| The mission of the Patient Medical Association (PAMEAS) is to improve clinical outcomes and reduce costs by making healthcare delivery more patient-centric, innovative, and informative through professional healthcare education and training programs. PAMEAS is uniquely positioned as a patient-advocacy change agent that develops holistic solutions with providers, industry, institutions, policy makers, payers, associations, and patients.
A demonstration of this mission is the PAMEAS Transradial Program. For interventional cardiovascular procedures, inserting a catheter through the radial artery in the arm appears to be linked to a lower rate of bleeding complications, lower costs, and increased patient satisfaction than the standard route through the femoral artery in the groin. Currently for all catheter procedures in the United States, the radial artery is used for access only 3-5% of the time. PAMEAS has a stated goal of increasing this to 50% by 2020 through its transradial education and training programs for physicians, nurses, technicians, hospital administrators, members of industry, and health policy legislators and implementors (e.g., CMS, FDA, NIH, and members of Congress).
Other current PAMEAS cardiovascular clinical areas of focus include the management of complex coronary lesions, critical limb ischemia, transcatheter Aortic valve implantation, peripheral vascular disease, the reduction of hospital acquired conditions, and the interventional management of stroke. Additionally, PAMEAS has ongoing programs in orthopedics, dermatology, dentistry, mental health, and obstetrics/gynecology.
Trends that impact the selection of topics PAMEAS educational programs address include:
- Cost-cutting measures in healthcare delivery
- Increased patient empowerment
- Federal guidelines that are changing healthcare delivery
- Doctor shortages and the expanded role of nursing and other physician extenders
- Increasing “Patient-Focused” healthcare to reduce costs
- Increased use of the Internet by patients as their first source of healthcare information, ranking above doctors and hospitals
- Increased use of decentralized medicine through mobile monitoring and telemedicine systems
- Growth of “personalized medicine” to customize patient diagnosis and treatment
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