Healthcare is a rapidly growing specialized field. There are numerous opportunities within this field including professional medical staff and administrative staff. The administrative staff deals with the business and financial end of physician groups, hospitals and insurance entities. Obtaining a healthcare administration online degree will give you a step up in advancing your career in this field.

Many adults who already have a hob in the healthcare industry are unable to take the time to devote to obtaining a higher degree without sacrificing time already accounted for in their jobs. However, in order to progress within their chosen field, a higher degree is often a requirement. A healthcare administration online degree is an ideal solution for this. It will allow adults to continue their education yet not sacrifice existing obligations.

A healthcare administration online degree will allow the student to immediately put into practice knowledge learned. This can help improve processes and efficiency in the workplace with your existing duties and give you an edge on the competition for advancement. A healthcare administration online degree will give all the necessary education to effectively function in that field. It will give valuable understanding of finance, organization, human resources, writing and public speaking. All the knowledge needed to work within this area is accessible via a healthcare administration online degree.

A healthcare administration online degree is available in an associates, bachelors, masters and doctorate. An associates degree will take less time to accomplish and can easily get you on the track to a career with basic knowledge. This is an ideal degree for administrative assistants, claims processors or accounting assistants in this industry. A bachelor’s degree is necessary for any type of managerial or supervisory position. Most executive level positions in health care require a post graduate degree with either a masters or doctorate degree.

The time and effort needed to complete a healthcare administration online degree varies depending on the type of degree. You should not only check requirements with the potential school where you will be learning but also check local job requirements. Many jobs will require a residency where you will receive on the job training while earning your degree in a variety of departments within the healthcare industry.

In order to obtain a healthcare administration online degree there are also some technical requirements that are necessary. Each student must have access to a computer and have an Internet connection. This will allow you to turn in and receive assignments, view course work and participate in discussions. Particular software programs may also be required such as document viewers, chat programs or word processing programs. There may be in person attendance requirements for post graduate degrees.

A healthcare administration online degree is a great way to further a career and your education. Healthcare is a rapidly growing field and the demand for qualified employees is increasing. A healthcare administration online degree will provide the convenience of learning at your own pace and at your own schedule and give you valuable experience in a highly lucrative field.

Most Americans are struggling to afford health insurance. In just the past few years, the cost of buying health insurance for your family has skyrocketed. I was talking with an insurance agent recently, who told me it’s not unusual at all for his clients to be paying $1,000 to $1,400 per month for their family to be covered.

I don’t know many people who can easily afford those kinds of monthly insurance payments. Most who are paying them are making major sacrifices in other areas. The vast majority of Americans put health coverage very high on their list of priorities, so the other things that get left behind might surprise you. No question, the quality of life is far lower for many people now that they pay so much to be insured.

Meanwhile, many employers are cutting back their employees’ insurance coverage. Professions that once paid all their employees’ health insurance premiums — like teachers and firefighters — are finding the employee footing the bill for larger and larger portions of their insurance.

How are people coping? Many Americans simply don’t have health insurance anymore. That’s a big problem not only for families, who often put off going to the doctor, but also for society in general. People who hesitate buying medicine or seeing a doctor often end up very sick in hospital emergency rooms.

Others are simply reducing the amount of health insurance they have. They pay a larger portion of their doctor visits and prescription medicine costs. If you are a young adult, it may not make a lot of sense to pay huge insurance premiums to be covered for major illnesses that you are very unlikely to experience.

There are a growing number of health insurance plans that let you pick and choose the areas of coverage you want to pay for. While this practice was prohibited in many states, more and more places are seeing the wisdom and necessity of this approach.

Even more pressing than the cost of health insurance is the cost of buying prescription medicines. Many people simply can’t afford the spiraling cost of the medicines they need. Others might insist, willingly lowering their standard of living just to afford overpriced medicine. The solution to this problem increasingly has nothing to do with insurance. Organizations use their large pool of members to negotiate big discounts on prescription drugs at thousands of chain and independent pharmacies nationwide. Typically you can save up to 60% off generic drugs and up to 15% off name-brand drugs.

