Your Flu Shot is Waiting

Today's post was shared by RWJF PublicHealth and comes from www.rwjf.org

New reports from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that 39 percent of adults and 41 percent of children six months and older got their flu shots for the 2013-2014 season by early November—a rate similar to flu vaccination coverage last season at the same time. Other flu shot statistics of note this year include: Vaccination among pregnant women (41 percent) and health care providers (63 percent) is about the same as it was this time last year High rates were seen again this year among health care providers including pharmacists (90 percent), physicians (84 percent) and nurses (79 percent), but the CDC reported much lower vaccination rates among assistants or aides (49 percent) and health care providers working in long-term care facilities (53 percent) “We are happy that annual flu vaccination is becoming a habit for many people, but there is still much room for improvement,” says Anne Schuchat, MD, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at CDC. “The bottom line is that influenza can cause a tremendous amount of illness and can be severe. Even when our flu vaccines are not as effective as we want them to be, they can reduce flu illnesses, doctors' visits, and flu-related hospitalizations and deaths.” Seasonal influenza activity is increasing in parts of the United States. Further increases in influenza activity across the country are expected in the coming weeks. “If you have not...

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The Road toward Fully Transparent Medical Records

Privacy of medical data in the workers' compensation system does not exist. Federal portability act excluded worker's Compensation claims. In some jurisdictions, claimants are able to seek declaratory relief to shield the records. The processes costly, onerous, and incompatible with the underlining summary and remedial legislative intent of a viable Worker's Compensation program. Today's post was shared by NEJM and comes from www.nejm.org

Perspective Jan Walker, R.N., M.B.A., Jonathan D. Darer, M.D., M.P.H., Joann G. Elmore, M.D., M.P.H., and Tom Delbanco, M.D. December 4, 2013DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1310132 Article Forty years ago, Shenkin and Warner argued that giving patients their medical records “would lead to more appropriate utilization of physicians and a greater ability of patients to participate in their own care.”1 At that time, patients in most states could obtain their records only through litigation, but the rules gradually changed, and in 1996 the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act entitled virtually all patients to obtain their records on request. Today, we're on the verge of eliminating such requests by simply providing patients online access. Thanks in part to federal financial incentives,2 electronic medical records are becoming the rule, accompanied increasingly by password-protected portals that offer patients laboratory, radiology, and pathology results and secure communication with their clinicians by e-mail. One central component of the records, the notes composed by clinicians, has remained largely hidden from patients. But now OpenNotes, an initiative fueled primarily by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is exploring the effects of providing access to these notes.3 Beginning in 2010, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (which serves urban and suburban Boston), Geisinger Health System (in rural Pennsylvania), and Harborview Medical Center (Seattle's...

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