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Healthcare Payment Systems: An Introduction
by Duane C. AbbeyHealthcare Payment Systems: An Introduction provides a complete introduction to healthcare payment systems. Written by Duane Abbey, one of the nation‘s leading experts and most sought out consultants on payment systems, this volume makes the monumental task of medical reimbursement approachable and manageable. Covering the fundamentals and terminology needed to understand this discipline, and the strategies needed to master it, Dr. Abbey will help you begin to develop the solid core of skills and knowledge needed to confidently approach payment systems as tools to use rather than hazards to avoid -- tools that will lead to improved revenue cycles and higher levels of profitability.
Healthcare Payment Systems: Fee Schedule Payment Systems
by Duane C. AbbeyFor healthcare providers and patients alike, the ways of private third-party payer payment systems can be mysterious and oftentimes quite frustrating. Payment for hospital, nursing, or homecare services can be subject to a variety of payment systems including cost-based and charge-based or those with payments that are determined in advance. Knowing
Healthcare Policy, Innovation and Digitalization: Contemporary Strategy and Approaches (Accounting, Finance, Sustainability, Governance & Fraud: Theory and Application)
by Eyüp Çetin Hilal ÖzenThis book takes a deep look at healthcare in today’s post-pandemic world. It combines both theory and application to reflect a new era for healthcare. The need for innovation, digitalization, and enhanced policies in healthcare has never been greater than it is today. Taking this need into consideration, this book offers a multidisciplinary approach to healthcare, in both managerial and clinical views. Since the book combines both qualitative and quantitative studies about healthcare, readers will receive a broad view of healthcare issues and policies in today’s world.
The Healthcare Practitioner's Handbook of Management
by Larry D. GrieshaberThe American system of healthcare is rapidly changing. Today, more and more of an emphasis is being placed on management skills-organizing, coordinating and managing the resources required for providing quality patient care. Medical practitioners are now expected to be efficient administrators as well as skilled clinicians. Although some may see this as a difficult hurdle, The Healthcare Practitioner's Handbook of Management shows that many healthcare providers are already well-prepared to perform management roles effectively. Through their education and clinical experience, most clinicians now have the problem-solving skills required for management - it's simply a matter of applying these skills to a different arena.In keeping with this idea, each chapter of The Healthcare Practitioner's Handbook of Management links a management topic to a clinical analogy and presents diagnostic and treatment approaches to the issue at hand. In addition, the book introduces the healthcare professional to the vocabulary and basic theories of management and shows how to transform clinical skills into managerial skills. In today's complex health care environment, these management skills are not just helpful, but essential.
Healthcare Reform, Quality and Safety: Perspectives, Participants, Partnerships and Prospects in 30 Countries
by Jeffrey Braithwaite Yukihiro Matsuyama Julie JohnsonThis book offers a global perspective on healthcare reform and its relationship with efforts to improve quality and safety. It looks at the ways reforms have developed in 30 countries, and specifically the impact national reform initiatives have had on the quality and safety of care. It explores how reforms drive quality and safety improvement, and equally how they act to negate such goals. Every country included in this book is involved in a reform and improvement process, but each takes place in a particular social, cultural, economic and developmental context, leading to differing emphases and varied progress. Methods for tackling common problems - financing, efficiencies, effectiveness, evidence-based practice, institutional reforms, quality improvement, and patient safety initiatives - also differ. Representatives from each nation provide a chapter to convey their own situation. The editors draw a conclusion from these numerous contributions and synthesize the themes emerging into a coherent ’lessons learned’ summary that delivers value to the numerous stakeholders. Healthcare Reform, Quality and Safety forms a compendium of the current ’state of the art’ in global healthcare reform. This is the first book of its type, and offers a unique opportunity for cross-fertilization of ideas to the mutual benefit of countries involved in the project. The content will be of interest to governments, policymakers, managers and leaders, clinicians, teaching academics, researchers and students.
