SAN ANTONIO—As we get together deep in the heart of Texas this week for Benefits Selling Expo, health care's all over the news. We've got a lot of ground to cover, and I've got a trade show to get back to, so let's run through the headlines.
For starters, we've a story in the May issue of Health Affairs that reports "more than half of all office-based physicians were using electronic health record systems, but only about one-third of those physicians had systems with basic features such as the abilities to record information on patient demographics, view laboratory and imaging results, maintain problem lists, compile clinical notes, or manage computerized prescription ordering." So we're making progress here, but it's typically uneven. What makes this particularly frustrating is how technology holds the key to cutting back on costs going forward.
And for those of you still wondering about my last blog about obesity, I got more backup this week with a new report out of Duke University that shows 42 percent of us will be obese by 2030, and while this updated forecast actually shows a slowdown in our waistline expansion, the number of "severely obese" is expected to actually double. The study predicts roughly 11 percent of will be 100 pounds or more overweight. And this increasingly larger population only makes the next news bit even more troubling.
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Finally, Health Affairs also reports on a new national survey that reveals health care access has fallen steadily over the past decade among 19- to 64-year-olds, between 2000 and 2010, especially among the uninsured.
"More than half of uninsured U.S. adults did not see a doctor in 2010, and only slightly more than a quarter of these adults were seen by a dentist," according to the magazine. "We also found that children—many of whom qualify for public coverage through Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program—generally maintained or improved their access to care during the same period. This provides a reason for optimism about the ability of the coverage expansion in the Affordable Care Act to improve access for adults, but it suggests that eliminating the law or curtailing the coverage expansion could result in continued erosion of adults' access to care."
And if you're here in San Antonio with us, stick around through Friday and you'll have a chance to actually ask Health Affairs' own Susan Dentzer herself about the report. It'd be nice to have you grilling another editor for a change.
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