BY: DAVID WARREN, PhD
Dr. Warren is CHAusa editor, Catholic Health Association, St. Louis.
Catholic healthcare leaders need to know every day about government policies, managed care requirements, ethical challenges, business changes, public health trends, the extent of insurance coverage, and plenty else. The "Daily News" page on CHA's website, CHAusa (www.chausa.org), helps fill this need. Daily News — accessed through the toolbar on any CHAusa page or directly at www.chausa.org/$memb/dailynew.asp — provides CHA members with a summary of important healthcare news from more than 50 daily newspapers, dozens of weekly business newspapers, several weekly journals and trade publications, and various search engines. Updates are posted every business day by 10:30 am central time, and items remain posted for seven days. Each Daily News item includes the headline and lead from the source, and a link to the complete story.
For example, a January 8 Daily News story from the Orange County Register — "Health Care Hardball" — offered this lead: "Pressed by a shrinking share of health-care dollars, some local medical providers are engaging in a risky stare-down with managed-care health plans." That same day's Daily News included stories on a variety of topics from California, Texas, Maryland, Ohio, Missouri, Oregon, Minnesota, Colorado, and Washington, DC. Daily News is the most thorough compilation anywhere of the information Catholic healthcare leaders need. It's a unique, innovative resource that is indispensable to Catholic leaders who want to be effective.
At the writing of this column, Daily News listed 76 articles and editorials from more than 40 publications, on topics such as Medicare and Medicaid, healthcare costs for institutions and doctors, federal and state politics, managed care, HMO reform, mergers and other cooperative efforts, children's health insurance, senior housing, nursing care, euthanasia, bioethics, Y2K problems, and Catholic identity.
Access to Daily News, a CHA member service, is restricted to registered users of CHAusa. Becoming a registered user of CHAusa is free, but you must be a CHA member or an employee of a member. If you are not already a registered user, visit www.chausa.org/register.asp and complete the brief registration form.
Daily News is just one of several resources CHAusa offers to members. Directories of CHA members and their websites, theologians, ethicists, and ethics centers make it easy to find others in Catholic healthcare. Catholic healthcare advocacy coordinators can get free access to the Health Policy Tracking Service, where they can obtain summaries of bills and their current status, biweekly reports on trends and events, and analysis of key factors affecting hot topics.
Facility and system leaders can use the corporate compliance program policy and procedure documents from Catholic Healthcare West as a starting point for their own responsibility programs, or measure their Y2K efforts against PeaceHealth's exemplary procedures. Organizations assessing prospective partners should take a look at Values and Operating Principles: A St. Joseph Health System Paper for Discussion with Potential Partners, while all members can profit from the wisdom in A Sponsor's Guide: The Catholic Church and Labor Unions, also from Catholic Healthcare West.
CHAusa's resources help members maintain their Catholic identity, which shapes their response to the news, to ethics questions, to advocacy for social justice in healthcare, and to the ways in which justice is implemented in the workplaces of Catholic healthcare. CHAusa helps members stay informed and well-equipped to advance the ministry, and gives them a forum in which to share, comment, and collaborate.
CHA's website can be found at www.chausa.org. For more information, contact David Warren at 314-253-3464.