Healthcare Relationship Marketing: Strategy, Design and Measurement
by Ira J. HaimowitzIn recent years there have been dramatic changes in the pharmaceutical promotional landscape, affecting both consumers and healthcare professionals. One consequence of these dynamics is the need for pharmaceutical companies to plan new kinds of dialogue and relationships with their stakeholders. The evolution has been from mass-channel "push" marketing to two-way, multi-channel relationship marketing. Targeted Emails, webinars, mobile messages, and social networks are expanding in usage. This book is a practical overview and resource guide for the design and measurement of pharmaceutical relationship marketing (RM) programs. There are descriptions of each aspect of pharmaceutical RM design and measurement, including a running case study with follow-up exercises. The author has also conducted interviews from several pharmaceutical marketing industry experts, each having 15 years or more of working healthcare RM knowledge, and each speaking on their specific specialities. For newcomers to healthcare marketing, this book can serve as a foundation and introduction that provides framework, details, and examples of both relationship marketing designs and associated measurement disciplines. Healthcare Relationship Marketing will also be valuable to readers currently working in pharmaceutical marketing or sales who may not have exposure to the particular disciplines of relationship marketing and direct response measurement and optimization. Even for the experienced practitioner this will serve as a convenient reference that pulls together all of the program components and measurement frameworks within a single book. This book may also serve as a textbook within a university course in marketing, or a pharmaceutical business program.
Healthcare Safety for Nursing Personnel: An Organizational Guide to Achieving Results
by James T. TweedyNursing personnel play an integral role in healthcare and medical delivery organizations. Nurses not only work to keep patients safe, but must also contend with a number of safety and health risks. Illustrating the occupational risks nurses face, Healthcare Safety for Nursing Personnel: An Organizational Guide to Achieving Results addresses healthc
Healthcare Security: Solutions for Management, Operations, and Administration
by Anthony Luizzo Bernard J. ScaglioneHealthcare is on a critical path, evolving with the introduction of Obama Care and now COVID-19. How will healthcare and specifically healthcare security adapt over the next few years? What tools will be necessary for healthcare security professionals and all security professionals to meet the demands of the transforming security environment? Security professionals need new tools and programs to adapt security services to the “New Normal.” As healthcare emerges from pandemic threats, active shooter and workplace violence will re-emerge and new threats related to civil unrest, fraud, mergers, and further financial struggles will change how healthcare security will function. Healthcare Security: Solutions for Management, Operations, and Administration provides a series of articles related to the management and operations of healthcare security which will assist healthcare security professionals in managing the “New Normal” now and into the future. It is a collection of previously published articles on healthcare security and general security covering various topics related to the management of healthcare security and provides information on general security operations. It also includes unconventional topics that are necessary in the administration of healthcare security such as auditing principles, fraud prevention, investigations, interview and interrogation techniques, and forensics.