This is a big advantage for the elderly, families, businesses, organizations, and anyone who wants to lower their cost of medicine. Additionally, some programs also cover medicine for your pets. If you often care for an ill animal, this can save you a lot of money over time.

Unlike insurance, discount drug programs are often very low cost or free. Pharmacies participate in the discount programs to encourage you to buy from them. It’s a win-win for both you and the medical industry.

Group Health Insurance is an insurance scheme provided by the insurance companies for a group of persons, such as the employees of an organization at a reduced individual rate. Most of the companies provide group health insurance schemes for their employees, which helps the employees to receive health treatments without any cost they need to pay. Group health insurance ensures the employees of an organization to receive medical treatment quickly so that they can avoid waiting long time in queues and other sufferings.

Group health insurance offers lots of advantages to both the employer and the employees. As far as an employer is concerned, the group health insurance scheme will provide enough medical treatment quickly for the staff of his company and thereby ensures speedy recovery from diseases and keeping disruption owing to illness in the office to some extend. The employee can also provide more focus on his/her job as there is no need to worry thinking about the time they want to wait for the treatment on the NHS, or suffering undue pain, or for a diagnosis.

Group health insurance plan offers several valuable benefits for an employee. The main advantage of becoming a member of the group health insurance scheme is that the insured doesn’t have to pay large premiums for taking a private health insurance plan. The employee can work without being worried of their health as he/she will surely get quality medical help immediately if needed.

There are several health insurance companies offering group health insurance schemes. Most of the health insurance companies, as part of their Group Health Insurance Plan, provide the insured (the employees of the company) to take a ‘health check’ once in every year at any private hospital with which the company has tie-up. The health checks will cover a complete check up, which include height, levels of fitness, weight, blood tests, blood pressure. The health checks are done so as to check whether the insured employee is in a good health or to find out a so far undiagnosed condition. What ever be the purpose, the health check is considered to be beneficial for the employee and the employer.

For those individuals who are not a member of the group health insurance scheme has to pay about $150 upwards to perform a complete health check. Hence this is considered as an added advantage for those who are in the group health insurance scheme. Group health insurance also helps to boost the morale of the staffs as they will know that their employer is providing special care about his employees.

Group health insurance schemes will differ from one insurance provider to another. The insurance coverage will also change according to the schemes you select. But there are certain factors which all the group health insurance schemes will cover for:

– In-patient and day-patient treatment
– Out patient treatments such as physiotherapy
– Free Help lines such as a GP Helpline and Stress Counseling Helpline.
– Specialist consultations after getting a referral from the employee’s GP

Group health insurance policy differs from one insurance company to another. It is always advisable to compare different insurance companies before selecting a group insurance policy. Select the one which suits your company.

Statistics about mental health problems are now becoming more increasingly alarming. The

key factors in the apparent rise in mental health cases have not yet been fully determined.

In fact, authorities may have released inaccurate figures since people tend to hide mental

illness or ignore them. This is also the reason why many mental health problems worsen.

Perhaps, the only good news to come out from this is that there are some common mental

health disorders and conditions among the statistics. According to the records of a number

of Washington-based psychiatric hospitals, there are four particularly common strands of

mental health problems that have been recorded.

Depression

Among all the common mental health disorders, depression is stated as being the most

common. Approximately 80% of the population has experienced clinical depression at one

point in their lives. In the early stages, this problem can be alleviated through

counseling. However, the problem lies in the fact that most people tend to see the early

stages of depression as just a negative mood swing. Since it is typically difficult for

most people to detect depression until it has taken full effect, the condition can often go

completely unnoticed. For some people, the physical and mental changes are gradual, which

only makes it harder to detect the problem.

Bi-polar Disorder

Bipolar disorder, as compared with depression, is more difficult to detect. The condition

causes the person’s mood to swing, being manic one moment and depressed in the next. While

this usually fits the stereotype of people with this particular strain of mental health

illness, the reality is that there are periods where the person exhibits a relatively

normal mood. This period of normalcy between the high and low points is often enough for

casual observers to discount the possibility of a person having bi-polar disorder. Often,

casual observers and the patient himself will only note the frequency of the mood swings

and the possibility of a problem much later on. On occasion, a session of psychiatric

counseling mandated by company policy can detect the problem. However, not all companies

have such a system in place.

