The Florida Hospital Association is committed to a Tobacco Free Florida. Nationally, tobacco use is responsible for nearly 1 in 5 deaths or an estimated 440,000 deaths per year. Approximately 1,200 people each day, more than alcohol, cocaine, crack, heroin, homicide, suicide, car crashes, fires and AIDS combined.
Tobacco use is the number one cause of all cancers and emphysema, and is a leading preventable cause of heart disease and stroke. Among pregnant women, tobacco use is a major contributor to low birth weight and premature delivery. Smoking negatively affects bone and wound healing. Patients who smoke have twice the risk of postoperative infection. Besides lung cancer, tobacco use also causes increased risk for cancer of the mouth, nasal cavities, larynx, pharynx, esophagus, stomach, liver, pancreas, kidney, bladder, uterine cervix, and myeloid leukemia. Smoking causes more than $167 billion in annual health-related economic costs, including adult mortality-related productivity costs, adult medical expenditures, and medical expenditures for newborns.
As a result, we are focusing on three key initiatives to promote smoking cessation in the state of Florida:
Smoking Cessation Counseling for Hospital Patients
FHA’s Board of Trustees has adopted a goal to achieve the National Benchmark (99.9% of all patients) for providing smoking cessation counseling to heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia patients. Currently, Florida hospitals are performing well on these measures, however, the Board has challenged them to do better. To assist in this effort, FHA enlisted the guidance of hospitals and health systems with high performance ratings on the outcome standards. Hospitals that perform well on the measure generally have an electronic health record system to track performance - a finding supported by recently released research - or have adopted a policy that requires counseling or smoking cessation materials to be provided to all patients in their admission packet, thereby ensuring maximum compliance. At least one hospital has incorporated smoking cessation counseling into its tobacco-free campus policy as a responsibility of nursing upon admission to a patient care unit. To further assist hospitals in achieving the national benchmark, FHA has assembled resource materials - clinical tools and consumer education materials - that can be downloaded for use in individual facilities. Hospital performance on this challenge will be updated quarterly, so visit us again to see how we’re progressing!
Tobacco-Free Hospitals
The Florida Hospital Association Board of Trustees adopted a policy on September 14, 2007, that encourages all Florida hospitals to establish and implement a tobacco-free campus policy. Here you will find more information on Implemention, sample policies and procedures, communications and other resources to help you adopt a tobacco free campus.
Increasing the Cigarette Tax
Faced with the threat of catastrophic cuts to the Medicaid program resulting from Florida’s economic downturn, the Florida Hospital Association made a $1 increase in the cigarette tax to fund the Medicaid Medically Needy and Medicaid Aged/Disabled programs and other health-promoting services and programs its top priority during the 2009 Legislative Session. We know that an increase in the tobacco tax will result in a decrease in both adult and teen smoking. We also know that over $6.3 billion—$586 per household—are spent annually in smoking-related health services. Supporting a strategy that both increases dollars available for tobacco-related health services and at the same time promotes a reduction in smoking is vital to the health of Florida’s citizens and the state’s fiscal well-being.
