What if Cancer Could be Ended without Hurting the Patient?

B'SD

5 Tishrei, 5778

Welcome back to a fresh new year. My Rosh HaShana experience was wonderful and delicious in many ways.

I prayed hard for GOD to bless the world with soothing, genuine peace and restored health. We've been through lots of trauma lately, considering the hurricanes, earthquakes, terrorism and illnesses.

Back to business: I function as a medical reporter and as a medical research editor in addition to being an author and journalist. This morning I covered the presentation of a medical researcher who perfected a system for ending cancer by inserting an atom bomb, so to speak, within cancerous tumors. Her method does not affect the body or human health other than by ending the life of the tumor and the cancer's ability to spread.

Want to know the answer to the question in today's blogpost title? Here it is: The chemical process involved is user-friendly for patients who need it. They do not feel the treatment's effect as it works.

THAT is purely wonderful.

I'm preparing an in-depth news story about this innovative medical treatment, and its path to FDA approval.

Stand by for heart-warming updates and a news story with jaw-dropping potential. I've already put the researcher in touch with a foundation that provides grants to further medical innovations for ending cancer. 

Lives can be saved early and often with this new method.





Need to cope with your medical or mental health issues, maybe someone else's? Buy the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. 





Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity. Face Your Future with Optimism.

Fill your life with potential, then realize it.

How ICD10 is Poised to HELP the Average American - and Beyond

B'SD

9 Nisan, 5774

ICD-10 is the newest version of International Classification of Diseases designed by the World Health Organization. It enables medical researchers and medical professionals in industrialized nations to communicate in optimal fashion to protect global health.

It has received bad press for quite some time.

It is maligned for being more complicated than past ICD versions, and loaded with obscure meanings, improbable situations and other bothersome stuff.

What critics fail to realize is that ICD-10 aka I10, enables medical coders such as me to explain the nature of problems and treatments that have become part of life since the invention of the Internet:

• Extreme sports and attendant injuries are newish developments. 

• So are problems which result from using digital devices, exposure to chemicals recently added to public life, increased medical awareness of disease processes plus their causes and cures. 

• The skills for identifying child, spouse, employee and other abuses are better than they were in the past, too. 

Those are only a tiny smidgen of issues that matter to the new ICD-10 version of medical coding and to your medical insurance reimbursements. 

They also matter to the way public health care is improved.

New medicines, medical devices, medical strategies and medical insight invented after the creation of the Internet are being used today. The previous version of medical coding, ICD-9, can't possibly reflect that.

Without ICD-10 available as a communication tool in the wider medical care, medical coding, medical research and medical insurance worlds, there is simply no way to adequately, thoroughly inform many people who need to know of those realities.

When you read condemnations such as New Coding System to Add Costs, Burdens to Healthcare, you need to put things into perspective.

Anyone using a new tool needs to learn how to use it. That adds costs of money and time to the picture. 

But the cost-effectiveness of inevitably better insurance reimbursements improves the overall situation.

So do cutting-edge medical reporting and research, used to protect your health.

What about doctors who feel burdened by the learning curve? I propose that they consider what it would be like to deliver medical care without knowing developing trends in public health and harm. Working without sufficient information can limit medical care. So can lower medical insurance reimbursements to their medical practices and facilities.

Look at Coder Coach's Newsflash for a brief overview of the situation.

Now consider this: When medical coders can better explain to your insurer about why you benefited from medical practices refined and more effective than what was available before 1979 (when the present form of medical coding went into effect) or invented after the invention of the Internet, you stand to receive BIGGER and more frequent medical insurance reimbursements for the medical care keeping you optimally healthy/alive.

You'd also be able to benefit from more accurate medical research statistics. They teach medical professionals about what's likely to harm or help you. Stuff all of you need to know.

Here's a peek at the evidence mounting about the effects of improved medical care. 

The ICD-10 medical coding system enables important people to process that information for the betterment of public and financial health.

So, are you ready to benefit from the wealth of updated medical procedures and more?

Tell your senators, congressmen/women and president that you want ICD-10 medical coding in America, NOW.



Need to take action to nurture yourself through a medical or mental health setback in the meantime?

Buy the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge.


Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity. Face Your Future with Optimism. 

Fill your mind with facts, not rumors. That's good for your health.



 

ICD-10 Medical Coding and You

B'SD

2 Av, 5773

It's a somber time on the Jewish calendar, the first 9 Days of Av. They culminate on a day on which we pray very hard to continue to improve our characters and to earn the Messianic era.

In my day-to-day life of pursuing knowledge about medical information to benefit my readers, I took a hard look at this April news item from MedPage Today some time ago:

Docs’ Charting Falls Short of ICD-10 Demands  
SAN FRANCISCO -- Nearly 65% of clinical documentation doesn’t contain enough information for coders to use for billing under the upcoming ICD-10coding system, a survey of patient charts found.full story

I understood a serious need to know 

what ICD-10 coding portends for us mortals.

Today I enrolled in a Health Information Management aka Medical Coding Skills course in which I'll learn  ICD-10 medical coding. It becomes effective in October 2014. 

Controversial and PRICEY Obamacare probably goes into effect after mid-term 2014 elections. Some timing for a Healthcare Affordability Act, hmmm? 

Medical coding, by the way, is a means of translating entire medical records into a series of numbers. Those numbers tell insurers, medical researchers and other people in the medical world 

• Exactly what the patient suffered from, 
• What was done to relieve their situation, and 
• What failed 

without having to read lots and lots and LOTS of medical documents.

Medical coding is a sophisticated method of communication that accomplishes many positive purposes. I've only given you a brief overview of all that in this blogpost.

