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Hepatitis C infects an estimated 5 million Americans, although most of them don’t know it. But deaths from hepatitis C are on the rise in baby boomers. And throughout New England, new infections are creeping up among a younger generation.
In just a few weeks, another pharmaceutical company will likely win FDA approval for a new drug to cure hepatitis C. It’s big news for those living with the chronic disease, many of whom have been waiting decades for a cure.
An effort to reduce the number of patients who are "super-utilizers" in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley requires providers to enter into what one expert calls the "messy space" — a relationship that's closer and more personal than the traditional doctor-patient relationship.
Ambulances benefits from frequent users. Place a call for patient transport and a bill is generated. But what if the ambulance service was paid to keep patients out of the hospital? A new model pioneered in Fort Worth, Texas has caught the interest of other communities.
Health care super-users are often chronically ill, alone and with limited incomes. They typically need the medical skills of a trained health-care professional, but also the listening, counseling and support offered by social workers and clergy.
How do you stop an epidemic? Keep the people who are sick from infecting more people. Isolate them if you have to, treat them, and cure them. But what if you don’t know who’s sick? What if the person who’s still infectious doesn’t know it either, and won’t notice any symptoms for decades?
Can "super-utilizers" be helped? A partnership of health care workers, case managers, social workers, parish nurses, clergy and community members in Allentown, Penn. thinks so. The group is building a program to help those with manageable chronic illnesses stay out of the hospital.
For many of the patients who are known as "super-utilizers" of the health care system, the issue of simply getting to treatment is critical and sometimes more problematic than getting the treatment itself. The picture is often complicated by the disabilities and haphazard lives of these patients.
Delorian Cole is a 10 year old with a rare disorder that causes her breasts to grow at a rapid, abnormal rate. Doctors at Children's Hospital Los Angeles prescribed monthly injections to stem the growth, but the insurance company that covers Delorian said the injections were not medically necessary.
