supply appropriate levels of care, and some of the commonly faced ethical dilemmas and challenges. These topics are apt in this period of economic constraint. Intensive care medicine consumes a considerable proportion of health-care resources and these costs will need to be justified. The appropriateness and effectiveness of the care provided will need to be improved to ensure that these resources are directed to patients most in need of them. "

"Patients and clinicians share why it's important to ask questions and offer ways that you can ask questions and get your health care needs met. In these short, compelling videos, patients talk about how simple questions can help you take better care of yourself, feel better, and get the right care at the right time. Doctors and nurses talk about how your questions help them take better care of you and offer advice on how you can be an active member of your health care team and get your most pressing questions answered."

"WHAT TO DO WHEN A PATIENT LACKS CAPACITY - The degree and urgency with which to act on findings of impaired capacity depends on multiple factors, including the expected duration of impairment, the severity of the impairment, and the seriousness of the decision. Unless the urgency of a patient's medical condition requires that a substituted decision be made immediately, efforts should be made to identify and correct any reversible causes of the impairment [26]. This is particularly relevant in hospitalized patients with impaired capacity due to delirium. Treatment of the underlying causes of delirium may restore decision-making capacity. Patients with mild to moderate cognitive impairment that is not expected to fluctuate may benefit from more intensive efforts at education to improve understanding of the relevant facts, followed by reassessment of decision-making abilities. A randomized trial found that a memory and organizational aid given to patients with mild stage Alzheimer disease dementia (n = 80) improved performance on understanding, which in turn increased the likelihood of being judged capable of providing informed consent to enroll in a clinical trial [34]. This enhancement was also effective in a randomized trial with middle-aged and older adults with schizophrenia [35]. For patients whose impairments are severe enough that they are judged to lack the capacity to make a decision, there is a clear ethical obligation to seek out a substitute decision maker. Substitute or surrogate decision makers should ideally have been chosen by the patient in advance. In the absence of a designated surrogate, laws may vary in terms of which people can serve in this proxy role and their hierarchy; in general, the order is the spouse, adult children, parents, siblings, and other relatives. (See "Legal aspects in palliative and end of life care", section on 'Surrogate decision makers'.) When making a substituted decision, the proxy should take into consideration

Homeless persons may be underserved by the end-of-life care system as a result of barriers that they face to accessing end-of-life care services. Changes in the rules and regulations that reflect the health needs and circumstances of homeless persons and measures to improve continuity of care have the potential to increase equity in the end-of-life care system for this underserved population.

While More Americans Need Access to Essential Healthcare, Fewer Primary Care Clinicians Are Available to Treat Them. UVA Professor Says Increased Funding for Title VII Programs May Help Alleviate National Shortage of Primary Care Doctors and Dentists

A health care administration degree provides the skills and knowledge that you require to help ensure that your organization has strong  management and administration.  This page gives you more information about what is involved in studying online masters and PhDs in health care administration, where you can study them, and the job and salary prospects after completion.

Families are an immense resource in the care, treatment and recovery of individuals with co-occurring mental health and addiction problems. However, they often have limited access to the resources, information and help that they need to be supportive to the ones they love. This six-week online course for health care providers explores the needs of families affected by concurrent disorders as well as the strategies that health care providers can use to empower families and ensure that their experiences are more positive. The recommended pre-requisite for this course is the Concurrent Disorders Core Course.

The Institute for Health Improvement site which includes free on-line courses. You just need to sign up for a free account to view these. "The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) is an independent not-for-profit organization helping to lead the improvement of health care throughout the world. Founded in 1991 and based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, IHI works to accelerate improvement by building the will for change, cultivating promising concepts for improving patient care, and helping health care systems put those ideas into action."

"The 3.0 platform update means that now all the apps have refined drawing tools. Can't draw a straight arrow? No problem, we took care of that! Want bold, italic, or larger text? We took care of that too! In addition, you can now scale, rotate, and change the opacity of stamps. All this so you can quickly and easily explain conditions and procedures at the point of care."

"We believe that graphic stories have an important role in patient care, medical education, and the social critique of the medical profession. What follows is an introduction to graphic stories, with some examples of what they are, how and why they work, and how they can enhance teaching and patient care."

"COMFORT is an acronym that stands for the basic principles of palliative care communication and comprises seven modules (Communication, Orientation/Opportunity, Mindfulness, Family, Openings, Relating, Team). These communication skills training modules are designed to highlight interprofessional care and communication. Each module of the COMFORT curriculum can stand alone as a teaching activity or can be integrated into a new or existing course. Modules C (narrative clinical communication) and F (family caregivers) provide beginner level instruction, while M (mindfulness), O/O (orientation), and T (team) provide intermediate instruction and O (openings) and R (relating) provide advanced communication skills and are intended for learners who have clinical observation experience."

"The AMS Phoenix Project: A Call to Caring is based on the premise that health professionals provide the best care when they are able to balance human compassion and technical expertise. "

"The curriculum introduces a simple, stepwise framework for delivering high-value care and focuses on teaching trainees to incorporate high-value, cost-conscious care principles into their clinical practice. It consists of ten 1-hour, case-based, interactive sessions designed to be flexibly incorporated into the existing conference structure of a residency training program."

"The home is an outstanding setting for education of medical students, providing wonderful opportunities to enrich students' appreciation of the patient-physician relationship; of interdisciplinary care; and of the challenging biomedical, psychosocial, and spiritual aspects of care."

A health care administration degree provides the skills and knowledge to help your organization have a strong management and administration. Find out more ...

This website is designed to serve as a practical guide to health care providers, planners and consumers for determining the inclusion or exclusion, content and frequency of a wide variety of preventive health interventions, using the evidence-based recommendations of the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care (CTFPHC)*.

"By offloading tasks from the 15-minute visit in order to prioritize the patient's agenda, adding group, telephone, and electronic encounters, and reorganizing services with the aim of maximizing the health of a practice's entire patient population, innovative primary care practices could lead primary care out of crisis into an era of renewal."

This article seems to advocate the trend in UK based primary care- but key questions remain unanswered, can trust be transferred from the individual doctor to the team? Does this dilute the 'doctor as drug' benefit?