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Accreditation simplified. The healthcare environment is complex but getting your accreditation doesn’t have to be. The Compliance Team has been leading the movement to simplify the healthcare accreditation process since 1998. Each of our Exemplary Provider accreditation programs promotes healthcare delivery excellence through the implementation of sustainable quality improvement processes that are not difficult, time consuming, or costly to realize. Our Respiratory DMEPOS (CMS deeming authority) and Diagnostic Sleep accreditation programs provide a dramatically simplified, “operations” driven process that, unlike some other accreditation organizations, provides: Plain language quality standards that look at all aspects of your business Packages combining DMEPOS and Sleep Center for a one-source accreditation solution Home Sleep Testing standards But most importantly, we simplify your Respiratory DMEPOS and Diagnostic Sleep accreditation while focusing on what matters most to patients—Safety-Honesty-Caring . For more information, call 215.654.9110; email us at info@TheComplianceTeam.org or visit: www.TheComplianceTeam.org. An accreditation organization. ADVANCE for Healthcare Careers 17
n CHRONIC OBSTRUCTIVE PULMONARY DISEASE to correct perceptions and help blacks seek appropriate treatment earlier.” Shifting Susceptibility COPD is no longer a ‘white man’s problem’ By Valerie Neff Newitt White meN once had the dubious distinction of “owning” chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Not any more. COPD has widened its grip, constricting airways of blacks and females as they embrace smoking with the same fervor as did white males half a century ago. The public misperception that COPD primarily strikes caucasian men has only added to the problem. Pulmonologist Jermaine Jackson, MD, sees a diverse patient population in his practice at Georgia Lung Associates, Austell, Ga. “What I observe is this: African Americans with COPD are younger and have more severe disease than white counterparts.” And while his patients may realize smoking causes heart and lung problems, “… they think they are immune to COPD. I hear, ‘I didn’t think that was applicable to me. This is not an African American problem; it’s a white man’s problem. I just thought I was getting older,’” Dr. Jackson said. “By the time an African American patient gets to me, in early to mid-50s, he is already in severe COPD. We in health care are challenged COPD RESOURCES Our COPD spotlight offers targeted articles, relevant jobs, columns, blogs and other helpful information. Visit http://respiratory-caresleep-medicine.advanceweb.com/COPD/default.aspx. The leap to statistical data That anecdotal snapshot on the COPD ethnic/ gender chasm is backed up by hard data, subject to interpretation. “If we look at the incidence of COPD and mortality rates over the last century, they track according to when different demographics actually started smoking,” said Mark Dransfield, MD, of Birmingham, Ala., who spoke May 16 before the American Thoracic Society 2011 International Conference in Denver on the topic of “Racial Disparities in COPD.” In the 1900s, the first group to start smoking heavily was white men. Next, white women started smoking in numbers, followed by black men, then black women. The effects on disease frequency and death, Dransfield said, become evident 30 to 50 years later. But on top of increased smoking habits, is there a superimposed increased susceptibility for COPD among women and African Americans, causing their current statistical numbers to catch up with those of white males “It depends on what study you look at,” Dr. Dransfield said. “Some suggest there could be differences in nicotine metabolism — that it’s easier for African Americans to become addicted to cigarettes. But we don’t know yet if that’s definitively true.” There is also a persistent hypothesis suggesting a female’s airway caliber is narrower than a male’s, thus a similar injury from smoking would result in more airway obstruction for women than men. Again, this idea is likely to be true, but not yet proven. “If you look at cross-sectional studies, you find at the same level of lung function impairment, women and African Americans have smoked less and tend to be younger,” Dr. Dransfield said. “At 60 percent of lung function left, the average woman would be several years younger than the average man with the same level of lung function.” He also pointed to studies that appear to show differences between races in the distribution of the emphysema that they get. “Looking at people with very advanced COPD who were being evaluated for lung transplant, we’ve seen that African Americans have less emphysema and the pattern is different than that seen in whites. So it looks like the biological response to smoke jeff leeser 18 ADVANCE for Healthcare Careers
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Page 7 and 8: ■ Advertiser Index ENTRY DEADLINE
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