Michigan Disability Resistance

http://bit.ly/2IL97iw

With a severe shortage of obstetrician/gynecologists forecasted, some metropolitan areas are more prone to crisis-level conditions than others, according to new research.

The stakes for women's health are high, according to Amit Phull, MD, vice president of strategy and insights at San Francisco-based Doximity, which conducted the research.

"We're facing a national physician shortage in the years to come," he said in a statement. "Ob/gyns are one of the top specialties at risk and are central to women's healthcare in the U.S. The emergence of a significant shortage in this specialty could be terribly problematic from a women's health standpoint."

The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) estimates a shortage of up to 8,800 ob/gyns by 2020, with the shortfall approaching 22,000 by 2050.

One of the key features of the study is a risk index designed to identify which cities could feel the brunt of the shortage first. The risk index has two factors: the average age of the local ob/gyn workforce, and the workload they carry based on births per ob/gyn per year.

"In the metropolitan areas with older ob/gyns and higher workloads, we expect that they have a greater risk of shortages," the researchers wrote. "In the metropolitan areas with younger ob/gyns and lower workloads, we expect that they have a lower risk of shortages."

The top 5 cities considered to be at high risk for an ob/gyn shortage are Las Vegas; Los Angeles; Miami; Orlando; and Riverside, Calif.

The top 5 cities considered to be at low risk for a shortage are Ann Arbor, Mich.; Birmingham, Ala.; Portland, Ore.; San Jose, Calif.; and Baltimore.

Too expensive to treat???

http://bit.ly/2NjyZoX

Recent efforts to increase accountability for health outcomes and costs has put a spotlight on the immense challenge of providing high-quality and efficient care to people with complex needs, many of whom require inputs from both the medical and social care systems to remain at their highest functional capacity. 

People with complex needs often have functional limitations, such as the inability to effectively communicate, move about, or take care of themselves without additional help, and they may have behavioral health needs that typically incur high health care costs. Traditionally, these individuals have been a source of revenue for health systems due to the sheer number of covered services they receive. Yet, under new payment and delivery models, such as accountable care organizations and bundled payments, these people could be viewed as a serious financial risk because of their outlier expenditures and potential for poor health outcomes. 

Herein lies an opportunity to improve the management of care for this population. The National Academy of Medicine’s (NAM’s) special publication, Effective Care for High-Need Patients: Opportunities for Improving Outcomes, Value, and Health, serves as a primer for how health care stakeholders can use evidence-based approaches to effectively manage care for this population. How to measure quality and outcomes as models of care and policies are implemented, while also managing costs of care, should be further discussed. Accountability measures for this population are necessary to assess the effectiveness of health financing reform efforts. 

http://bit.ly/2KHWkPt

Patients diagnosed with an intellectual disability can often have a hard time getting their doctors to believe them.

One day last February, Henny Kupferstein started having trouble walking. Her knees were buckling and she couldn't feel her feet, so she took herself to the emergency room at the Kaiser Permanente Zion Medical Center in San Diego. After two hours in the emergency room, her body was shaking, her teeth were chattering, she was sweating profusely, and she was losing the ability to communicate through speech—so she wrote on a piece of paper that she thought she was going to have a seizure.

Going to the emergency room wasn't that unusual. Since Kupferstein moved to California three and a half years ago to pursue her Ph.D. in psychology at Saybrook University, she's had trouble accessing routine care for managing the symptoms of her co-occurring genetic conditions, so she's visited the emergency room many times. This time, though, she was kept in the hospital for nine days, feeling increasingly ignored and disrespected by the medical staff. She says they treated her as if she was faking her illness and kept demanding psychiatric evaluations rather than addressing her physical problems. Eventually, she figured out why: A hospital doctor had learned that she was autistic and had written on her chart that she probably had "mental retardation."

This is a story about a hospital treating a woman with complex medical needs as if she were the problem, a predicament that neuro-atypical Americans fear they’ll face every time they seek medical care. What's more, the medical staff—at least as Kupferstein experienced it—did so by questioning her fundamental competency to assess and be an expert in herself. They applied the label "mental retardation" to make her own voice less potent in managing her care.

There are two problems here. First, Kupferstein does not, in fact, have an intellectual disability. Second, doctors should clearly listen to patients who do have intellectual disabilities. In fact, by mislabeling Kupferstein, they plunged her into a category of patients who are especially vulnerable to abuse in hospital settings.

https://ind.pn/2MwvHxs

Ever heard of the ‘social model’ of disability? It’s the idea that disability is actually caused by the way society is organised, rather than a person’s impairment or condition – and so it’s this which has to change. 

This inspiring theory sits right at the heart of an arts movement that first bloomed toward the end of the 1970s, and led to major advancements in Britain, such as increased accessibility on public transport and the passing of the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act.

Yet strangely, the UK’s Disability Arts Movement isn’t something that’s widely spoken about – except among the disabled creative community. Even as the parent of a four-year-old autistic son I’m ashamed to say I hadn’t really heard of it until I started working with the team behind the National Disability Arts Collection and Archive, or NDACA as it’s known.

Although a highly successful protest group, the Disability Arts Movement is also inspiring because it brought together a wealth of people from Britain’s creative communities – from comedians and film directors to sculptors and artists. Set up to raise awareness, provoke social discussion and dispel the myth that disabled people want or need to be pitied, it was quite simply ahead of its time.

And with the launch of the million-pound archive later this year – and its digital arm this month – this radical protest movement is now taking its place in the spotlight. The initial plan was to include a thousand pieces in the archive, but cheeringly it has mushroomed to over 3,500, with more to come; the archive, which is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Arts Council England and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, will continue to be added to.

“The Disability Arts Movement broke the struggle for social equality down to peoples’ stories and that’s what I’ve always been interested in – how individuals can change society,” says David Hevey, film producer and director and Project Director of NDACA. “This project is all about harnessing the power of art to achieve social change.”

“The stereotype of disabled people used to be that they were a group who needed our pity, when actually in my opinion it’s always outsiders in society who are the agents of change,” he adds. “You can’t necessarily play football with a disability but anyone can be creative. Art allows people in.”

https://ab.co/2Mnyysq

MC Jaco (Jacob Hughes) and The King (Robert King) wrote verses that were programmed into the devices, allowing their lines to be spoken.

Seven artists in total are featured in the music video for 'My World' which was released on YouTube at a red carpet event.

Peer worker with Community Disability Alliance Hunter (CDAH) Catherine Mahony said the release "could be a world first".

"It's certainly a first for Speak Up Hunter," Ms Mahony said

"We aren't aware of any other local music videos featuring people with intellectual disability."

The idea for a music video was developed by members of Speak Up Hunter, a peer support group for people with intellectual disability.

"It focuses on people with intellectual disability organising and participating in a range of activities," Ms Mahony said