A Healthcare Solution: A Patient-Centered, Resource Management Perspective (Resource Management)
by Mark A. Vonderembse David D. DobrzykowskiThe evidence is undeniable. By any measure, the US spends more on healthcare than any other country in the world, yet its health outcomes as measure by longevity are in the bottom half among developed countries, and its health-related quality of life has remained constant or declined since 1998. In addition to high costs and lower than expected outcomes, the healthcare delivery system is plagues by treatment delays as it can take weeks to see a specialist, and many people have limited or no access to care. Part of the challenge is that the healthcare delivery system is a large, complex, and sophisticated value creation chain. Successfully changing this highly interconnected system is difficult and time consuming because the underlying problems are hard to comprehend, the root causes are many, the solution is unclear, and the relationships among problems, causes, and solution are multifaceted. To address these issues, the book carefully explains the underlying problems, examines their root causes using information, data, and logic, and presents a comprehensive and integrated solution that addresses these causes. These three steps are the methodological backbone of this book. A solution depends on understanding and applying the principles of patient-centered care (PCC) and resource management. PCC puts patients, supported by their primary care physicians, back in the role as decision makers and depends on patients being responsible for their health including making good life-style choices. After all, the best way to reduce healthcare costs and increase quality of life is to improve our health and wellness and as a result need less care. In addition, health insurance must be rethought and redesigned so it is less likely to lead to overuse. For many people with health insurance, the out-of-pocket cost of healthcare are small, so healthcare decision making is often biased toward consumption. Effective resource management means that healthcare providers must do a better job of acquiring and using resources in order to provide care quickly, productively, and correctly. This means improving healthcare strategy and management, accelerating the use of information technology, making drug costs affordable and fair, reducing the incidence of malpractice, and rebuilding the provider network.In addition, implementation is difficult because there are many participants in the healthcare delivery value chain, such as physicians, nurses, and medical technicians, as well as many provider organizations, such as hospitals, clinics, physician offices, and labs. Further up the value chain there are pharmaceutical companies, equipment providers, and other suppliers. These participants have diverse and sometimes conflicting goals, but each must be willing to accept change and work in a coordinated manner to improve healthcare. To overcome these problems, strong national leadership is needed to get the attention and support from the people and organizations involved in healthcare and to make the comprehensive changes that will lower healthcare costs, improve healthcare quality, eliminate delays, increase access, and enhance patient satisfaction.
Healthcare Staff Scheduling: Emerging Fuzzy Optimization Approaches
by Michael Mutingi Charles MbohwaHealthcare operations, in hospitals and home healthcare settings, are inundated with complex fuzzy features that impose difficulties in the creation of work schedules. This book presents in-depth research on emerging approaches to healthcare staff scheduling. It starts by reviewing the key issues and challenges inherent in staff scheduling, along with the basic concepts of fuzzy set theory. Examining cutting-edge research applications, it details fuzzy optimization algorithms derived from biologically inspired approaches and fuzzy theory. Facilitating a practical and in-depth understanding of modern fuzzy metaheuristic optimization approaches, the book presents recent research on multi-criteria algorithms and their applications in healthcare operations, particularly staff scheduling.
Healthcare Teams Manual: Building Continuous Quality Improvement Facilitator's Guide
by Peter MearsThis work provides the reader with an understanding of team building in a health care environment, and shows managers how to build a team that is committed to delivering quality. Topics covered include key quality concepts, team exercises, how to be a team member, team empowerment and continuous quality improvement. The facilitator's guide provides all the lesson plans, overhead projection masters and guides to all the exercises necessary for the team leader or trainer to run a teambuilding workshop.
Healthcare Technology Management - A Systematic Approach
by Francis Hegarty John Amoore Paul Blackett Justin McCarthy Richard ScottHealthcare Technology Management: A Systematic Approach offers a comprehensive description of a method for providing safe and cost effective healthcare technology management (HTM). The approach is directed to enhancing the value (benefit in relation to cost) of the medical equipment assets of healthcare organizations to best support patients, clinicians and other care providers, as well as financial stakeholders. The authors propose a management model based on interlinked strategic and operational quality cycles which, when fully realized, delivers a comprehensive and transparent methodology for implementing a HTM programme throughout a healthcare organization. The approach proposes that HTM extends beyond managing the technology in isolation to include advancing patient care through supporting the application of the technology. The book shows how to cost effectively manage medical equipment through its full life cycle, from acquisition through operational use to disposal, and to advance care, adding value to the medical equipment assets for the benefit of patients and stakeholders. This book will be of interest to practicing clinical engineers and to students and lecturers, and includes self-directed learning questions and case studies. Clinicians, Chief Executive Officers, Directors of Finance and other hospital managers with responsibility for the governance of medical equipment will also find this book of interest and value. For more information about the book, please visit the website.
