Translational Medicine for Improved Outcomes and Increased Profit

Translational medicine, the practice of turning bench science into bedside practice, has been challenging since the beginning of medicine. The federal government and health care policy makers have been wrestling with how to drive warranted changes through the health care system to improve patient outcomes, increase medical treatment effectiveness and ultimately lower the costs of care.

The current "solutions" to this problem have had dismal results and the public policy solution chosen has been to ration care and reduce payments to health care providers. These policies in turn have caused their own problems including reduced access to medical treatment, delays in implementation of improved medical treatments, and higher costs to the system because of deteriorating patient outcomes.

Profit to the hospital and to the treating physicians is truly the best way to implement bench science into bedside practice. If discoveries can decrease patient stay, decrease physician and health care provider time commitments, while greatly improving patient outcomes, they can be adopted quickly. This will be accelerated where the physicians and stockholders receive a profit reward quickly. A new complete system generally must be ten times better than what it replaces (horses to automobiles.) Lesser discoveries can be marginally better. Oxygen saturation qualifies as 10x better than existing therapies alone. It is potentially as synergistic as the discovery of the integrated circuit (computer chip.)

Based upon well-characterized but little known bench science and preliminary applications the HOPS system the IHMF is proposing can be expected: to improve patient outcomes; decrease physician time and potentially reduce the length of hospital stays; reduce the number and length of stay of outlier patients that can sap the bottom line. These challenges are especially a problem at small community based hospitals and hospitals with high levels of Medicare and Medicaid or Medi-CAL patients. Based upon preliminary evaluations, HOPS contains protocols for emergency room patients, patients receiving surgery and for patients known to have markers for becoming outliers. The HOPS system, fully implemented, is anticipated to reduce physician time and hospital stay time by one-third or more, while reducing patient recovery time by over one third.

Long term profit is also important. It is estimated that it will take the third party payment system between 10 and 15 years to adjust to the technology proposed, leaving the pioneers in innovation implementation a considerable span of time to profit from and gain a reputation as an innovative solution provider that offers patients higher quality of care than is available at other locations.

Instruction about participating in on-going Translational Medicine Studies available to the practitioner to increase hyperbaric medical center revenue and prestige in the surrounding community

NBIRR-01:  Mild-Moderate TBI or PTSD, 18-65:  Restoring Brain Injured Veterans, NFL Players & Police Officers and others to more productive lives

HAPI: The Hyperbaric Amputation Prevention Initiative:  Working to provide the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) with the data they requested on Wagner Grade I & II Wounds to help prevent amputations.  Under a translational medicine study, Medicare and state Medicaid will pay for patient treatment

HOPS:  Hospital Outcomes & Profit System:  Integrating Hyperbaric Medicine into Hospital routine patient care for increased recovery and lower costs to the hospital.

Practical assistance and guidance on how to be a problem solver for your professional colleagues and public policy makers

Help federal, state and local policy makers to solve entitlement program costs, incarceration, and high costs of ineffective education.

Gain the respect of your professional colleagues by helping them understand how oxygen saturation technology (hyperbaric oxygen therapy) can improve their patient's outcomes and increase efficiency while reducing malpractice exposure.