Erie Family Health Center

Erie Beats

Last week Northwestern University stopped by Erie West Town Health Center to learn more about our Electronic Health Records System and what it means to our centers. Check out the video below to learn more!

Beats this week:

1) Happy Fiscal Year 2011 blogosphere! Unfortunately, for some in Illinois, this new fiscal year brings a great deal of unhappiness. On July 1, Governor Quinn held a press conference in which he laid out nearly $1.4 billion in cuts to the state budget.

2) This week President Obama made a key recess appointment, placing Dr. Donald Berwick in charge of the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The appointment of this position is even more important than before because of health care reform’s impact on the Medicaid and Medicare programs.

3) Around 40 million doses the swine flu vaccine (around $260 million worth) are set to be destroyed in the United States because they have expired. And that’s not the end of it: another 30 million doses are still available but set to expire in the near future.

4) Starting out the summer with some pep in their step, the White House launched a new health care reform website for consumers on July 1. This new website is part of an overall strategy to use the internet and social media as a means to inform people about health care reform. Earlier this week, the White House used their YouTube page to solicit questions from constituents about health care reform, which were then answered by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius earlier today.

5) Twitter and the blogosphere have been abuzz lately with health care folks linking to and discussing the pros and cons of electronic medical records. Erie was even featured in one of the many news stories that came out within the last week. Check us out in the Chicago Sun-Times over the weekend!

Beats this week:

1) Over the weekend, patients began lining up before dawn at a dentist office in the Logan Square community of Chicago to receive free dental care. The annual event, which is hosted by Dentists With Heart, drew a line of several hundred people.

2) This week, the New York Times reported that after an extended quiet period, the U.S. is finally seeing a surge in medical schools. Could this be a response to the need for primary care providers? Beats Per Minute discussed this very issue last month.

3) Wondering why no one is talking about H1N1 anymore? The Centers for Disease Control is! The CDC says that H1N1 cases are down but reported that from April 2009 through January 2010, the U.S. saw 57 million possible cases, 257,000 hospitalizations and 11,690 deaths.

4) A study released this week found that over the last three decades chronic conditions have significantly increased in children. In fact, from 1994 to 2006 the percentage of children with chronic conditions, such as asthma, obesity and behavioral health issues, nearly doubled. The highest rates of chronic conditions were found in Latino and African American children.

5) It was announced this week that two Illinois universities will receive federal stimulus money to invest in electronic medical records technology. Last month, Erie Family Health Center completed the implementation of electronic health records at all of our nine sites. Read about it here!