Healthcare Transformation: A Guide for the Health System Board Member
by Maulik Joshi, Dr.P.H. Aaron George, DOThe purpose of this book is to offer health system board members an actionable, concise guide on their role as well as provide updates on key changes in health care delivery, including evidence and contemporary examples.The goal is for any board member to have an opportunity to not only be literate in healthcare, but to be supportive and engaged in the transformation of their organization and the industry towards improving health. Hospital and Health system board members, regardless of their experience and expertise, are challenged with keeping pace with healthcare performance and strategy. Surveys continue to show that this is not their comfort level, given healthcare complexity and the rate of recent change and targets for transformation. The aim of this book is to keep the guide concise so that all board members can become fairly literate on the major issues, with an emphasis on recent updates in healthcare, for today and the future.This is an ideal book for new board members for their orientation to the Board and for all board members to use to have a knowledge base and a set of questions to facilitate their engagement on these important issues. Much has changed since the initial printing of Healthcare Transformation in 2009, and this 2nd edition provides updated resources and more contemporary examples and lessons for both new and seasoned board members. This edition updates all chapters and provides 3 new transformers/chapters to consider.
Healthcare Transformation: A Guide for the Hospital Board Member
by Maulik Joshi Bernard HorakDesigned for easy reference, this concise manual provides hospital board members and executives with practical guidance on how to become actively engaged in the transformation of their organization. It focuses on how the healthcare industry as a whole is transforming and stresses the importance of having board members who are knowledgeable and skil
Healthcare Valuation, The Financial Appraisal of Enterprises, Assets, and Services: The Financial Appraisal Of Enterprises, Assets, And Services
by Robert James CimasiA timely look at the healthcare valuation process in an era of dynamic healthcare reform, including theory, methodology, and professional standards In light of the dynamic nature of the healthcare industry sector, the analysis supporting business valuation engagements for healthcare enterprises, assets, and services must address the expected economic conditions and events resulting from the four pillars of the healthcare industry: Reimbursement, Regulation, Competition, and Technology. Healthcare Valuation presents specific attributes of each of these enterprises, assets, and services and how research needs and valuation processes differentiate depending on the subject of the appraisal, the environment the property interest exists, and the nature of the practices. Includes theory, methodology, and professional standards as well as requisite research, analytical, and reporting functions in delivering healthcare valuation services Provides useful process tools such as worksheets and checklists, relevant case studies, plus a website that will include comprehensive glossaries and topical bibliographies Read Healthcare Valuation for a comprehensive treatise of valuation issues in the healthcare field including trends of compensation and reimbursement, technology and intellectual property, and newly emerging healthcare entities.
The Healthcare Value Chain: Demystifying the Role of GPOs and PBMs
by Lawton Robert BurnsThis volume analyzes group purchasing organizations (GPOs) and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) in order to better understand the significant roles that these entities play in the healthcare supply chain. It examines who they contract with, on what terms, and who they represent and answer to while charting their historical development. The analysis reveals that the current roles of both players have historical roots that explain why they behave the way they do. Finally, the book reviews the evidence base on the performance results of these two players. This work fills a void in our understanding about two important and controversial players in the healthcare value chain. Both organizations are cloaked in secrecy — partly by virtue of the private sector contracts they negotiate, partly by virtue of the lack of academic attention. Both play potentially important roles in controlling healthcare costs, albeit using contracting strategies and reimbursement mechanisms that arouse suspicion among stakeholders. This timely text explicates how these organizations arose and evolved to shed more light on how they really operate.
