Today is National Running Day and we take fitness at CHC very seriously. We want all of our staff to be as fit as possible, not only for their own good, but also for the good of our patients. You see, patients pay close attention to their providers, sometimes paying more attention to the example that the provider offers than the recommendations that provider makes. There is another way that our staff use their own fitness to help improve the…
This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. Joel Kupersmith, Chief Research and Development Officer of the Veterans Health Administration who heads numerous research initiatives at the VA. Dr. Kupersmith discusses the creation of The Million Veterans Program, which is seeking to compile the largest data bank of genetic information in the nation for ongoing research. He outlines the benefits of the VA’s long-standing use of electronic health records to better track patients’ health as well as yielding meaningful data…
The following is an email, edited for the blog, which Dr. Velandy Manohar wrote to the staff at CHC that marched in the Memorial Day parade on Monday. Dr. Manohar is the proud parent of an active duty Marine Major and has served veterans nobly for many years. He has served as part of the Stand Down Event annually at the Rocky Hill VA hospital, and is well acquainted with the effects of war on our fellow Americans and their…
This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. Amelia Haviland, Senior Statistician on Health Insurance for the RAND Corporation, a non-profit organization committed to improving public policy through non-partisan research and analysis. Dr. Haviland discusses RAND’s in-depth study of the rapid growth of consumer-directed, high-deductible insurance policies in the private insurance market. She also explores their potential to save tens of billions of dollars in health care costs annually, while cautioning that such plans could lead to diminished health outcomes…
March was National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month and this year, I didn’t get around to putting up a blog post about it. Yet I did get around to doing some firsthand research. I am fifty-two years old, have a family history of pre-cancerous polyps and was overdue for a colonoscopy. So, I finally got around to scheduling one. For various reasons, I couldn’t get the colonoscopy scheduled until lateMay, but now, I’ve completed my colonoscopy and can write firsthand about…
It can be hard to acknowledge why exactly we get a three day weekend around the time of Memorial Day. Summer is right at our fingertips, beach trips and Barbeques are on the agenda, and getting a Monday off from work is always a nice treat…but that’s not the most important thing about the last Monday in May year after year. I had the privilege to be in Middletown for this year’s Memorial Day parade and I felt like it…