By Moriah Balingit / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Originally published January 19, 2013
After facing legal and technical challenges for more than two years, the Pennsylvania State Police this week began transmitting hundreds of thousands of mental health records to a federal database used to conduct background checks for potential gun buyers.
On Tuesday, 643,167 mental health records were sent to the FBI-run National Instant Check System (NICS), according to the state police. The records represent people who are prohibited from buying guns because of involuntary mental health commitments.
"It's been an objective of ours for close to two years, so I think it's an important accomplishment that these records were able to be uploaded to NICS," said Lt. Col. Scott Snyder, deputy commissioner for the state police. The state police are working to fix a program that will upload the records automatically as they're created.
Strengthening the national database and universal background checks have been pillars of President Barack Obama's gun control agenda. On Wednesday, when he unfurled a massive gun control package, some executive orders were intended to make it easier for states to transmit mental health records to NICS.
Despite the state's achieving that goal, a disagreement between the state police and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives over interpretation of federal gun law throws into question how the records will be used. At issue is the 302, the shortest and most common type of involuntary mental health commitment.
On Friday, a spokeswoman for the ATF said the bureau was still reviewing whether a 302 should preclude someone under federal law from buying a gun.
The entire story is here.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Hickenlooper's Gun Control
The Colorado Governor's plan to fix mental health, not firearms alone.
Review and Outlook - The Wall Street Journal
Originally published January 15, 2013
Gun control has been the exclusive political fixation of President Obama's Washington after Newtown, so perhaps readers will be surprised to learn that some states are being more constructive. One of them is Colorado, where Governor John Hickenlooper is promoting an innovative overhaul of his state's mental health-care system.
In his State of the State address last week, the Democrat said that "our democracy demands" a debate over guns, violence and mental illness—not least in the aftermath of James Holmes's attack on an Aurora movie theater that killed 12 and wounded 58 in July. "Let me prime the pump," Mr. Hickenlooper said. "Why not have universal background checks for all gun sales?"
There was a lot of media attention for that line, but much less for what followed. As Mr. Hickenlooper continued, "It's not enough to prevent dangerous people from getting weapons. We have to do a better job identifying and helping people who are a threat to themselves and others." His office spent the last five months developing a detailed $18.5 million plan to modernize civil commitment laws while expanding community-based mental health treatment.
The rest of the story is here.
Review and Outlook - The Wall Street Journal
Originally published January 15, 2013
Gun control has been the exclusive political fixation of President Obama's Washington after Newtown, so perhaps readers will be surprised to learn that some states are being more constructive. One of them is Colorado, where Governor John Hickenlooper is promoting an innovative overhaul of his state's mental health-care system.
In his State of the State address last week, the Democrat said that "our democracy demands" a debate over guns, violence and mental illness—not least in the aftermath of James Holmes's attack on an Aurora movie theater that killed 12 and wounded 58 in July. "Let me prime the pump," Mr. Hickenlooper said. "Why not have universal background checks for all gun sales?"
There was a lot of media attention for that line, but much less for what followed. As Mr. Hickenlooper continued, "It's not enough to prevent dangerous people from getting weapons. We have to do a better job identifying and helping people who are a threat to themselves and others." His office spent the last five months developing a detailed $18.5 million plan to modernize civil commitment laws while expanding community-based mental health treatment.
The rest of the story is here.
Warning Signs of Violent Acts Often Unclear
By BENEDICT CAREY and ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
The New York Times
Published: January 15, 2013
No one but a deeply disturbed individual marches into an elementary school or a movie theater and guns down random, innocent people.
That hard fact drives the public longing for a mental health system that produces clear warning signals and can somehow stop the violence. And it is now fueling a surge in legislative activity, in Washington and New York.
But these proposed changes and others like them may backfire and only reveal how broken the system is, experts said.
“Anytime you have one of these tragic cases like Newtown, it’s going to expose deficiencies in the mental health system, and provide some opportunity for reform,” said Richard J. Bonnie, a professor of public policy at the University of Virginia’s law school who led a state commission that overhauled policies after the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings that left 33 people dead. “But you have to be very careful not to overreact.”
The entire story is here.
The New York Times
Published: January 15, 2013
No one but a deeply disturbed individual marches into an elementary school or a movie theater and guns down random, innocent people.
That hard fact drives the public longing for a mental health system that produces clear warning signals and can somehow stop the violence. And it is now fueling a surge in legislative activity, in Washington and New York.