Healthcare Value Proposition: Creating a Culture of Excellence in Patient Experience
by Vincent K. OmachonuNever before in the healthcare industry has there been such intense emphasis and open debate on the issue of quality. The steady rise in the cost of healthcare coupled with the need for quality have combined to put the healthcare industry at the top of the national agenda. Quality, costs, and service are not just socially provocative ideas. They are critical criteria for decision-making by patients, physicians, and many key constituents of healthcare organizations. The pursuit of improved performance has driven a host of executives and managers in search of techniques for structuring, rehabilitating, redesigning, and reengineering the organizations they serve. Unfortunately, the narrow-mindedness with which programs are implemented and the discontinuity in their application weaken the promise of success. The process of quality improvement can become an undisciplined search for illusions rather than reality. For many years, healthcare managers have embraced the narrow definition of performance solely in the context of financial success. Forward-thinking executives now realize that the road to financial success begins with success in quality and service. Quality and service are no longer separate issues – they are the same. Neither one by itself will bring about lasting success. The ultimate measure of performance is in an organization’s ability to create value for its customers, and true performance must be measured in the context of the customers’ total experience. This book is about how to manage performance in the context of value to the customer or patient. It brings together the many pieces of the performance improvement puzzle – quality, technology, costs, productivity, and customer service. The author also covers process improvement tools including Lean and Six Sigma, and how to create a culture of continuous improvement as well as how to improve the patient experience and productivity improvement strategies. The book is filled with examples, illustrations, and tools for improving key aspects of a healthcare organization’s performance.
Healthcare Workforce Transitioning: Competency Conversations through World Café
by Dr. Anne DrabczykHealthcare Workforce Transitioning shares with educators and healthcare professionals alike the awareness, integration, and partnership that results from a successful process of framing a Healthcare Management Program around core competencies. To transition toward a successful healthcare career requires proficiencies in communication, leadership, professionalism, knowledge of the healthcare environment, and business skills. Competencies provide context to curriculum construction and build awareness of the role this standard plays in a career-ready workforce. Integrating professional development and service learning into co-curricular activities further strengthens outcomes. Partnering with healthcare professionals through ongoing World Café conversations, contributes a touchstone about expectations and accountabilities to be successful in a career. This book draws on the World Café methodology, guidelines, and vignettes in developing performance assessment, coaching, training, and performance reviews. The author provides lessons learned throughout the text to illustrate the points made in the chapters. It also provides a proven participatory methodology applied to competency exploration, application, and authentication.
HEALTHCARE's OUT SICK - PREDICTING A CURE - Solutions that WORK !!!!: Predictive Analytic Modeling, Decision Making, INNOVATIONS and Precision Medicine Necessary to Correct the Broken Healthcare Delivery System
by Linda Miner Gary D. Miner Darrell L. DeanThe U.S. healthcare system is in "complete chaos-disarray." Medical costs have increased significantly over the past 6 years with 70% increase for deductibles and 24% or more for health insurance premiums. All the while, workers earnings have either not increased or if they did, the pay raises were for less than the increase in the cost of medical care. The situation is unsustainable and the public wants the system fixed. This book offers ways of fixing the problems in healthcare. HEALTHCARE's OUT SICK - PREDICTING A CURE - Solutions that WORK !!!! first defines the "healthcare in crisis" problem. Through real patient experiences, the book describes the difficulties of getting through the maze of complexity among the plethora of "silo providers" which make up the industry. The heart of the book provides readers with a comprehensive solution that can work, a disruption that is necessary to provide Americans the medical care they need without the US public and healthcare providers and payors going into bankruptcy, insolvency or closure. This book delves into digitized medicine, payor and provider reimbursement models, and value-based healthcare delivery. It also includes a philosophy or mode of thinking and operation for the solutions that are needed for diagnosis-effective, cost-effective, and time-efficient healthcare delivery, of which digitized medicine, value-based care, and payor reimbursement modes are just some of the factors. The authors propose that the real solution involves having the patient at the center of the issues and changing from an archaic gold standard way of thinking to a "Predictive Analytic thinking" where one gets at the real truth by doing "real science" that in the end becomes effective not only for the population but for the individual person. This all leads to real person-centered and person-directed medicine and healthcare delivery.
