The nation's health care system is once again faced with overwhelming need pressing against limited resources. Medical professionals, including health care social workers, are forced to make hard choices that test the ethical boundaries of medical arbitrage. The scenarios below are all real-life situations communicated to GVT by health care social workers in the past month.
Topics: social workers, public health, Covid-19, healthcare workers
A Better Alternative to Electronic Health Records
I recently read an article in Forbes about how Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are broken. And while some of the points they made were appalling, they weren’t surprising – at least, not to me. We’ve known about the limitations of the government approved EHRs for some time now.
Topics: FAMCare Tips and Tools, FAMCare, case management software, caseworkers, cyber security, public health, computer etiquette, Electronic Health Records, EHRs
Transitioning from Fee-For-Service To Value-Based Healthcare
The United States has the highest costs for healthcare of any industrialized nation and some of the worst health outcomes. The traditional fee-for-service model of delivery and payment is now seen as an ineffective model in terms of health and well-being. It is considered part of the reason the United States has such a poor healthcare ranking.
Topics: public health, healthcare, cost of healthcare, healthcare issues, value-based healthcare, affordable care act, Fee-for-service healthcare
Our recent blog on the true cost of healthcare ignited a robust response from social workers who specialize in public health. This relatively new but growing social work specialty stresses a socio-epidemiological approach to the prevention and management of the chronic diseases that plague our society.
Topics: human services, social services, social workers, public health, healthcare, cost of healthcare, healthcare issues
The healthcare debate rages on. Politicians on both sides of the aisle insist that they have the answer to the staggering cost of healthcare in the United States, but no concrete solutions have emerged. One party tends to favor socialized medicine while the opposition, agreeing that healthcare should be available to all citizens, hasn’t figured out how to pay the staggering bill.
Topics: social workers, public health, healthcare, cost of healthcare
It is a serious misperception to view social workers as low paid civil servants who push paper on behalf of the less fortunate and perhaps undeserving. Social workers occupy a unique position in our social fabric.
From the very outset, the history of social work is populated with empathetic leaders who, upon discovering profound human suffering, not only offered a helping hand but immediately set out to change the social conditions contributing to the suffering. Social work's earliest pioneers - Florence Kelley, Alice Hamilton, Julia Lathrop, Sophonisba Breckinridge, and Grace and Edith Abbott, among others—laid the foundation of the profession's social leadership role and, to this day, this inclination to activism sets social workers apart from other civil servants.
Topics: mental health, education, leadership, social workers, public health, human kindness, civic leaders, Dorothea Dix, Council on Social Work Education
In the beautiful red rock canyon setting of Sedona, Arizona, Caroline Diehl works tirelessly in a cold shed every morning before sunrise filling backpacks with food staples to distribute to hungry local school children.
Topics: human services, social services, social workers, homeless students, public health, human kindness, hunger in America, hungry children, Caroline Diehl, backpack program
Ensuring your computer systems and employees are Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant is something that is of the utmost importance for agencies who deal with health information that must remain private and safeguarded. While training to be HIPAA compliant can vary based on your industry, one area that can reach across the board is proper computer etiquette.
Topics: HIPAA Compliant, caseworkers, social workers, public health, computer etiquette
During a recent discussion with social workers engaged in public health, obesity was identified as the major chronic health problem facing the United States.
Topics: human services, food system, social services, social workers, public health, obesity