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In Touch

Keeping you In Touch with what's happening in the world of Health Care

Vol. 4, No. 6 June 2000 ISSN 1525-416X

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE REPORT ON CHIROPRACTIC SUBMITTED TO CONGRESS

The report of the Department of Defense on the Chiropractic Health Care Demonstration Project has been finished and submitted to Congress.

The report, finalized by Department of Defense (DOD) consultants Birch and Davis has some interesting findings:

• 5% of all military personnel will receive care for low back complaints every year.
• The total effect of chiropractic care on active duty time availability would likely range between 111,000 and 331,000 additional duty days per year, with a central value of about 199,000.
• Chiropractic care is associated with improved outcomes in time availability of active duty, reduced inpatient admissions by active duty and reduced physical therapy visits.
• Active duty beneficiaries clearly have a strong demand for chiropractic services, and this demand is strictly increasing with age.

After their care program ended, the positive responses of patients who received chiropractic care were compared with those who received medical care:

The chiropractic members of the Oversight Advisory Committee (OAC) submitted a separate report pointing out that while the inclusion of chiropractic care into the military would cost about $43 million, it would save the military (excuse me, taxpayers) nearly $70 million in other expenses with a net savings of about $26 million every year.

Please write your representatives in Congress and encourage them to support the inclusion of Chiropractic in the military health plan. If you don't know who your representatives are and you have access to the internet, you can find out by going to http://www.vote-smart.org/ and enter your zip code. A detailed list of your national and local representatives will then be displayed.

POST-SURGICAL INFECTIONS CAN BE REDUCED WITH OXYGEN

The January 20th issue of The New England Journal of Medicine highlights a study that found increasing the concentration of oxygen a patient gets during large intestine surgery can cut wound infection by 50%.

According to the authors, 9%-27% of patients who have surgery on their large intestines suffer from wound infections. Previous studies have shown that wound infections can add an average of $12,500 to a patient's hospital bill.

In this study, 250 patients received 30% oxygen and 250 received 80% oxygen during surgery and for 2 hours after surgery.

5.2% of patients who received 80% oxygen developed infections compared to 11.2% of patients who received the usual 30%.

Also, in the 30% group, twelve had to be admitted to the intensive care unit and six of them died; a 50% death rate of those admitted. Only five in the 80% group had to be admitted to intensive care and only one died; a 20% death rate of those admitted.

The authors go on to say "Because the cost of and risk associated with supplemental (oxygen use) are trivial, the provision of supplemental oxygen appears to be a practical method of reducing the incidence of this dangerous and expensive complication."

They went on to say that increasing the oxygen concentrations seemed reasonable and that "it seems likely that it would decrease the risk of infection in patients undergoing other major operations as well."

Oxygen. It's a good thing. Ask for it by name.

MEDICAL COMPLICATIONS DIFFER AMONG TYPES OF HOSPITALS

The April, 2000 issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine reports that patients at certain types of hospitals are more likely to suffer from such preventable health problems as drug reactions in patients with a known allergy to the medication given, a missed or delayed diagnosis leading to complications or death, or adverse surgical events.

"Patients in for-profit and minor teaching or non-teaching government-owned hospitals were more likely to suffer several types of preventable adverse events," according to researcher Dr. Eric J. Thomas, of the University of Texas-Houston Medical School.

Patients treated in minor or non-teaching government hospitals had complication rates 4 to 5 times higher than patients treated in non-profit hospitals.

Patients treated at for-profit hospitals were more than twice as likely to experience surgical complications and four times as likely to have problems from missed or delayed diagnosis or treatment than patients in non-profit hospitals.

An editorial on the subject in the same issue says that "something is wrong in our nation's hospitals." Dr. Gordon Schiff of Cook County Hospital in Chicago goes on to say "While hospitals are fatally injuring more people than are killed by automobiles and firearms, at a cost that is as large as caring for people with HIV/AIDS, hospital managers and even medical staffs appear more preoccupied with survival in the marketplace than the survival of their patients."

Schiff goes on to say that "public awareness and demands for change are growing."

Copyright 2000 In Touch P.O. Box 2353 Peachtree City, GA 30269