Healthtech Innovation: How Entrepreneurs Can Define and Build the Value of Their New Products
by Silvia MicaloToday, over 500,000 medical technologies are available in hospitals, homes, and community care settings. They range from simple bandages to complex, multi-part body scanners that cost millions of dollars to develop. Yet a typical technology has a lifecycle of just 21 months before an improved product usurps it—the healthcare ecosystem is rapidly advancing and driven by a constant flow of innovation. And those innovations need innovators. With $21 billion made available for investment in the digital healthcare industry in 2020 (a 20x increase on 2010), entrepreneurs, investors, and related actors are entering the healthcare ecosystem in greater numbers than ever before. Last year alone, over 17,000 medical technology patents were filed, the third highest of all patent types. Each of those has a dedicated team of entrepreneurs behind it. Yet with increasingly strict regulations and pharmaceutical giants growing more aggressive, many thousands of entrepreneurs fail before even the patent stage: just 2% secure revenue or adoption. Healthtech Innovation: How Entrepreneurs Can Define and Build the Value of Their New Products is a down-to-earth survival guide for entrepreneurs struggling to secure a strategic position within the healthtech ecosystem. Which is expected that by 2026, the global digital health market size will be around $657 billion. This book is designed to help innovators navigate this complex and newly volatile landscape. It covers business strategy, marketing, funding acquisition, and operation in a global regulatory context. It is written in simple language, evidenced by the latest academic and industry research, and explained using real-world examples and case studies.
Healthy Ageing after COVID-19: Research and Policy Perspectives from Asia (ISSN)
by Wang-Kin Chiu and Vincent T. S. LawWritten by researchers and experienced health professionals from Hong Kong, China, Chiu and Law identify and examine important issues of healthy ageing after COVID-19 from research and policy perspectives in the Asian contexts.This book opens with discussions of healthy ageing from personal, social, economic, and political perspectives. These discussions make reference to the key characteristics of a community health model. It aims to examine the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on aged care in an international perspective, citing the fifth wave of COVID-19 in Hong Kong as a case report. Comprehensive analysis on the influence of COVID-19 infection on Hong Kong and the implemented anti-pandemic policy measures, as well as recommendations of post-pandemic policies to promote healthy ageing, are provided. This monograph also reviews the worldwide impacts on aged care during and after the pandemic, as well as the experience of aged care services in Hong Kong and other Asia-Pacific regions. The responding changes in policies and strategies for healthy ageing in selected countries are also reviewed. This monograph ends with a highlight on the design and development of a community model for healthy ageing, providing insights to the achievement of sustainable healthy ageing with reference to the sustainable development goal (SDG) 3.A valuable resource to governments, politicians, academics, and practitioners, it is intended for formulating future directions of relevant research, and the design and implementation of interventions for the promotion of healthy ageing in the post-pandemic era.
Healthy at Work
by Markus Wiencke Mirella Cacace Sebastian FischerThis book aims at exploring the link between corporate and organizational culture, public and private policy, leadership and managerial skills or attitudes, and the successful implementation of work-related healthcare in Europe. Therefore it brings together a wide range of empirical and theoretical contributions from occupational health, management, psychology, economics, and (organizational) sociology to address the question of how to sustainably promote occupational health. Such important questions are answered as: What aspects of a corporate culture can be associated with health issues? How does leadership style affect the health of employees? How are health-related decisions in the workplace affected by the political environment? To what extent are interventions influenced by corporate culture, leadership and public policy? How can we make such interventions sustainable?
Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity
by Joseph G. Allen John D. Macomber“This book should be essential reading for all who commission, design, manage, and use buildings—indeed anyone who is interested in a healthy environment.” —Norman Foster A forensic investigator of “sick buildings” and Director of Harvard’s Healthy Buildings Program teams up with a CEO-turned–Harvard Business School professor to reveal the secrets of a healthy building—and unlock one of the greatest business opportunities of our time. By the time you reach eighty, you will have spent seventy-two years of your life indoors. Like it or not, humans have become an indoor species. This means that the people who design, build, and maintain our buildings can have a major impact on our health. Ever feel tired during a meeting? That’s because most offices and conference rooms are not bringing in enough fresh air. When that door opens, it literally breathes life back into the room. But there is a lot more acting on your body that you can’t feel or see. From our offices and homes to our schools and hospitals, the indoor spaces where we work, learn, play, eat, and heal have an outsized influence on our performance and wellbeing. They affect our creativity, focus, and problem-solving ability and can make us sick—dragging down profits in the process. Charismatic pioneers of the healthy building movement who have paired up to combine the cutting-edge science of Harvard’s School of Public Health with the financial know-how of the Harvard Business School, Joseph Allen and John Macomber lay out the science of healthy buildings and make the business case for owners, developers, and CEOs. They reveal the 9 Foundations of a Healthy Building, and show how tracking health performance indicators with smart technology can boost performance and create economic value. While the “green” building movement tackled energy, waste, and water, the new healthy building movement focuses on the most important (and expensive) asset of any business: its people.
Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Can Make You Sick—or Keep You Well
by Joseph G. Allen John D. MacomberA revised and updated edition of the landmark work the New York Times hailed as “a call to action for every developer, building owner, shareholder, chief executive, manager, teacher, worker and parent to start demanding healthy buildings with cleaner indoor air.”For too long we’ve designed buildings that haven’t focused on the people inside—their health, their ability to work effectively, and what that means for the bottom line. An authoritative introduction to a movement whose vital importance is now all too clear, Healthy Buildings breaks down the science and makes a compelling business case for creating healthier offices, schools, and homes.As the COVID-19 crisis brought into sharp focus, indoor spaces can make you sick—or keep you healthy. Fortunately, we now have the know-how and technology to keep people safe indoors. But there is more to securing your office, school, or home than wiping down surfaces. Levels of carbon dioxide, particulates, humidity, pollution, and a toxic soup of volatile organic compounds from everyday products can influence our health in ways people aren’t always aware of.This landmark book, revised and updated with the latest research since the COVID-19 pandemic, lays out a compelling case for more environmentally friendly and less toxic offices, schools, and homes. It features a concise explanation of disease transmission indoors, and provides tips for making buildings the first line of defense. Joe Allen and John Macomber dispel the myth that we can’t have both energy-efficient buildings and good indoor air quality. We can—and must—have both. At the center of the great convergence of green, smart, and safe buildings, healthy buildings are vital to the push for more sustainable urbanization that will shape our future.
Healthy China: Building High-Quality and Value-Based Service Delivery
by The World Bank;World Health OrganizationThe report recommends that China maintain the goal and direction of its healthcare reform, and continue the shift from its current hospital-centric model that rewards volume and sales, to one that is centered on primary care, focused on improving the quality of basic health services, and delivers high-quality, cost-effective health services. With 20 commissioned background studies, more than 30 case studies, visits to 21 provinces in China, the report proposes practical, concrete steps toward a value-based integrated service model of healthcare financing and delivery, including: 1) Creating a new model of people-centered quality integrated health care that strengthens primary care as the core of the health system. This new care model is organized around the health needs of individuals and families and is integrated with higher level care and social services. 2) Continuously improve health care quality, establish an effective coordination mechanism, and actively engage all stakeholders and professional bodies to oversee improvements in quality and performance. 3) Empowering patients with knowledge and understanding of health services, so that there is more trust in the system and patients are actively engaged in their healthcare decisions. 4) Reforming public hospitals, so that they focus on complicated cases and delegate routine care to primary-care providers. 5) Changing incentives for providers, so they are rewarded for good patient health outcomes instead of the number of medical procedures used or drugs sold. 6) Boosting the status of the health workforce, especially primary-care providers, so they are better paid and supported to ensure a competent health workforce aligned with the new delivery system. 7) Allowing qualified private health providers to deliver cost-effective services and compete on a level playing field with the public sector, with the right regulatory oversight, and 8) Prioritizing public investments according to the burden of disease, where people live, and the kind of care people need on a daily basis.