But these proposed changes and others like them may backfire and only reveal how broken the system is, experts said.
“Anytime you have one of these tragic cases like Newtown, it’s going to expose deficiencies in the mental health system, and provide some opportunity for reform,” said Richard J. Bonnie, a professor of public policy at the University of Virginia’s law school who led a state commission that overhauled policies after the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings that left 33 people dead. “But you have to be very careful not to overreact.”
The entire story is here.
Monday, January 28, 2013
In Second Look, Few Savings From Digital Health Records
By REED ABELSON and JULIE CRESWELL
The New York Times
Published: January 10, 2013
The conversion to electronic health records has failed so far to produce the hoped-for savings in health care costs and has had mixed results, at best, in improving efficiency and patient care, according to a new analysis by the influential RAND Corporation.
Optimistic predictions by RAND in 2005 helped drive explosive growth in the electronic records industry and encouraged the federal government to give billions of dollars in financial incentives to hospitals and doctors that put the systems in place.
“We’ve not achieved the productivity and quality benefits that are unquestionably there for the taking,” said Dr. Arthur L. Kellermann, one of the authors of a reassessment by RAND that was published in this month’s edition of Health Affairs, an academic journal.
RAND’s 2005 report was paid for by a group of companies, including General Electric and Cerner Corporation, that have profited by developing and selling electronic records systems to hospitals and physician practices. Cerner’s revenue has nearly tripled since the report was released, to a projected $3 billion in 2013, from $1 billion in 2005.
The entire story is here.
New designs to make health records easier for patients to use
HHS.gov
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 15, 2013
Winning designs of printed health records to help patients better understand and use their electronic health records (EHRs) were announced today by Farzad Mostashari, M.D., the national coordinator for health information technology. The designs, created through a HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) challenge contest, all met the goal of making EHRs valuable to patients and their family members.
“Patients that are engaged in their health care treatments have better outcomes in their health,” said Farzad Mostashari, M.D., national coordinator for Health Information Technology. “The design challenge winners all proposed patient-friendly designs that will help to translate technical health information into easy-to-understand information that will help patients work closely with their doctors to manage their care.”
More than 230 submissions to the design challenge were submitted. Winners of the Health Design Challenge include:
The Health Design Challenge supports ONC’s efforts to engage consumers in their health through the use of technology, including the Blue Button, and is part of ONC’s Investing in Innovation (i2) Initiative. The i2 Initiative holds competitions to accelerate development and adoption of technology solutions that enhance quality and outcomes.
"This challenge was unique because it engaged professionals and students inside and outside of the health care industry to participate and propose real solutions," said Ryan Panchadsaram, presidential innovation fellow for ONC." We’ve assembled a showcase of top entries that challenged the status quo and inspired the health community."
More information about the winning submissions and other top entries can be viewed in the online gallery at http://healthdesignchallenge.com . For more information about health information technology, visit: www.healthit.gov.
The release was posted here.
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 15, 2013
Winning designs of printed health records to help patients better understand and use their electronic health records (EHRs) were announced today by Farzad Mostashari, M.D., the national coordinator for health information technology. The designs, created through a HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) challenge contest, all met the goal of making EHRs valuable to patients and their family members.
“Patients that are engaged in their health care treatments have better outcomes in their health,” said Farzad Mostashari, M.D., national coordinator for Health Information Technology. “The design challenge winners all proposed patient-friendly designs that will help to translate technical health information into easy-to-understand information that will help patients work closely with their doctors to manage their care.”
More than 230 submissions to the design challenge were submitted. Winners of the Health Design Challenge include:
- Best Overall Design – “Nightingale” - Amy Guterman, Stephen Menton, Defne Civelekoglu, Kunal Bhat, Amy Seng, and Justin Rheinfrank from gravitytank in Chicago, Ill.
- Best Medication Section – “M.ed” - Josh Hemsley from Orange County, Calif., presented a modern and intuitive design to help patients better understand how to properly adhere to their medication
- Best Medical/Problem History – “Grouping by Time” – Mathew Sanders from Brooklyn, N.Y., aimed to provide more context by listing items in chronological order instead of grouping by functional type so cause and effect can be seen
- Best Lab Summaries – “Health Summary” – Mike Parker, Dan McGorry, and Kel Smith from HealthEd in Clark, N.J., brought life to lab summaries through an aggregate health score and rich graphs of lab values
- The Best Overall Design winner will receive $16,000, while the winners in the remaining categories will each receive $5,000.