Schizophrenia

Approximately two million people are suffering from schizophrenia at any given time, which

should be a cause for alarm. The condition is often characterized by the patient hearing

“voices” in their head that no one else can hear, a typical trait of insane people. This

mental health condition has a number of sub-varieties and can effectively disable a

person’s ability to interact with others if left unattended or treated. Schizophrenia can

also sometimes cause other mental health disorders. While there are medications that have

been proven to alleviate the problem, there are still some cases where medication must be

complimented by counseling. Roughly 20% of people who develop the condition never fully

recover and times of great stress and anxiety can sometimes result in a relapse.

Alzheimer’s

Arguably, Alzheimer’s Disease is among the most debilitating mental conditions known to

man. The increasing frequency of the condition has caused alarm since current medications

only help ease the symptoms and not really treat the condition. Usually diagnosed during

the latter years of a person, Alzheimer’s can take an immense toll on one’s life and

relationships. As a debilitating condition, it rapidly takes away the patient’s self-

confidence and ability to physically function in a normal way. In contrast to other mental

health problems, Alzheimer’s is relatively easy to detect if the person is properly

informed. However, as previously mentioned, the disease is difficult to treat with any

level of certainty. Counseling is known to have minimal effects even the mildest of cases.

There is still no psychoactive medication that has shown appreciable effects other than

“delaying the inevitable.”

As these mental health conditions eclipse the human mind, it has become more clear that

more work needs to be done in terms of research and drug development.

Most people think that they are quite safe in their homes, or any other place which one has been used to; but its time to think twice. Why?

Our world is no longer the same world as it was a very long time ago. Before, when civilizations were just beginning to form, the whole environment was safe and free from any pollution. But now, because of the rapid changes which took place in almost every part of the world, the environment is ‘unsafe’ to almost any individual.

Who wouldn’t want to attain longevity in life? Seldom can you find people that reach the age of 120 years or more. But before, that is quite possible. People now are contented and happy enough when they still reach the age of 65.

The lifestyle of many people now has a major effect on the entire body system. Because of the unhealthy lifestyle that people are getting used to, the body is able to acquire harmful chemicals (like acids). These harmful chemicals should be eliminated from the body’s system, however, when the body is unable to perform natural detoxification, the chemicals or acids stay in the body and form build ups.

This build up cause imbalance in your body, and after sometime, other complications may arise. You might wonder how you were able to get too much acid build up in your body, but the answer is very much obvious.

Observe your daily life; most of the food stuffs that you’re used to eating contain many harmful chemicals. Beverages like soda pop, coffee, alcohol and other milk beverages can cause certain diseases. Cigarette smokers are not exempted from acquiring harmful acids; as well as inhaling exhaust from cars, trucks, and other vehicles. Dousing yourself with hygiene products which contains harmful chemicals; pharmaceutical drugs, and the modern technology all contributes to acid build up in our body.

So you can just imagine living your life every day with all this harmful things around us. No wonder a lot of people get sick. A call to a natural way of healing diseases or illnesses is the cry of many people who are now aware of the sad fact that many others refuse to believe.

Body detox is a good way to rid your body of the harmful chemicals that has been inside your body for some time now. Detox can help your body to reverse all negative effects from unhealthy lifestyle and eating habits.

There is a lot of detox resources that you can make use to guide you in your quest for a rejuvenated and new life. The book entitled The Tao of Detox: The Natural Way to Purify Your Body for Health and Longevity was written by Daniel Reid. This book will show you a holistic approach to cleanse your body. There is a need to detoxify our internal body, just as it is needed to clean our environment (and the whole planet).

This book will provide you with a solution to restore and preserve good health. And this will only be realized through detoxification.

If you desire to live a long life, purchase this book, and let it be your guide to detox your body, and help you change your unhealthy lifestyle. Start now before it is too late.

Health is the biggest and most crucial asset of every living being. An unhealthy animal and individual can never truly experience any joy. It is the wealth of health that provides the requisite potential to topple over all odds and to move ahead with life. So such an essential part of a person’s life demands extra care and concern. An ideal way to secure an individual’s prized possession for him and for those who love him is a health insurance policy.

