Health Check

Preventative health is a hot topic today and a big part of the Welltality mission. Preventative care is inclusive of health screenings, check-ups, or patient counseling and is a vital part of everyday health.  While traditional medicine is an essential component of health, there are also other areas to help foster wellbeing.

Recent Article Review From MedPage Today: January 1^st 2011 primary care providers celebrated the victory of better Medicare payments with the introduction of 3 new billing codes! The codes were to encompass Medicare Part B beneficiaries and represented 33 M people, all who were going to have free access to “annual wellness” by their provider. Every beneficiary was given the opportunity to spend valuable time with a healthcare professional to discuss their history, review screenings, immunizations, cognitive and physical abilities, risk for falls, and needed tests or screenings like mammograms and colonoscopies.  The patient would receive extra time and attention around their health and be provided a personalized prevention plan or an “action plan”. Not to mention this program represents billions of dollars that patients couldn’t bill for previously. Patient engagement, participation and action coupled with revenue for primary care doctors seemed like a very positive equation. However, due to physician bandwidth and patient awareness, less than 20% of recipients have participated as late as 2018. While the numbers are slowly rising, it’s obvious that physicians need help in getting these valuable visits done. While the incentives are great between collecting needed quality measures, traditional reimbursement, and most importantly having a healthier patient population, physicians should consider outsourcing components of this wonderful opportunity. Whether it’s licensing software or hiring a patient engagement team, thousands of PCP have found their way and have seen their patient utilization climb north of 80%.

A Recent Harvard Article: There is a great deal of conversation around preventative health and the impact it can have on the rising healthcare costs in the United States.  Providers and patients alike, debate both sides of the equation. One thought that has circulated: while prevention may delay death, it doesn’t reduce costs in the long run. However, many passionately argue that with early patient engagement and education, people will avoid unnecessary illness or heal faster. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence to highlight one’s point on either side of the discussion. However, David Cutler, an Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied economics, and his team were able to prove that prevention is making a great impact financially on healthcare spending. In a comparison of 1995 to 2012, he shows a reduction on average of $3,000 per person. Looking at the whole Medicare population, the numbers add up to an impressive $120 B. Cutler urges that there is still a lot of runway in prevention and specific disease states need more attention, and that preventative efforts would be even more effective on the pre-elderly population.

Have you thought about the top four challenges in a health system? It's no surprise that patient satisfaction is number 1!

Thanksgiving is coming and provides a gentle reminder that there is no better time to be ‘mindful’ of how gratitude can have a positive impact on health. “Mindfully focusing on wellness in our lives builds resilience and enables us to thrive amidst life’s challenges.” Wellness is an all-encompassing process that benefits the small and large parts of our health. Mindfulness and mental wellness go hand in hand, as many of the tenants of mental care require focused attention on building healthy habits. The three main areas in which mental wellness is achieved are spiritual, emotional, and intellectual. 

October is a month filled with horror films and spooky events focused on scaring the public; mass media targeting emotions and the onslaught of research showing that technology correlates to increased anxiety and depression. As we continue to discuss the six dimensions of wellness, the second area of mental wellness is emotional wellbeing.  Emotional wellbeing focuses on our feelings; how we form them, accept them, control them, and learn from them. Throughout the journey of life, we experience a wide variety of emotions, from resentment to sheer joy and everything in between. This is essential to mental development and contributes to our overall outlook on life. 

Has your job ever made you sick? Occupational Wellness is an often overlooked aspect of one’s health. There are many factors that can influence holistic wellbeing, all typically reducing back to stress, but one’s profession can be the most dominant factor if it is not kept in check.