The Quiet Health-Care Revolution

[Recursion]

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/the-quiet-health-care-revolution/8667/

ELLEN, AN 82-YEAR-OLD widow, lives in Anaheim, California. One Wednesday morning last year, she got on her scale, as she does every morning. One hundred and forty-six pounds—wasn’t that a little high? Ellen felt vaguely troubled as she poured herself a bowl of oat bran.

Half an hour later, the phone rang. It was Sandra at the clinic. She too was concerned about Ellen’s weight, which had jumped three pounds since the previous day. Sandra knew this because Ellen’s scale had transmitted its reading to the clinic over a wireless connection.

Given that Ellen had a history of congestive heart failure, a three-pound weight gain in 24 hours was a potentially dangerous development, a sign of possible fluid buildup in the lungs and increasing pressure on an already stressed heart. Sandra wanted her to come in for an immediate visit: the clinic would provide a car to pick her up and bring her back home. Ellen’s treatment began that very morning and continued for two weeks until she was out of danger. Had the warning signs not been noticed and addressed so quickly, she might easily have suffered a long, painful, and expensive hospitalization.

Dan, a retired letter carrier, is a patient at a clinic in the same system. At 87, he is decidedly frail, his once-sturdy legs now weak and unsteady. He is a classic candidate for a fall of the kind that has injured many of his friends, in some cases leading to weeks in the hospital and months of rehab. The elderly are prone to falls for many obvious reasons, including weak limbs, impaired vision, and medication side effects. But Dan’s doctors knew that some less obvious causes included shag carpets and long, untrimmed toenails. Because of this, they’d sent someone from the clinic to visit Dan’s apartment and make sure that his daughter replaced the 1980s-vintage carpets with low-pile rugs. Dan also visits the clinic regularly for light muscle-training sessions and periodic toenail clipping. Due to these preventive measures, Dan and his fellow clinic patients are one-fifth as likely as comparable patients elsewhere to suffer falls.

Interesting.

[RC]

1. More and better health care for those than can afford it. Less attention paid to

those that cannot afford health care.

This is all well and good for people living in up scale neighborhoods, but what about the fixed income folks living in a 2 room apartment in downtown Podunk and likes their one or sometimes two meals a day?

[Recursion]

2. These are fixed-income Medicare patients

Not the posh.

[sam11111]

3. unclear...whats the revolution and its cause and how paid for?

[dembotoz]

4. that sounds really cool

mom just got out of the hospital with congestive heart failure.
they stress getting a good scale for precisely that reason.
off to costco i go

same subject- but toe nail clippings

she has 2 hips replaced so she can not do it herself
she is on coumidan for heart problems and should not go to a nail salon for bleeding risk.
as the nail salon is a threat-sure as hell ain't gonna cut them myself.....
i have to persue the nail clipping thing further.

basic shit gets hard when your life goes down the health crapper....

[lumberjack_jeff]

5. I've long thought that aggressive primary care is a major part of the solution. n/t