A health insurance policy is meant to financially assist a person in case there occurs a setback to his health. For instance he is afflicted by some grave disease, meets an accident, becomes handicapped etc. In order to provide complete service and for the all round development of the individual the health care system of America offers ample of options or different types of health insurance for its citizens. Some of these are explained below:

• Preferred Provider Organization or PPO is a discount form of health insurance policy. PPO has a complete network of health care providers from hospitals to doctors. If an individual has taken PPO policy and takes treatment from any of these assigned providers, the PPO covers his complete medical treatment. While if the person takes recourse to some other doctor or institution, he gets served at a reduced rate. PPO’s thus facilitate medical services at abridged rates.

• One immensely cheap form of health insurance is the catastrophic health insurance. This sort of policy is basically meant for the people who have the financial means to manage regular illnesses and hospitalizations. The deductibles i.e. the sum of money an individual for these policies are quite large for this policy. At times there are caps on the amount the policy will pay in case of illness.

• A Short term health insurance policy is akin to a life insurance policy in the sense that both can be adopted for a specific tenure. This policy covers catastrophic to comprehensive cases and excludes the situation of pregnancy and childbirth. Quite often it is hard to qualify for these policies as there are strict conditions or qualifying procedures. Moreover these policies may not cover any pre-existing medical conditions.

• HMOs or the Health Maintenance Organizations also offer health insurane t significantly lower premiums. But the disadvantage is that they confine the sources a person may seek in non-exigency situations. HMOs do not cover the precautionary measures such as immunization, mammograms and physicals. There are quite a few issues associated with the HMOs. For instance it is believed that doctors receive financial perks for deducting the cost of medical services to patients. One way to do this is to pay monthly fee to the doctor for each patient despite of delving in to the issues of what treatment the latter one needs.

• There are also full-service health insurances. The lucrative feature of these policies is that they cover all sort of illnesses, cover any medical treatment the patient takes regardless of the institution or doctor and the deductibles are at the discretion of the policyholder. He may pay a high or a low one.

• Medicare or Medicaid insurances are meant for the retired or the low-income individuals.

Millions of children will head back to school this Fall without one of the most important of all school supplies–health insurance.

More than 8 million children in the United States are uninsured-that means one in every 10 kids might not receive the medical care they need, when they need it, because they don’t have insurance. In fact, uninsured children are 10 times more likely than insured children to miss out on needed care. Even when uninsured children do get some medical care, they often miss out on vital medical screenings and preventive care or seeing a doctor when they are sick.

To help these students start the school year off right, the Covering Kids & Families Back-to-School campaign, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is making sure that parents, grandparents and teachers of uninsured children know that low-cost or free health care coverage is available. Many uninsured children are eligible through Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

These programs cover doctor visits, prescriptions, hospitalizations and more. That means parents can put ‘getting coverage for our kids’ at the top of their back-to-school checklists.

“As a physician and mother, I have seen first hand that children who have health care coverage are better prepared to learn in school and better equipped to succeed in life,” says Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D., M.B.A., president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “Uninsured children are less likely to receive proper medical care for childhood illnesses such as sore throats, earaches and asthma-all of which can become very serious without treatment. These children are the future of our country and we need to make sure that they get the care they need.”

Although these programs are in every state and the District of Columbia, many parents may not believe their kids are eligible. Because these parents are working, they may think they earn too much to qualify. Children in a family earning up to $40,000 a year or more may qualify for Medicaid and SCHIP. Eligibility is based on family size and income.

“Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program have provided millions of children with low-cost or free health care coverage, but there are millions more who are still eligible,” said Sarah Shuptrine, national program director of Covering Kids & Families. “Many people still do not know about these programs, and parents in working families might assume their children would not qualify. Anyone can help get eligible kids covered. Grandparents can play an important role and are encouraged to find out about these public health coverage programs.

Writers of medical advice–including columnists, insurance companies, governmental agencies, medical organizations, drug companies and even practitioners–are all biased. They always have agendas. They all choose to write about certain topics and not others. They make choices about what to include in their articles, what to leave out and how to state their cases. They’re all self-serving. They all have something to “sell,” even when there is not an immediate cash-return.