The Health Design Challenge supports ONC’s efforts to engage consumers in their health through the use of technology, including the Blue Button, and is part of ONC’s Investing in Innovation (i2) Initiative. The i2 Initiative holds competitions to accelerate development and adoption of technology solutions that enhance quality and outcomes.
"This challenge was unique because it engaged professionals and students inside and outside of the health care industry to participate and propose real solutions," said Ryan Panchadsaram, presidential innovation fellow for ONC." We’ve assembled a showcase of top entries that challenged the status quo and inspired the health community."
More information about the winning submissions and other top entries can be viewed in the online gallery at http://healthdesignchallenge.com . For more information about health information technology, visit: www.healthit.gov.
The release was posted here.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Details on suicide among US physicians: data from the National Violent Death Reporting System
By Karen Gold, Ananda Sen, and Thomas Schwenk
General Hospital Psychiatry
Volume 35, Issue 1 , Pages 45-49, January 2013
Abstract
Objective
Physician suicide is an important public health problem as the rate of suicide is higher among physicians than the general population. Unfortunately, few studies have evaluated information about mental health comorbidities and psychosocial stressors which may contribute to physician suicide. We sought to evaluate these factors among physicians versus non-physician suicide victims.
Methods
We used data from the United States National Violent Death Reporting System to evaluate demographics, mental health variables, recent stressors and suicide methods among physician versus non-physician suicide victims in 17 states.
Results
The data set included 31,636 suicide victims of whom 203 were identified as physicians. Multivariable logistic regression found that having a known mental health disorder or a job problem which contributed to the suicide significantly predicted being a physician. Physicians were significantly more likely than non-physicians to have antipsychotics, benzodiazepines and barbiturates present on toxicology testing but not antidepressants.
Conclusions
Mental illness is an important comorbidity for physicians who complete a suicide but postmortem toxicology data shows low rates of medication treatment. Inadequate treatment and increased problems related to job stress may be potentially modifiable risk factors to reduce suicidal death among physicians.
The entire article is here.
Thanks to Ed Zuckerman for this article.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Who Knew? Patients’ Share Of Health Spending Is Shrinking
By Jay Hancock
KHN Staff Writer
Originally published January 13, 2013
Consumer-driven medical spending may be the second-biggest story in health care, after the Affordable Care Act. As employers give workers more "skin in the game" through higher costs from purse and paycheck, the thinking goes, they'll seek more efficient treatment and hold down overall spending.
But consumers may not have as much skin in the game as experts thought, new government figures show.
Despite rapid growth in high-deductible health plans and rising employee contributions for insurance premiums, consumers' share of national health spending continued to fall in 2011, slipping to its lowest level in decades.
"I'm surprised," says Jonathan Gruber, a health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "All the news is about the move to high-deductible health plans. Based on that logic … I would have expected it to go up."
True, medical costs are still pressuring families. Household health expense has outpaced sluggish income growth in recent years, says Micah Hartman, a statistician with the Department of Health and Human Services, which calculates the spending data.
But from a wider perspective, consumer health costs continued a trend of at least a quarter-century of taking up smaller and smaller parts of the health-spending pie. Household expense did go up. But other medical spending rose faster, especially for the government Medicare and Medicaid programs.
The entire article is here.
KHN Staff Writer
Originally published January 13, 2013
Consumer-driven medical spending may be the second-biggest story in health care, after the Affordable Care Act. As employers give workers more "skin in the game" through higher costs from purse and paycheck, the thinking goes, they'll seek more efficient treatment and hold down overall spending.
But consumers may not have as much skin in the game as experts thought, new government figures show.
Despite rapid growth in high-deductible health plans and rising employee contributions for insurance premiums, consumers' share of national health spending continued to fall in 2011, slipping to its lowest level in decades.
"I'm surprised," says Jonathan Gruber, a health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "All the news is about the move to high-deductible health plans. Based on that logic … I would have expected it to go up."
True, medical costs are still pressuring families. Household health expense has outpaced sluggish income growth in recent years, says Micah Hartman, a statistician with the Department of Health and Human Services, which calculates the spending data.
But from a wider perspective, consumer health costs continued a trend of at least a quarter-century of taking up smaller and smaller parts of the health-spending pie. Household expense did go up. But other medical spending rose faster, especially for the government Medicare and Medicaid programs.
The entire article is here.
