Archive for the ‘health care’ Category

GLEN BURNIE – VetCentric, a practice-to-home delivery provider of prescription medications and veterinary therapeutic and wellness diets, has partnered with Pfizer Animal Health in a move that allows home delivery of Pfizer products to VetCentric’s partner clinics. Pfizer Animal Health discovers, develops and manufactures veterinary-prescription vaccines and medicines for livestock and companion animals.

See full release.

COLUMBIA – WellPoint subsidiary Resolution Health has developed 25 of the 70 measures recently endorsed by the National Quality Forum to encourage the use of electronic data to measure, report and improve the delivery of health care across the U.S.  NQF reviewed more than 200 measures currently used by private health plans to assess physician performance.

See full release.

HANOVER – Conmed Healthcare Management will provide medical, pharmacy and laboratory services to inmates at three facilities in Clark County, Washington for up to $16 million over six years.

See full release.

HANOVER – Conmed Healthcare Management will provide health care services to inmates at the Garrett County Adult Detention Center as part of a potential 4.5 year term.  The deal will bring in $1 million to the company for services provided to the 50 adult inmates.

See full release.

ANNAPOLIS – RxNT V 6.1.4, an application for eprescribing from Networking Technology, Inc., has achieved the 2011 Standalone ePrescribing certification from the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology.  RxNT is the first standalone product in the U.S. to obtain the CCHIT Certified 2011 Standalone ePrescribing certification.

See full release.

HANOVER – Under its renewed agreement with the Sedgwick County, KS adult detention facility, Conmed Healthcare Management will continue to provide health care services for up to $22.5 million over five years.

See full release.

ANNAPOLIS – In the ongoing effort to build up the state’s farm business, Maryland Agriculture Secretary Buddy Hance presented a holiday tree to Wellness House of Annapolis, a cancer support group.  The tree came from Robert Giffen, owner of the Mas-Que Christmas Tree Farm and Plantation, an Annapolis farm that shares land with Wellness House.

The state promotes different farm products throughout the year in the “Maryland’s Best” program with fed funding of $358,000 for two years, and for good reason: the 2010 Maryland Policy Choices survey found that 78% are more like to buy a farm product if it is identified as grown by a Maryland farmer.

Seasonal stats on the number of tree farms and trees harvested (2007) from USDA:

Anne Arundel – 17 farms, 386 trees

Queen Anne’s – 9 farms, 1,184 trees

Prince George’s – 11 farms, 422 trees

Howard – 8 farms, 2,260 trees

Statewide – 200 farms, 77,800, total value $2.4 million.

See Maryland’s Best program.

See Wellness House.

HANOVER – Conmed Healthcare Management has received a two-year extension of its contract with the Pima County Adult Detention Center in Arizona.  This remains Conmed’s largest contract to date and is expected to generate approximately $19.5 million in revenue.

See full release.

LINTHICUM – At the BWI Business Partnership breakfast, guest speaker Dr. Stephen Schimpff gave what amounted to an open letter to Congress saying that the current bills do not address the real problems with health care.  With credentials numerous enough to crash a server, including the recently published The Future of Medicine: Megatrends That Will Improve Your Quality of Life, he described how the health care hubbub is more about care financings and access, but not improving delivery.  Specialists comprise 70% percent of all doctors, while primary care physicians are 30% and are not paid or incentivized enough for preventive care.  By improving the system for care coordination, where chronic conditions can be better managed so that patients can’t get multiple (and possibly counteractive) prescriptions from different doctors, for example, then overall costs will decrease.

The real culprits that challenge better health care are the aging population, the rise of chronic diseases, and risky behaviors (smoking, obesity, stress, and poor nutrition and exercise).  More coverage for the uninsured needs to be coupled with preventive care, reasonable income for practitioners and greater responsibility for healthy behaviors.

HANOVER – Conmed Healthcare Management has exercised the first of two three-year renewal options for the Baltimore County Detention Center.  One of the company’s three largest customers for correctional facility health care, Baltimore County will pay almost $6 million a year for in-house and out-of-facility medical care, dental and mental health care services, and pharmaceuticals.

See Conmed release.