Posts Tagged ‘United States’
Friday, June 12th, 2009
Another sign of the healthcare industry’s growth trajectory is the news that Roosevelt University is opening a College of Pharmacy at its Schaumburg, IL, campus. According to Dean George MacKinnon III, the college’s initial courses will begin in the fall of 2011 and enroll approximately 65 students.
Pharmacology is a high-demand, well-paying field, thanks to the aging American population and the healthcare industry’s increasing dependence on prescription drugs. The United States spends $986 million annually on prescription
drugs – the highest in the world. Statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that pharmacy jobs will grow by 22 percent between 2006 and 2016 – a rate that translates to solid career prospects in a demanding field.
Michael Patton, executive director of the Illinois Pharmacists Association, notes that the shortage of qualified pharmacists means that new graduates can easily find $100,000 a year jobs with very little effort. They may be aggressively recruited by nationally branded pharmacy companies that offer lucrative incentive packages such as signing bonuses and student loan repayment programs.
Roosevelt is speeding up the training process by offering a three-year program versus the traditional four-year curriculum. With tuition expected to run between $30,000 and $40,000 per year, this will let new pharmacists enter the workforce sooner rather than later.
Tags: Bureau of Labor Statistics, college, College of Pharmacy, Dean George MacKinnon III, Healthcare, healthcare industry, Illinois, Michael Patton, pharmacology, prescription drugs, Roosevelt, Roosevelt University, Schaumburg, students, United States
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Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) is on the verge of declaring swine flu a global pandemic. That’s Level 6, the highest possible.
With the disease now in 64 nations worldwide, dozens and even hundreds of cases have occurred in countries such as Great Britain, Spain, Japan, Chile and Australia. Right now, Southern Hemisphere countries are under the W.H.O.’s microscope because it’s the start of their winter and another strain of the H1N1 virus was widespread there last year and is resistant to Tamiflu, Roche AG’s flu pill, as are most common strains of flu.
Before raising the alert to Level 6, the W.H.O. will have to present evidence of extensive “community transmission”. This means that the flu is being diagnosed on two continents and in cases other than travelers, schools and immediate contacts. If swine flu is eventually declared a Level 6 pandemic, the W.H.O. may add a qualification that the disease is not especially deadly. Only 117 swine flu deaths have been reported worldwide. The flu has been diagnosed in all 50 of the United States.
Tags: alert, Australia, Chile, community transmission, disease, global pandemic, Great Britain, H1N1, Japan, Level 6, Roche AG flu pill, Southern Hemisphere, Spain, swine flu, Tamiflu, United States, virus, WHO, World Health Organiz, worldwide
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Thursday, May 28th, 2009
Urgent care centers (Illinois law mandates that they be called immediate or convenient care centers) are gaining ground nationwide as an alternative for families with minor medical emergencies that require quick treatment. Although the walk-in clinic concept has been around for more than 20 years, the trend is picking up steam in an increasingly cost-conscious healthcare environment. 
Approximately 8,000 such facilities currently are open for business in the United States.
A 2008 survey by the Urgent Care Association of America found that most centers are owned by physicians, and approximately 15 percent are hospital affiliated. More than 55 percent are located in suburbs, where well-off patients with private insurance are unwilling to spend hours waiting in an emergency room. The survey found that of an average of five employees, 1.7 are physicians; 0.4 are nurse practitioners; 0.7 are registered nurses; and 2.3 are clinical staff or medical assistants. Sixty percent of patients are seen by a physician, nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant in just 30 minutes.
Alter+Care sees immediate care centers as a great fit with Alter+Care’s Healthcare Village concept (our concept of a wellness/preventive-focused outpatient campus, see www.healthcarevillage.net, because the village becomes a healthcare destination while generating visibility and visits for all services located in the village such as diagnostics/imaging, specialty clinics, physician practices, retail healthcare, laboratory and the wellness center. For patients, the centers provide easy access and reasonably priced care because they typically charge far less than an emergency room visit. Insurers who want to control costs are encouraging people to use urgent care facilities as an alternative, especially during after hours and on weekends.
Tags: Alter+Care, campus, clinical staff, convenient care center, diagnostics, emergency room, emergency room visit, healthcare destination, healthcare insurance, Healthcare Village concept, hospital, Illinois, Illinois law mandate, laboratory, medical assistants, minor medical emergencies, nurse practitioners, patients, physicians, preventive focused, quick treatment, registered nurses, Retail healthcare, specilty clinics, United States, Urgent Care Association of America, urgent care center, walk-in clinic, wellness, wellness center
Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Village | No Comments »
Friday, May 22nd, 2009
Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer’s negative assessment of President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform package is based on his belief that the plan is economically feasible only if that care is rationed.
To quote Krauthammer: “Rationing is not quite as alien to America as we think. We already ration kidneys and hearts for transplant according to survivability criteria, as well as by queuing. A nationalized health insurance system would ration everything from MRIs to intensive care by myriad similar criteria.”
Krauthammer’s personal preference is “for a highly competitive, privatized health insurance system with a government-subsidized transition to portability, breaking the absurd and ruinous link between health insurance and employment. But if you believe healthcare is a public good to be guaranteed by the state, then a single-payer system is the next best alternative. Unfortunately, it is fiscally unsustainable without rationing.”
Krauthammer is wrong! In the United States, healthcare is rationed but it is according to your income and insurance status. And for the 47 million Americans who don’t have insurance, we ARE already rationing everything, “from MRIs to intensive care (to use Krauthammer’s examples)”. We have to accept that no matter what the system is that we adopt, that rationing will occur. The issue is rationing that is unethical and doesn’t meet the mission of healthcare. The way to mitigate rationing in a nationalized system may be to do what the British Medical Association has suggested, which is to define a set of core services – cardiac care, for example – -which may fall under the rubric of life threatening. These would never be rationed regardless of who you are. More elective procedures or non life-threatening procedures, on the other hand, would be rationed. We can’t expect our health system to do it all and this seems a modest proposal.
Tags: America, British Medical Association, cardiac care, Charles Krauthammer, employment, government-subsidized transition, health insurance, health system, Healthcare, healthcare reform, intensive care, MRIs, nationalized health insurance system, non life-threatening procedures, President Barack Obama, President Obama, privatized health insurance system, single-payer system, survivability criteria, United States
Posted in Economics, Healthcare, Healthcare Village, Wellness Centers | 2 Comments »