Does that mean you should throw up your hands, say the hell with it, and never read or listen to another medical message? I don’t think so, but in order to derive value from these messages, you sure as heck better understand the agendas of the people who created them. Or as the psychologists say, if you want to understand a behavior, you need to figure out what motivated it. Let’s examine some advice-givers and their biases.

What motivates health columnists? Well, how about their continued employment, the needs of their publisher-employers, and the needs of the companies the publishers wish to attract as advertisers? It’s not hard to imagine there are some subtle and not-so-subtle influences and incentives at play in framing the subject-matter and slant of the articles. Certainly, it’s hard to attract the business of potential advertisers when you have written devastating critiques of their products.

Yet don’t infer that you should ignore what the health columnists have to say. They provide a wonderful service in discussing health issues, the business of medicine and its practice. I personally enjoy reading the health columns of that great medical publication, The Wall Street Journal. In fact, I still distribute to my patients an excellent article about medication-overuse headaches that Tara Parker-Pope, one of their columnists, wrote years ago.

One of the odder chapters in the business of medicine is that certain insurance companies have positioned themselves as providers of health advice, particularly those companies paid by employers to manage their medication-benefit plans. I won’t waste the reader’s time in building a case that insurance companies have agendas and conflicts-of-interest in providing such advice. This should be self-evident.

Governmental agencies like the National Institutes of Health provide medical information which is generally reliable and useful, but influenced by the agency’s understandable needs for self-promotion and self-preservation. The same holds true for medical organizations like the American Academy of Neurology (to which I belong) and big group-practices like the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic. The advice tendered by these medical organizations in their publications and web-pages is backed by their reputations, which they zealously protect. So you can be sure that the medical content is subjected to rigorous quality-control. And fortunately, although their messages are motivated by commercial needs, the linkages are obvious and easy for the consumer to take into account.

How about individual health practitioners? Giving advice is what they do for a living, so what’s the issue? Well, in the U.S., at least, there is a genuine “medical marketplace” where competition reigns supreme. So when you need help with your health, each practitioner (including me!) would like to make the short-list of advisers whose opinions you trust and value.

Let’s move on to the drug companies. In my opinion there is no medical information that is both as pervasive and biased as that created by drug companies. And in many cases the connection between the message and the drug company’s name has been obscured or hidden, so the consumer doesn’t even know to be wary.

I have written elsewhere about the comical turn of events in the “advice” that drug companies have provided to people with headaches. For many years the makers of sinus medications invested heavily in convincing people with headaches that most of them were due to sinus disease. But now that effective and lucrative drugs for migraine exist, companies are sinking even larger sums of money into the message that those headaches weren’t due to sinus conditions after all. Instead, they’ve been due to migraine. This vignette illustrates the hazard in allowing marketing departments of drug companies to diagnose one’s headaches.

Another hazard is in allowing drug companies to write the information-sheets that doctors hand patients at the ends of office visits. Every doctor gets buried in pamphlets that sales reps from drug companies leave at their offices. For years I actually looked at these things, trying to select the 30% that might be worth retaining and passing along to my patients. After a while, 30% seemed too optimistic, so I searched for the 20% that was worth keeping, and then the 10%…well, you get the idea. The pamphlets kept getting more biased and less useful. At one time the sales reps passed out some real gems that were genuinely helpful to patients and their families. But those days are gone.

So when it comes to medical advice, consider the source.

If counting sheep is not working for you, here are some facts you may want to sleep on-chronic sleep deprivation can do more than make you tired. It can significantly affect your health, safety, performance, and lifestyle.

Most people are surprised to learn that sleeping less than six or seven hours a night can increase their mortality risk more than smoking, high blood pressure or heart disease.

Losing as little as one and a half hours of sleep for just one night could result in a reduction of daytime alertness by as much as 32 percent. This loss can impair memory and the ability to think and process information effectively.

Decreased alertness can also affect your life by limiting your participation in activities that require sustained attention, such as reading a book or watching your favorite TV show. And the risk of receiving an occupational injury more than doubles when a person is sleepy.

