PPAHS Mission
Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety (PPAHS) is an advocacy group dedicated to improving patient health and safety. PPAHS seeks to advance key patient health and safety initiatives that significantly impact patient lives and to do so in a prescriptive and practical manner by:
- Endorsing and publicizing health expert opinion that is supported by healthcare organizations and medical societies.
- Surveying healthcare professionals to determine current practices and using these responses to encourage improvement.
- Sharing best practices to encourage their spread and adoption.
- Developing safety checklists and advocating for the adoption of standards to help eliminate adverse events.
PPAHS Key Initiatives
PPAHS is engaged in the following key initiatives for improving patient safety and health outcomes (please click on the links below to learn more about each initiative):
- Alarm Fatigue
- Blood Clots (Venous Thromboembolism – VTE)
- Patient Monitoring
Inspiration and Individuals Behind PPAHS
PPAHS and this website is inspired by Howard Snitzer, who survived 96 minutes without a heart beat. Howard’s resuscitation by volunteer paramedics and Dr Roger White at the Mayo Clinic is a truly remarkable story. Moreover, as Howard says, he owes this “fifth shot at living well” to the capnograph which encouraged his rescuers to continue their efforts and, of course, to their persistence and never-give-up attitude.
Mike Wong built this free WordPress site (yes, free! — thank you, WordPress!). A graduate of Johns Hopkins University, he is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of Patient Compliance, a peer-reviewed journal devoted to improving patient adherence (i.e. getting patients to take their medications as prescribed by their physicians). According to the New England Healthcare Institute, the problem of non-adherence costs as much as $290 billion annually in extra doctor visits, extra hospital admissions, extra emergency room visits, extra prescriptions … and, of course, poorer patient health … all caused by non-adherence.
Mike has been involved in a number of healthcare issues affecting patients and their friends and families — including encouraging smokers to quit in community-driven initiatives, helping pain patients receive physician-recommended treatments, and raising awareness about the dangers of hepatitis B in the Asian American community.
PPAHS very much appreciates the assistance from our board of advisors for helping us with our three key initiatives to improve patient safety and health outcomes — alarm fatigue, blood clots, and patient monitoring.
There is passion and a desire to improve patient safety and health outcomes through technology like capnography that helped save Howard, and more knowledge and expertise like that of Bruce Goodman and Dr Roger White at the Mayo Clinic.
Hopefully, there will be more cases like Howard’s and fewer instances like that of Carly Ann Pritchard. (Ms Pritchard suffered an ankle injury and then underwent surgery to reduce lingering pain from her ankle injury. Unfortunately, although she survived surgery, she suffered brain damage because of an accidental overdose from a morphine-filled pain pump — after surgery. A California appeals court recently upheld a jury’s award of about $9.9 million in damages.)
Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety 
Sean Hintz, CRNA (Vice President, Louisiana Association of Nurse Anesthetists) writes: “Thank you for your support of patient safety through the advancement of Anesthesia.”
My recommendation is to move to any cotnury except the United States of America.Health insurance in the United States of America costs at least twice as much as anywhere else.You cannot get cheap but good health insurance in the United States of America.To get cheap but good health insurance, you have to go somewhere else.
The answer is that it doesn’t cost less ..if you don’t cnodiser what the employer is paying. That’s why so many people think COBRA is expensive. COBRA isn’t expensive, it’s just that when you continue your group plan under COBRA it’s the same plan, at the same cost (plus maybe 2% for admin), but it seems expensive because your employer is no longer contributing.Individual plans ARE CHEAPER than group because you can be turned down. In group plans nobody can be turned down, so the cost to cover all the health problems escalates.The biggest mistake people make is assuming that their work coverage is more competitive without shopping. It’s not uncommon, especially for young, health people, to be able to get cheaper plans on their own even when the employer is picking up half the cost.Finally, most small companies will just have their employees buy individual plans because it’s a fraction of the cost .though either way it’s always nicer when someone else is picking up the tab.
why is this not a no brainer? I dont understand. If their are politics, or big money involved, I would like to know, because I just can not comprehend this
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