Let me know if you have questions about the forthcoming changes to worldwide medical coding practices. I'll answer them if I can.




Buy the E-book or print edition of cost-cutting, question-answering and soothing EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge today! 

Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity. Face Your Future with Optimism. 

Face change with adequate information.


 

What to Do When Drugs Cause Problems they Should Prevent!

B'SD

28 Cheshvan 5771


This New York Times article names a nasty drug development and marketing problem hurting defenseless people already seriously ill and a possible solution: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/health/policy/17drug.html

I read it and then responded to a relevant LinkedIn discussion. I hope this URL will work for non-members of LinkedIn:

When Drugs Cause Problems
they Should Prevent!

If the link didn't work for you, read this reproduced repartee:

John Puma MD asked, "Is this part of DIY, farmers markets before pharmacies, Facebook before family doc, food before drugs? Is it one idea?"

I responded, "It's an interesting take on a difficult dilemma: struggling to prevent one serious problem as we're inadvertently causing others. The intense, short-term pressure to seize solutions before their long-term effects are assessed is gut-wrenching. There are very real time limits on when we can no longer try to salvage or to save endangered lives. So we plunge into the Unknown hoping for the best. But some alleged Unknowns aren't. Evidence exists that some alternatives are better than drugs and surgery. But knowledge of those alternatives might be suppressed/unintentionally limited.

John, I've participated in discussions on this and other LinkedIn lists, and share a consensus with fellow respondents that food can - demonstrably - be medicine. FWIW, I advocate the use of superb nutrition while or instead of pursuing medical procedures. The effects of nutrition have been observed for thousands of years. Their trials are over. Dr .Dean Ornish reverses heart disease with food and lifestyle changes instead of cardiac procedures. Other medical trailblazers do likewise. Choosing low-tech lifestyle changes is risky, frightening and a personal judgment call. It's not a sure thing in any manner. But documented evidence proves that alternative healing/prevention techniques do succeed.

I'm marketing a feature story I wrote about extremely effective low-tech solutions for making the most of the remaining vision in brain-injured patients. The lesson of the medical experts quoted in my piece is this: western medicine too often opts for expensive procedures and/or medications when less lucrative, equally or more effective solutions exist. Patients are not necessarily fully informed of those low-cost, low-risk and high-yield options. Medical practitioners are pressured to make sustainable incomes as insurance companies pull their financial chains. It all makes for a moral mess.

I don't know how best to respond to your "Is this part of DIY?" question with guaranteed validity. I'll take a risk and remark that opening the discussion to invite broader thought processes and considerations (far beyond merely one idea) is a step in very productive directions.

I'm grateful that you have the courage to broach the topic. BTW, I recovered my sight due to a horrific medical situation that almost killed me. Surgery saved my life but not my sight. That returned after I made lifestyle changes. Shocked the heck outta my medical team (mostly teaching professors). I explain how similar choices can save other lives and their quality in an E-book praised by medical and mental health professionals: It's MY Crisis! And I'll Cry If I Need To: EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge."


John summed up our thoughts with "Thanks for the really thoughtful response, Yocheved, and good luck with your feature story: I think entertainment venues are underestimated in medicine as effective ways of communicating and actually healing as well. Warm regards, JL"

~*~

Readers, I hope that you and someone who cares about you will ask important questions about the medications recommended to you. The impact on your life could be very, very important.

BTW, I might need to take some time off from updating the blog. My life is a bit hectic just now. I'll do my best to tap at you regularly and ask that you forgive me for occasional lapses.

A Resource Center for Meeting Your Medical Needs: Quick and convenient E-book EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge.

Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.

Did CNN Miss a Critical Point about Cutting-Edge Healthcare and Orphan Drugs?

B'SD

13 Sivan 5769


Readers, I appeal to you to do something very good for the world at large: contact CNN. Let the staff and worldwide readers there know: They need not be Priced Out of competent, curative medical care as this article indicates:

Patients Priced Out
Sufferers of rare diseases are often priced out of the drugs market because of the high cost.

Contact CNN every which way you can. People need not suffer when solutions exist for them.

Among the refences in the "Resource" section of "It's MY Crisis! And I'll Cry if I Need To: A Life Book that Helps You to Dry Your Tears and to Cope with a Medical Challenge" are

1) a company that refers people to worldwide practitioners of EVERY KNOWN FORM OF MEDICAL TREATMENT. What you'd call "Alternative" or "Complimentary Care" if you're minding Political Correctness protocols, AND what you'd know as standard Western medicine's cutting-edge practitioners.

(I know of ordinary people and medical practitioners whose lives were vastly improved by that one resource. It connected them with the person/s and treatment/s that added life to their endangered bodies. I even wrote a feature story about it all. You can request to purchase the story by contacting me at my journalist's E-address, yocheved@yochevedgolani.com).

Other references in the "Resource" section of "It's MY Crisis! And I'll Cry if I Need To: A Life Book that Helps You to Dry Your Tears and to Cope with a Medical Challenge" include

2) Contact information for organizations that provide financial and/or other practical help in your quest for recovery and/or coping mechanisms. That sort of help can lead to acquiring or to developing the orphan drug in question, or to something else that can help the person in need.

Help someone you don't even know.
Inform the world at large of a life-saving,
quality-of-life enhancing resource
listed in
"It's MY Crisis!
And I'll Cry if I Need To."

It truly is "A Life Book that Helps You to Dry Your Tears and to Cope with a Medical Challenge."


To worldwide, affordable medical care,

Yocheved Golani
Coping with a Medical Crisis?
Make the Changes You Need in Your Life