Car accidents are another problem. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates conservatively that each year drowsy driving is responsible for at least 100,000 automobiles crashed, 71,000 injuries and 1,550 fatalities.

As many as 70 million Americans have sleep disturbances-which include taking a long time to get to sleep, sleeping less and waking up frequently.

Sleep disturbances may in fact be a symptom of a much larger problem, especially if they are associated with irritability and mood swings. Emotional stress, racing thoughts and restlessness can be signs of something more serious, such as bipolar disorder.

“If someone is experiencing restlessness and irritability, along with sadness or emotional ups and downs for more than two weeks,” said Dr. Ellen Frank, professor of psychiatry and psychology, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, “they should seek medical attention from a specialist who is trained to diagnose or perhaps just rule out depression or bipolar disorder.”

The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) has launched a new Web site, www. sleeplessinamerica.org, which offers educational resources that provide screening for sleeplessness, information on when to see a doctor and a questionnaire to determine when sleeplessness might be symptomatic of a more serious illness. The Web site is also available in Spanish.

It doesn’t matter if you have already decided to purchase health insurance for the family pet or if you are simply. When you are comparing the quote of one health insurance quote to another remember that the base doller amount is not the only number you have to consider. In addition to the monthly payment make sure you also check out exactly what type of veterinary care and treatments are covered (some basic insurance plans do not include cancer treatment), what kind of deductible you, the pet owner, will be expected to pay, is there a yearly cap on medical expenses, and what type of discounts are available.
At the moment there are only a handful of companies that offer pet health insurance. Five of the most popular companies are Pets Best Pet Insurance, Veterinary Pet Insurance, ShelterCare, Pets Health and PetCare.
An insurance plan through Pets Best Pet Insurance will cost approximately $32.00 a month ($384.00 annually). Pets Best will cover pet sterilization provided the pet owner purchases an additional wellness plan. Pets Best does not cover pre-existing medical conditions a pet has so its best to insure them early in life before problems develop. Pets Best has a life time limit of $99,750 dollars per pet. Pets Best health insurance plans come with a $75.00 deductible. Multiple pet discounts are available. Pet’s Best pet health insurance does cover cancer.
Veterinary Pet Insurance is a company that offers pet owner a $14,000 a year cap on an insurance plan that only costs approximately $20.00 dollars a month. Veterinary Pet Insurance offers plans with a $50.00 deductible (after the deductible they pay ninety percent of the bill) on plans that include pet sterilization and cancer coverage. Veterinary Pet Insurance does not accept pre-existing conditions and does not offer multi-pet discounts.
ShelterCare is a pet insurance that cost pet’s owners approximately $29.95. For that $29.95 there is absolutely no deductible and cancer treatments are covered. ShelterCare will not pay for pet sterilization nor will they cover any pre-existing conditions. ShelterCare does not have a benefit cap. ShelterCare offers premium discounts for multi-pet plans, medical service, and micro-chips.
A pet health insurance policy through PetsHealth insurance company will cost the pet owner approximately $37.17 dollars per month. PetsHealth covers 80% of the pets vet bill after the $100.00 doller deductible is paid. PetsHealth has a $13,000 doller cap on each per year. PetHealth does insure pre-existing conditions after ninety days. Multi-pet discounts are available through PetHealth. PetsHealth does offer pet health insurance plans that cover cancer on a case by case basis.
PetCare is a pet health insurance company that estimates the average cost for a policy for a pet is $29.95 a month. This plan includes a fifty doller deductible. While PetCare is happy to cover the cost your pet’s cancer treatments they will not pay for any pre-existing conditions nor will they pay for pet sterilization. PetCare offers discounts for multi-pet plans and medical service.
None of the estimated monthly prices for these insurance companies include any extra insurances riders.
Any one or all of these companies can change their policies between now and the time you purchase a pet health insurance plan.
Remember to read the fine print before you sign up for a pet health insurance plan.
All five of these pet health insurance companies have their own websites where you can go to get up to date pet health insurance quotes.
There are other pet health insurance companies with different prices, discounts, stipulations, and benefit caps if you are not content with the previous five comparisons.