Friday, January 25, 2013
Contracts Awarded Despite Inquiry
By Colleen Heild
Journal Investigative Reporter
Originally published on Jan 13, 2013
First of two parts
A Roswell, N.M.-based psychiatric services firm landed state Department of Health contracts that allow charges of up to $2,000 a day, even though it was under investigation for alleged Medicaid fraud at another state agency.
The contracts between the Department of Health and New Mexico Psychiatric Services signed last summer permit the company to bill up to $623,900 to provide on-call or temporary services to state-run health facilities.
They include the Sequoyah Adolescent Treatment Center in Albuquerque, a 36-bed residential treatment center for violent and mentally ill youth.
At the time the contacts were awarded last year, the company was facing allegations of Medicaid billing fraud at the state Human Services Department. Its payments for services for HSD have been suspended pending the outcome of the inquiry.
A top health department official said in an interview last month that he didn’t know New Mexico Psychiatric Services was under investigation at the time he helped evaluate proposals for the so-called “locum tenens” psychiatric services last April.
But in a follow-up response last week, the agency’s spokesman said others in the agency did know and the inquiry by the state Attorney General’s Office wasn’t a “determinative” factor.
DOH spokesman Kenny C. Vigil told the Journal that the president of New Mexico Psychiatric Services, Dr. Babak Mirin, made a “self disclosure” about the investigation before any contracts were signed last year.
Asked whom Mirin had informed at the DOH and when, Vigil responded: “I don’t have that information.”
The Department of Health and the Human Services Department are separate state agencies, albeit with some overlapping missions involving assistance to New Mexicans.
The Human Services Department, which administers behavioral health services, notified New Mexico Psychiatric Services nearly a year ago of the billing fraud inquiry by the AG’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.
Mirin’s attorney, David H. Johnson, told the Journal in an email last week that the company has been cooperating with the AG’s investigation “and is committed to the repayment of any overpayments that it may have received.
“At this point there has only been an allegation of billing fraud,” Johnson’s email stated. “Fraud has not been established.”
The entire story is here.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
New Israeli law banning underweight models goes into effect, aims to prevent eating disorders
The Associated Press
Originally published January 11, 2013
When Margaux Stelman began modeling a few months ago, she always had her sister Aline in mind.
Aline was an ex-model who died three years ago after a long battle with anorexia, a common affliction of models trying to look thinner and thinner — and girls trying to look like them.
Now, thanks to a new Israeli law that prohibits the employment of underweight fashion models, Stelman says she feels protected from the traditional pressures of an industry notorious for encouraging extremes in thinness. The law sets weight minimums with the aim of discouraging anorexia and bulimia, eating disorders that affect mostly young women, who go on extreme diets and are unable to eat normally.
"This disease is something that's very close to me," the 21-year-old university student from Belgium said at a recent photo shoot, the country's first since the law took effect last week. "Doing the exact opposite, showing girls that (they) can be healthy and be a model anyway, it's really something I want to show."
The Israeli law, passed by parliament last year, is the first of its kind. The United States and England have guidelines, but their fashion industry is self-regulated. Other governments have taken steps to prevent "size zero" medical problems but have shied away from legislation.
Israel, like other countries, is obsessed by models. International supermodel Bar Refaeli is considered a national hero. Refaeli, an Israeli who has graced the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, among others, is not unnaturally thin.
The entire story is here.
Originally published January 11, 2013
When Margaux Stelman began modeling a few months ago, she always had her sister Aline in mind.
Aline was an ex-model who died three years ago after a long battle with anorexia, a common affliction of models trying to look thinner and thinner — and girls trying to look like them.
Now, thanks to a new Israeli law that prohibits the employment of underweight fashion models, Stelman says she feels protected from the traditional pressures of an industry notorious for encouraging extremes in thinness. The law sets weight minimums with the aim of discouraging anorexia and bulimia, eating disorders that affect mostly young women, who go on extreme diets and are unable to eat normally.
"This disease is something that's very close to me," the 21-year-old university student from Belgium said at a recent photo shoot, the country's first since the law took effect last week. "Doing the exact opposite, showing girls that (they) can be healthy and be a model anyway, it's really something I want to show."
The Israeli law, passed by parliament last year, is the first of its kind. The United States and England have guidelines, but their fashion industry is self-regulated. Other governments have taken steps to prevent "size zero" medical problems but have shied away from legislation.
Israel, like other countries, is obsessed by models. International supermodel Bar Refaeli is considered a national hero. Refaeli, an Israeli who has graced the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, among others, is not unnaturally thin.
The entire story is here.
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